Eknath Easwaran Quotes

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.

Man must do his part and detach himself from created things.

You can't ever get everything you want. It is impossible. Luckily, there is another option: You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of the endless cycle of desire and aversion.

Not being anxious requires a level of humility, doesn't it? It does, I think. It's not all about you.

I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.

So then put away, relentlessly away, all thought of the results. You cannot control them.

You learn to not take things personally and to just let it roll off of you.

To surrender your ego, you have to have one first.

My motto is never to hold on to anything. I accept and then let go: not just the negatives, but the praise, too. Or it'll get to my head.

With effort, reach to effortlessness. With seeking, reach to a state of no-seeking. With mind, arrive at no-mind.

Whatsoever you are waiting for, you are waiting in vain. It is not going to happen, and what is going to happen has nothing to do with your expectations and your desires. You just let it come in; don't block the way. Remove yourself out of your own way. This time, with no expectations, no desires, no hopes, just meditate.

The more you feel like you need to fix something, the more you need to not.

Happiness requires that we give up a worldly orientation-not worldly things, but a worldly attachment to things. We have to surrender all outcomes. We have to live here but appreciate the joke.

To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love.

When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be.

If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?

You don't give up the intention, and you don't give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the results.

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.

Inner peace begins when we stop saying of things, 'I have lost it' and instead say, 'It has been returned to where it came from.' Why should it be any concern of yours who gives your things back to the world that gave them to you? The important thing is to take great care with what you have while the world lets you have it.

Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.

Surrendering means non-desiring.

When we recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy, that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home can be surprisingly simple. We have enormous power not to manipulate the world, but to be happy and to know peace.

Desirelessness or renunciation does not come for the mere talking about it.