Rene Daumal Quotes

Discard yourself and thereby regain yourself. Spread the trap of humility and ensnare love.

God happens only when you have moved out of the way and left yourself totally empty, spacious. It is a very strange phenomenon: The guest only comes inside the house when the host disappears.

Fear not to be nothing that thou mayst be all.

It is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully.

Our problem is not that we're fallen; our problem is we haven't become human yet. The question is, what can make us human, so that we can give life away and give love away and not be grasping after trying to protect our own lives all the time? That's the way I see the Jesus story, and I think it's a powerful and profound story.

What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?

The Tao is infinite, eternal. Why is it eternal? It was never born; thus it can never die. Why is it infinite? It has no desires for itself; thus it is present for all beings. The Master stays behind; that is why she is ahead. She is detached from all things; that is why she is one with them. Because she has let go of herself, she is perfectly fulfilled.

Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.

The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.

Real change isn't found in some new way to think about yourself, but in freedom from the need to think about yourself at all.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.

I like to spread myself out. Since I was a kid, I always recognized some void.

I'm really interested in stories about identity - who I am now versus who I used to be.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the oneself that there is no self left to die.

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.

The essence of the Way is detachment.

Aladdin is a good soul. He is very selfless and usually does things for other people, but as he falls in love, he loses himself a little bit and starts to become someone that he is not. But he is a person with good intentions and has good people surrounding him who lead him back to where he is supposed to be.

Become alert about desire and non-attachment begins to appear. This is not to be made to happen, it follows naturally from awareness of attachment. Each one of us has to become aware of his attachments, and keep being so! Nothing should be done unconsciously.

If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing.

I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then

In spirituality, when we say growth, we are talking about becoming smaller; not just smaller - non-existent.

I think staying grounded is one of the hardest things we'll ever do in our lives. It's always back and forth. To be able to stay grounded, we need to live with open hands that everything that we have has been given to us by the creator of this universe. He can take it, and he can give it back to us. He can take some things, and he can give us new things. When a door closes, a new one is going to open.

The secret self knows the anguish of our attachments and assures us that letting go of what we think we must have to be happy is the same as letting go of our unhappiness.

I think if we could turn the dial a bit, and try to take what the philosopher Henry Sidgwick called "the point of view of the universe", and look from above, and realize that we are not special, none of us are, I think it would just cause a transformation.