Following dharma puts you in a proper field of attention. In a proper field of attention, regardless of what your outer circumstances are, happiness will flow.
Success is not success in an individual endeavor. Success is simply to practice the dharma impeccably.
Happiness does not come from external objects. It comes from peace of mind. You can be famous; you can be a king, a queen, anything. It does not necessarily bring happiness or peace of mind. It comes about through following dharma.
To not follow the dharma, either intentionally or through lack of awareness, creates a very low level of attention. In this low level of attention we make all kinds of mistakes and we are unhappy no matter what good fortune befalls us.
When you are following dharma, you will be happy, at peace, still inside. There will be a sense of purpose to your life. Difficulties will not seem unconquerable.
When you are not following dharma, then you will not be at peace. You will not be happy. The simplest things will seem to be endless obstacles.
Not to follow the dharma leads to disaster. Life will be unhappy.
Beyond happiness and unhappiness is truth. Truth is not affected by anything in the relative world. Truth is the unifying aspect of existence.
Begin with your daily life. Take your life as a challenge and try to bring yourself into harmony with each thing in your life.
Have a wonderful sense of humor, particularly about yourself and your own situation. Yet don't simply laugh. Work to change and improve things even though, at times, it seems impossible.
The future is certain for those who follow dharma. Those who don't follow dharma are pushed back again and again into the net of rebirth. They are drawn back to the same planes of attention, or lower. It could happen to you!
You are dharma. You are a wheel. And the wheel of dharma spins.
Of the four major pathways to self-realization, jnana yoga, from the point of view of the beginner, is the most difficult.
To practice jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge and discrimination, it's necessary to have a highly developed mind.
One who practices jnana yoga has practiced the other yogas for many, many lifetimes.
The yoga of knowledge is the yoga of perfection. It is the end and the beginning of all things.
We examine everything in existence and we come to see that everything is transitory and temporal, that which is left over is God, is eternity, is the Self.
There is nothing but God.
When we talk about self-realization, we're talking from the point of view of limitation of the mind. Real knowledge is to see that you are that - you are eternity.
To talk about realizing the Self is discontinuous because there is nothing to realize but the Self. There is nothing but realization.
There is no one to realize the Self.
To realize the Self involves an action, it implies that there is something to realize, that there is time, a temporal world, and that Self is not yet realized, but will be realized by the actor through action.
This is not the case. There is nothing that is not the Self. The Self does not have to be realized.
There has never been anything but the Self. There is no world, there is no time, there is no place, there is no condition. There is nothing and there can be nothing else.
The illusion of selfhood, ego, a separate identity is false.
