Does one scent appeal more than another? Do you prefer this flavor, or that feeling? Is your practice sacred and your work profane? Then your mind is separated: from itself, from oneness, from the Tao.
In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves. This is a helpful pointer for our everyday presence-practice. Can you catch yourself angrily defending your point of view or attacking the other person's? There's the ego.
All practice or worship is only for taking off this veil. When that will go, you will find that the Sun of Absolute Knowledge is shining in Its own lustre.
If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled.
As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones [authors] are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses.
It will not do merely to listen to great principles. You must apply them in the practical field, turn them into constant practice. What will be the good of cramming the high - sounding dicta of the scriptures? You have first to grasp the teachings of the Shastras, and then to work them out in practical life. Do you understand? This is called practical religion.
Life creeps slowly upward.... When some forgotten inventor of the older world smote his rival or enemy with a branch of wood and found that it was good and thereafter made a practice of smiting rivals and enemies with branches of wood, then, and on that day, artificiality may be said to have begun. Then, and on that day, was begun a revolution destined to change the history of life. Then, and on that day, was laid the cornerstone of that most tremendous of artifices, CIVILIZATION!
The values that we share - freedom of speech, freedom of religious practice, freedom for civil society, free and fair elections, all the innovation that's been created through a market-based economy - those things are ultimately going to be the path for us to continue into a better future. I hope that, despite some of the challenges we have, that people appreciate that.
God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one - fifth of our vast population as untouchables.
The practice of utter sincerity towards other men would avail to no good end, if they were incapable of practising it towards their own minds. In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.
I don't think I underestimated [Vladimir Putin], but I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating.