Anthony of Mello

 ~If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. Because they live any moment in the eternal now without past and future. This is how they escape the guilt and anxiety that human beings torture and are full of the pure joy of life, which do not enjoy both faces and things as life itself. Since your happiness is caused or maintained by something or someone outside you, you are still in the land of the dead. The day you will be happy for no reason, the day you please everything and nothing, you will know that you found the land of endless joy called kingdom.

Finding the kingdom is the easiest thing in the world but also the hardest. Easy because it's around you and inside you, and all you have to do is shake your hand and get it. Hard because if you wish to acquire the kingdom you may have nothing else. That is, you must let all the means, drop every inward,, blowlamps to any person or thing, by of them forever the power to delight you, or to fascinate you,, or give you a sense of safety or wellness . That's why you must first see this simple and overwhelming truth: Unlike what your culture and religion have taught you, nothing but nothing can make you happy. The moment you see it, you will stop moving from one job to another, from one friend to another, one place to another, a spiritual technique, from one teacher to another. None of these things can give you a minute of happiness. They can offer you a temporary emotion, a pleasure that originally increases in intensity, and then turns into pain if you lose them and into boredom if you keep them. '

Rigveda 10.53.6

 God is omnipresent, omniscient and all powerful to run this universe as per the divine laws which He too does not break or infringe. The Vedic Dharm does not subscribe to the theory of God deputing prophets to run His errands. There is a direct communication between God and man and there is no place for a middleman. That is why the treasure of Vedic knowledge made available to man through mantras does not envisage a godman who is different from a common man.

The Mundaka Upanishad

Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart. Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes Lives in the Self. This is the Source of Love And may be known through love but not through thought. This is the goal of life. Here are woven heaven and earth, Mind and body. Realize this as the One Behind the many and stop all vain talk. This is the bridge from death to deathless life. Where all the nerves meet like spokes in a wheel, There dwells the One behind the many. Meditate upon This in the mantram. This is the guide from death to deathless life. This Source of Love is before and behind. It extends to the right and to the left. It extends above; it extends below. There is no one here but the This. This alone is; in truth, This alone is.

RUMI

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within us out into the world, miracles happen.”

Unknown Author

 Shakti is love. It leads us to love through its fertile uninhibited force, dissolving all the beliefs that stand in the way of wild joy, the expression of love untrammeled by convention. It says yes to love, and connects all life forms, once you have allowed it to flow through you unchecked, and to take you without reservation

Rudyard Kipling

LIfe is eternal and impersonal and therefore indifferent. It is a principle that is omnipresent and a potential available everywhere for you to pursue. Make of it what you will, it is up to you. You can suffer or you can experience joy and peace and love which are the foundations of the principle. Choose.

The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda

 The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali

There is a sanskrit saying, “Mana eva manushyanam karanam bandha mokshayoho.” “As the mind, so the man; bondage or liberation are in your own mind.” If you feel bound, you are bound. If you feel liberated, you are liberated. Things outside neither bind nor liberate you; only your attitude toward them does…. 

There’s nothing wrong with the world. You can make it a heaven or a hell according to your approach. That is why the entire Yoga is based on chitta vritti nirodhah (restraint of the mind-stuff). If you control your mind, you have controlled everything. Then there is nothing in the world to bind you.

Chandogya Upanishad, VII.24.1

Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else, that is the infinite. But where one sees something else, hears something else, understands something else, that is the small (ie. the finite). Verily, the infinite is the same as the immortal, the finite is the same as the mortal.

Sri Swami Satchidananda

“If you think you can get the answer and directions from within, fine, do that. Your own mind acts as a Guru if it’s clean enough. Ultimately, the Guru is within. But until you are able to get clear answers from within, you can ask somebody who already knows the way. And remember, it’s not the physical body that is the Guru; it’s the divine aspect that vibrates in the body.”

“God bless you. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.”