10 Sages With 10 Inspiring Messages

Throughout the ages there have been a few notable luminaries of humanity that have experienced a transformational harmonization initiated by the vectors of human becoming: love, beauty, and truth. We can look up to these sages for inspiration that cultivates courage, will, and determination to experience an inner transformation as well. Although there are quite a few individuals that we can look to for sage-like guidance, 10 will be focused on here, each with a message they streamed into the global mind in their own unique way. Let these words spark a shift within that will change the very way to see Reality.

Thich Nhat Hanh

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for  reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce.

Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument.

That is my experience.

No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.

If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

Huang Po

The approach to it  (Mind, Absolute, Void, Buddha Nature, Enlightenment)  is called the Gateway of the Stillness beyond all Activity.  If you wish to understand, know that a sudden comprehension comes when the mind has been purged of all the clutter of conceptual and discriminatory thought-activity.

Those who seek the truth by means of the intellect and learning only get further and further away from it.  Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.

Bodhidharma

The fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don’t believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage.

The sutras say, ‘Mind is the teaching.’ But people of no understanding don’t believe in their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha-images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity.

Heraclitus

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny – it is the light that guides your way.

It is wise to listen, not to me but to reason, and to confess that all things are one.

From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars.

Lao Tzu

If you understand others you are smart.
If you understand yourself you are illuminated.
If you overcome others you are powerful.
If you overcome yourself you have strength.
If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.
If you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If you don’t lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.
If you die without loss, you are eternal.

Ramana Maharshi

The attempt to destroy the ego or the mind through practices other than self-inquiry is just like the thief pretending to be a policeman to catch the thief, that is, himself.

Self-inquiry alone can reveal the truth that neither the ego nor the mind really exists, and enable one to realize the pure, undifferentiated being of the Self or the absolute.

Having realized the Self, nothing remains to be known, because it is perfect bliss, it is the all.

Sri Aurobindo

An aimless life is always a troubled life. Every individual should have an aim. But do not forget that the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life. Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.

Whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realized unless you have realized perfection in yourself.

Mohandas Gandhi

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.
Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits.
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

Osho Rajneesh

Pleasure is momentary, of time, for the time being; bliss is non-temporal, timeless. Pleasure begins and ends; bliss abides forever. Pleasure comes and goes; bliss never comes, never goes — it is already there in the innermost core of your being. Pleasure has to be snatched away from the other; you become either a beggar or a thief. Bliss makes you a master.

Bliss is not something that you invent but something that you discover. Bliss is your innermost nature. It has been there since the very beginning, you just have not looked at it, you have taken it for granted. You don’t look inwards. This is the only misery of man: that he goes on looking outwards, seeking and searching. And you cannot find it in the outside because it is not there.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

We seek happiness through things, through relationship, through thoughts, ideas. So things, relationship, and ideas become all-important and not happiness. When we seek happiness through something, then the thing becomes of greater value than happiness itself. When stated in this manner, the problem sounds simple and it is simple. We seek happiness in property, in family, in name; then property, family, idea become all important, for then happiness is sought through a means, and then the means destroys the end.

Can happiness be found through any means, through anything made by the hand or by the mind? Things, relationship, and ideas are so transparently impermanent, we are ever made unhappy by them…Things are impermanent, they wear out and are lost; relationship is constant friction and death awaits; ideas and beliefs have no stability, no permanency. We seek happiness in them and yet do not realize their impermanency. So sorrow becomes our constant companion and overcoming it our problem.

To find out the true meaning of happiness, we must explore the river of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not an end in itself. Is there a source to a stream? Every drop of water from the beginning to the end makes the river. To imagine that we will find happiness at the source is to be mistaken. It is to be found where you are on the river of self knowledge.

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