“The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.”

“The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world's problems.”

“One of our difficulties is, surely, that we want to be happy through something, through a person, through a symbol, through an idea, through virtue, through action, through companionship. We think happiness, or reality, or what you like to call it, can be found through something. Therefore we feel that through action, through companionship, through certain ideas, we will find happiness. So being lonely, I want to find someone or some idea through which I can be happy. But loneliness always remains; it is ever there.If I use you for my fulfillment for my happiness, you become very unimportant, because it is my happiness I am concerned with. So when the mind is concerned with the idea that it can have happiness through somebody, through a thing or through an idea, do I not make all these means transitory? Because my concern is then something else, to go further, to catch something beyond.”

“Most of us waste this extraordinary thing called life. We have lived forty or sixty years, have gone to the office, engaged ourselves in social activity, escaping in various forms, and at the end of it, we have nothing but an empty, dull, stupid life, a wasted life.Now, pleasure has created this pattern of social life. We take pleasure in ambition, in competition, in acquiring knowledge or power, or position, prestige, status. And that pursuit of pleasure as ambition, competition, greed, envy, status, domination, power is respectable. It is made respectable by a society which has only one concept: that you shall lead a moral life, which is a respectable life. You can be ambitious, you can be greedy, you can be violent, you can be competitive, you can be a ruthless human being, but society accepts it, because at the end of your ambition, you are either so called successful man with plenty of money, or a failure and therefore a frustrated human being. So social morality is immorality.”

“En cette perpétuelle bataille que l'on appelle vivre, on cherche à établirun code de comportement adapté à la société, communiste ou prétendumentlibre, dans laquelle on a été élevé.Nous obéissons à certaines règles de conduite, en tant qu'elles sontparties intégrantes de notre tradition, hindoue, islamique, chrétienne ouautre. Nous avons recours à autrui pour distinguer la bonne et la mauvaisefaçon d'agir, la bonne et la mauvaise façon de penser. En nous yconformant, notre action et notre pensée deviennent mécaniques, nos réactionsdeviennent automatiques. Nous pouvons facilement le constateren nous-mêmes.Depuis des siècles, nous nous faisons alimenter par nos maîtres, parnos autorités, par nos livres, par nos saints, leur demandant de nous révélertout ce qui existe au-delà des collines, au-delà des montagnes, audelàde la Terre. Si leurs récits nous satisfont, c'est que nous vivons demots et que notre vie est creuse et vide : une vie, pour ainsi dire de « secondemain ». Nous avons vécu de ce que l'on nous a dit, soit à cause denos tendances, de nos inclinations, soit parce que les circonstances et lemilieu nous y ont contraints. Ainsi, nous sommes la résultante de toutessortes d'influences et il n'y a rien de neuf en nous, rien que nous ayonsdécouvert par nous-mêmes, rien d'originel, de non corrompu, de clair.”

“To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine...”

“Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.”