Daily Quotes for the last three days.

Hi everyone,

Plenty of reading this morning! :-) Looks like they are back on track.

Tuesday June 2, 2009

Beginningless ignorance.

To be able to experience reality, you must be free of all the masks which you have developed in the struggle for acquisition, born of craving. These masks do not conceal reality. We are apt to think that, by getting rid of these masks, we will find reality or that, by uncovering the many layers of want, we will discover that which is hidden; thus, we are assuming that, behind this ignorance, or in the depths of consciousness, or beyond this friction of will, of craving, lies reality. This consciousness of many masks, of many layers, does not conceal within itself reality. But, as we begin to comprehend the process of development of these masks, these layers of consciousness, and as consciousness frees itself from its volitional growth, there is reality.

Our conception that man is divine but limited, that beauty is concealed by ugliness, wisdom buried under ignorance, supreme intelligence hiding in darkness, is utterly erroneous. In discerning how, through this beginningless ignorance and its activities, there has arisen the 'I'-process, and in bringing that process to an end, there is enlightenment. It is an experience of that which is immeasurable, which cannot be described but is.

Collected Works, Vol. III - 44

Wednesday June 3, 2009

Truth is always new.

Truth is always new, therefore timeless. What was truth yesterday is not truth today, what is truth today is not truth tomorrow: truth has no continuity. It is the mind which wants to make the experience which it calls truth continuous, and such a mind shall not know truth.

Truth is always new: it is to see the same smile and see that smile newly, to see the same person and see that person anew, to see the waving palms anew, to meet life anew. Truth is not to be had through books, through devotion or through self-immolation, but it is known when the mind is free, quiet; and that freedom, that quietness of the mind, comes only when the facts of its relationships are understood. Without understanding its relationships, whatever it does only creates further problems. But, when the mind is free from all its projections, there is a state of quietness in which problems cease; and then only, the timeless, the eternal, comes into being. Then truth is not a matter of knowledge, it is not a thing to be remembered, it is not something to be repeated, to be printed and spread abroad.

Truth is that which is; it is nameless. And so, the mind cannot approach it.

Collected Works, Vol. VI - 135

Thursday June 4, 2009

When thought as we know it has come to an end.

It seems to me that the important thing is for the mind to be in a state when it can allow itself not to ask, not to demand, which does not mean acquiescence, acceptance, but that the mind is really silent. The mind, being thought - thought as the verbalization of certain experiences, thought as memory, thought that is seeking, investigating - cannot such thinking come to an end, so that the mind is no longer projecting, is really still? For then only is it possible for the mind to be free from all illusion; then only shall we find out what is reality: not the description of reality, not the explanations, not the speculations, not the reality of someone else who has experienced it - those things are utterly valueless, they have no meaning. But, when the mind is really in that state when thought as we know it has come to an end - thought which is always strengthening the background of the conditioned mind - then we shall find out what that nameless thing is.

Collected Works, Vol. VII - 271