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No Self Quotes

“These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment: A Glimpse of the Whole The first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment: Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being The second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom. The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen. Your own wisdom from within has arisen. A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego: 1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego. 2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego. 3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being. In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness. For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean. At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole. It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want. This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. You have found the door to God. You have come home.”

LoveLifeGodWisdomTruthJoySpiritualityJesusExistenceSilenceMeditationAwarenessEgoEnlightenmentEmptinessMysticismTaoBuddhaNirvanaLao TzuSatoriNo SelfThe Kingdom Of God
Author:Swami Dhyan Giten
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“Sermon of the Mounts Matthew 5 AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES, HE WENT UP INTO THE MOUNTAINS, AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM. The multitudes, the masses, the crowd, is the lowest state of consciousness. It is a deep ignorance and sleep. If you want to relate and communicate with the masses, you have to come down to their level. That is why whenever you go into the masses, the crowd, you start to feel suffocated. This suffocation is physical and psychological, beacuse you relate to people, who functions from a very low state of consciousness. They pull you down and you become physically and psychologically tired and drained. That is why a need for meditation and aloneness arises. There is a practice in the life of Jesus that he noves into the crowds of people, but after a few months he goes to the mountains. He goes away from the crowd, to be with God. When you are alone, you are with God. To relate to the masses brings you down to their level of consciousness, but only in the presence of God, you can fly. With the crowd, you can not fly, you become crippled, and the masses will not tolerate if you do not live according to them, according to their level of consciousness. To be able to work with the masses, to be able to help them, you have to relate to them according to their level fo consciousness - and this is tiring and draining. Both Jesus and Buddha moved to the mounatins, to a lonely place, just to be themselves, and to be with God to regain their vitality to be able to come back to the masses where people are thristy. The montain is where Jesus do not need to think about the masses, where he can forget the mind and the body. In that moment of aloneness and meditation, one simply is. This is the inner being, the source of life. And when you are full again, you can share again. AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM. To talk to the masses and to talk to disciples is two very different things. To talk to the crowd is to talk to people, who are indifferent. The crowd is resisting, defensive and argumentative. To talk to disciples means to talk to people, who have a basic thirst. It means that they are not defensive, they are open to listen to the heart of truth. AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING. Jesus escaped into the mountains from the crowd, but he did not escape from the disciples. He was available to the disciples. In his aloneness, Jesus is with God. And through Jesus, the disciples can feel God. The closer the disciple come to Jesus, the more they will see that Jesus is a silence and emptiness through which God can sing. And the more the disciple himself will become an emptiness, he will also be able to help other people. AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING. BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT, FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD. This is the most fundamental statement of Jesus. With this statement, Jesus has said everything. The "poor in spirit" is exactly what Buddha means with the term Shunyatta - "emptiness", no-self, nothingness. It is when the ego disappears, and you are a nobody, a silence. If you are a nobody, if you are nothing, you are God.”

LoveLifeGodTruthReligionSilenceChristianityMeditationAwarenessEgoJesus ChristDiscipleNothingnessKingdom Of GodBuddhaAlonenessNo SelfEmptinness
Author:Swami Dhyan Giten
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“The function of a university is to teach a [person] how to drink tea. not because anything is important, but because it is usual to drink tea, or for that matter anything else under the sun. And whatever you do, every act, however small, can teach you everything, provided you see who is acting.”

EducationBuddhismMindfulnessZenSelf KnowledgeThomas MertonNo SelfSacrament Of The Present MomentSpirituality Of Life
Book:Thomas Merton on Prayer
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“Mindfulness means being present to whatever is happening here and now - when mindfulness is strong, there is no room left in the mind for wanting something else. With less liking and disliking of what arises, there is less pushing and pulling on the world, less defining of the threshold between self and other, resulting in a reduced construction of self. As the influence of self diminishes, suffering diminishes in proportion.”

SufferingBuddhismMindfulnessNo Self
Book:Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
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“If you love another person, you have to become a no-self, a nothing. When you love, you have to become a nobody. When you are a nobody, love happens. If you remain somebody, love never happens. One becomes afraid of love, because love opens the inner emptiness. Love is not an effort. If love is an effort, it is not love. It is the same case with the ultimate experience, it happens when you do not make an effort. Then you can simply float with the river to the Ocean.”

LoveLifeJoyRelationshipsEffortConsciousnessPsychologyEgoAmbitionEnlightenmentOnenessSpiritual GrowthMysticismRiverNo Self
Author:Swami Dhyan Giten
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“The fundamental principal when traversing a spiritual path is that we do not have a mind. The mind has created the sense of you and me from the way it perceives reality. The truth is, the mind holds us within it. We are not the possessor of a mind and the mind is not something happening to us as if we were outside looking in. We are a part of the mental processing of the mind. The thoughts of the mind and the sense of 'I' are not two separate events. We exist only because the mind thinks us into creation.”

SpiritualityBuddhismAnattaNo Self
Book:Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha's Liberating Teaching of No-Self
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“The deepest level of obsession is obsession with a sense of self. A sense of self, generated as a reaction to non-referential space, lies at the core of every habituated pattern. A self is felt to be a permanent, independent unit. The feeling of permanence manifests in life as a feeling of dullness, of not being quite present. The illusion of independence arises as a feeling of separation. The feeling of being one thing arises as a feeling of incompleteness or dissatisfaction. Together, these three qualities obscure the mystery of being.”

BuddhismAnattaNo Self
Book:Wake Up To Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention – Essential Methods for Equanimity, Compassion, and Joy
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“The first love of oneself has to rise in your own heart. If the love has not risen for yourself it cannot rise for anybody either. One has to love one's body and one has to love ones soul. The person who loves himself is bound to become more silent and meditative, than the person who does not love himself. If you love yourself you will be nourishing yourself. When you love yourself you will discover that others will love you. Nobody loves a person who does not love himself. To love yourself is of immense spiritual value. The person who loves himself will find that there is no self in him. Love always melts the self. Whenever you love, the self disappears. Ego and love cannot exist together. The less a person is loving himself, the more egoistic a person is. The more you love yourself, the more you will find that the self disappears. For moments, you will find that the self is not there and only love is there.”

LoveTruthMeditationEgoAnattaNo SelfRelatinships
Book:The Call of the Heart
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“The sutra pictures Vimalakirti living his bodhisattva vow, that is, caring as much about the well-being of others as he does about his own. He lives selflessly, as though he has or is "no isolated self," because his sense of identity now encompasses his relations with others. The self/other dichotomy has been transformed in the paramita of morality. The boundaries that once defined his identity in opposition to others have been enlarged to include others. That is a significant dimension of what it means to live selflessly. Although Buddhist texts routinely refer to this as an experience of "no-self," it could just as easily be described as an expansion of the self, an enlargement empowered by a profound reverence for the whole of life.”

No SelfBodhisattva VowVimalakirti Sutra
Book:Living Skillfully: Buddhist Philosophy of Life from the Vimalakirti Sutra
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