Nothing and Everything

Love says: I am everything. Wisdom says: I am nothing. Between the two my life flows.

Q: How can I find peace when the world suffers?
A: The world suffers for very valid reasons. If you want to help the world, you must be beyond the need of help. Then all your doing as well as not doing will help the world most effectively.

Nothing is wrong with you, but the ideas you have of yourself are altogether wrong. It is not you who desires, fears and suffers, it is the person built on the foundation of your body by circumstances and influences. You are not that person. This must be clearly established in your mind and never lost sight of.

What is really your own, you are not conscious of. What you are conscious of is neither you nor yours. Yours is the power of perception, not what you perceive. It is a mistake to take the conscious to be the whole of man. Man is the unconscious, the conscious and the superconscious, but you are not the man. Yours is the cinema screen, the light as well as the seeing power, but the movie is not you.

Pleasure puts you to sleep, pain wakes you up. If you don't want to suffer, don't go to sleep.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj (a cigarette vendor!)