So Said The Sage

You cannot describe it or draw it. You cannot praise it enough or perceive it. No place can be found in which to put the Original Face; it will not disappear even when the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon

See what at this very moment your own face looks like - the Face you had before you, or indeed your parents, were born - there is nothing hidden. If you look within and recognize your own ‘Original Face', all secrets are in you.
- Hui-neng

God, whose love and joy
are present everywhere,
can't come to visit you
unless you aren't there.
- Angelus Silesius

You are the eternal thing that comes and goes that appears - now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown - and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.
- Alan Watts

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
- Alan Watts

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god?
- Alan Watts

We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
- Alan Watts

Everything affects everything. In this universe, when one thing changes, everything changes (all minds are joined). Hence the great power of man in changing the world by changing himself.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

God is a pure no-thing,
concealed in now and here:
the less you reach for him,
the more he will appear.
- Angelus Silesius

Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realise your true nature.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Are not our desires inseparably intertwined with the continuation of life? Even the idea of eliminating desire is fruitless. The desire to eliminate all desire is still itself a desire. How can we find release and peace by replacing one desire with another? Surely we shall find peace not by eliminating desire, but by finding its fulfilment and satisfaction in the One who created it.
- Sadhu Sundar Singh

...a man sitting quietly and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be "passive", because he is not "doing" anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence.
- Erich Fromm

God is my final end;
Does he from me evolve,
Then he grows out of me,
While I in Him dissolve.
-Angelus Silesius

The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same — one in seeing, one in knowing, and one in loving.
- Meister Eckhart

If you ask a good man: “Why are you seeking God?” — he will reply: “Just because he is God!” “Why are you seeking Truth?” “Just because it is Truth!” As life lives on for its own sake, needing no reason for being, so the just man has no reason for doing what he does.
- Meister Eckhart

There is no duty except in relation to an authority which imposes it. The believer of this or that religion will say that 'God' is the authority which imposes on him the obligation of salvation. But who then is this 'God' who while imposing something on me, is separate from me and has need of my action? Everything, then, is not included in his perfect harmony?
- Hubert Benoit

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode... Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
- Henry David Thoreau