Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

Who can leap the world's ties and sit with me among white clouds?

A religious person is a desireless person.

The sage seeks freedom from desire. He does not collect precious things. He learns not to hold on to ideas. He brings men back to what they have lost.

No one can be a yogi, maintaining a state of mental equilibrium, free from inner involvement in planned desireful activities, unless he has renounced identification with his ego and its unsatisfiable lust for the fruits of actions.

I am totally unattached to material items.

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

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.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

The essence of the Way is detachment.

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.

I enjoy an easy jog. In the mountains, or the forest with my own thoughts, I can escape from the world for a bit.

Only if you are joyful, you can be free from the fruit of action.

Stillness empowers. Being able to detach from all external stimulants - social media, social engagements, TV, alcohol, food, etc. - and face our own silence is an enormous luxury that should not be taken for granted. The most rewarding moments in my life have stemmed from such stillness.

If you can come to this nowness without sex, sex, by and by will become useless, it will disappear. It will not be a desire then. If you want to move in it you can move into it as a fun, but not as a desire. Then there is no obsession in it because you are not dependent on it.

The real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it. - Karla

and i walked for hours the mist growing thick and whole the thought of disappaering like that, so simply, made me so happy

If you want to be a yogi, you must be free, and place yourself in circumstances where you are alone and free from all anxiety. One who desires a comfortable and nice life and at the same time wants to realize the Self is like the fool who, wanting to cross the river, caught hold of a crocodile, mistaking it for a log of wood.

Just after I dedicated my life to service, I felt that I could no longer accept more than I need while others in the world have less than they need. This moved me to bring my life down to need level. I thought it would be difficult. I thought it would entail a great many hardships, but I was quite wrong. Instead of hardships, I found a wonderful sense of peace and joy, and a conviction that unnecessary possessions are only unnecessary burdens.

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

To realize the spirit as spirit is practical religion. Everything else is good so far as it leads to this one grand idea. That realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation-renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter.

Give up all desire for enjoyment in earth or heaven. Control the organs of the senses and control the mind. Bear every misery without even knowing that you are miserable. Think of nothing but spiritual freedom.

One way leads to acquisition, the other leads to nirvana. Realising this a monk should take no pleasure in the respect of others, but should devote himself to solitude.

A true Zen saying: "Nothing is what I want.

Everything is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless.