Lao Tzu Quotes

When you become a sannyasin, I initiate you into freedom, and into nothing else... I am destroying your ideologies, creeds, cults, dogmas, and I am not replacing them with anything else.

A Buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.

The Buddha is in me, the Buddha is in you. Live up to it.

It is wisest to be impartial. If you have health, but are attached to it, you will always be afraid of losing it. And if you fear that loss, but become ill, you will suffer. Why not remain forever joyful in the Self?

One has to go beyond the mind to experience the spiritual bliss of desirelessness.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

All bad qualities centre round the ego. When the ego is gone, Realisation results by itself. There are neither good nor bad qualities in the Self. The Self is free from all qualities. Qualities pertain to the mind only.

Everything is Song. Everything is Silence. Since it all turns out to be illusion, perfectly being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, you are free to die laughing.

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.

All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That's why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.

Suffering only shows where you are attached. That is why, to those on the path, suffering is grace.

"Some would call you a saint, some a chandala; some a lunatic, others a demon. Go on then straight to thy work without heeding either" - thus saith one of our great Sannyasins, an old emperor of India, King Bhartrihari, who joined the order in old times.

The essence of the Way is detachment. And the goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances.

The world is unimportant and whoever recognizes this conquers his liberty.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or completion in the future. So don’t seek to become free or desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present.

Surrender becomes so much easier when you realize the fleeting nature of all experiences and that the world cannot give you anything of lasting value. You then continue to meet people, to be involved in experience and activities, but without the wants and fears of the egoic self. That is to say, you no longer demand that a situation, person, place, or event should satisfy you or make you happy. It's passing and imperfect nature is allowed to be.

Thus Gotama [Buddha] walked toward the town to gather alms, and the two samanas recognized him solely by the perfection of his repose, by the calmness of his figure, in which there was no trace of seeking, desiring, imitating, or striving, only light and peace

Free from desire, you realize the mystery, caught in the desire, you see only the manifestations.

People who have let go of themselves are so pure that the world cannot harm them.

We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything.

When nothing upsets you, you are at the beginning of the path. When you desire nothing, you are halfway on the path; when nothing becomes everything, you are perfected.

All have I overcome, all do I know. From all am I detached. All have I renounced. Wholly absorbed am I in ''the destruction of craving. Having comprehended all by myself, whom shall I call my teacher.

He in whose mind is no anger, hatred, or envy, who never loses his balance, dies, or is born, who is he but God?