Quotes from Ram Dass

My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.

Gratitude opens your heart, and opening your heart is a wonderful and easy way for God to slip in.

Suffering brings me so close to God.

What the word God means is the mystery really. It's the mystery that we face as humans the mystery of existence, of suffering and of death.

Real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes, but simply is.

Our thinking minds deprive us of the happiness that comes when we are living fully in the moment.

We're all just walking each other home.

My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that.

Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.

You may have expected that enlightenment would come ZAP! instantaneous and permanent.This is unlikely.After the first ah ha expereince, it can be thougth of as a thinning of a layer of clouds.

When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there.

In India, there's a way of seeing life as a cosmic play. It's called Lila. I can watch my life, and I can see my guru playing with me.

Prolong not the pastInvite not the futureDo not alter your innate wakefulnessFear not appearancesThere in nothing more than this

When I used to perform weddings, the image I always had was the image of a triangle, in which there are two partners and then there is this third force, this third being, that emerges out of the interaction of these two. The third one is the one that is the shared awareness that lies behind the two of them.

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.

Religions are founded by what mystics say when they come back; but what the mystics say is not the same as what happened to them.

I take the assumption that every religion has been rooted in some mystical or transcendent experience. From that assumption, I just look at all the different systems as metaphors or doorways to God.

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.

In communications empathy knowing respect spirituality tolerance understanding. Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.

Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.

In our Western culture, although death has come out of the closet, it is still not openly experienced or discussed. Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it.

Science and religion both teach that we are all interconnected, and thus interdependent. And at the very core, we are all One. But how do we live as if we know this?

Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life, and yet less attached to it.