Quotes from Anthony de Mello

The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.

Isn't it wonderful to realize you're no better than anybody else in this world?

The lovely thing about Jesus was that he was so at home with sinners, because he understood that he wasn't one bit better than they were.

Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them. Otherwise you spend the whole time grappling with your wrong notions of them, with your illusions that are constantly crashing against reality.

Mejor dicho: experimentas un instante de placer, que en modo alguno constituye la felicidad, porque viene acompañado de un difuso temor a que, en cualquier momento, ese mundo de cosas y personas que con tanto esfuerzo has conseguido construir escape a tu control y te llene de frustración, que es algo que, tarde o temprano, acaba siempre por suceder

One of the biggest enemies to prayer is nervous tension.

In the past, regretting past mistakes, feeling guilty about past sins, gloating over past achievements, resenting past injuries caused them by other people.

Y qué es un apego? Es un estado emocional de vinculación compulsiva a una cosa o persona determinada, originado por la creencia de que sin esa cosa o persona

Or in the future, dreading possible calamities and unpleasantnesses, anticipating future joys, dreaming of future events.

Stop for a moment and contemplate in horror the endless list of attachments that you have become a prisoner to. Think of concrete things and persons, not abstractions. Once your attachment had you in its grip, you began to strive with every waking minute of your life to rearrange the world around you so that you could attain and maintain the objects of your attachment.

No one can sin in the light of awareness. Sin occurs, not, as we mistakenly think, in malice, but in ignorance. "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." To see this is to acquire the indiscriminate quality one so admires in the rose, the lamp and the tree.

And here is a second quality of love—its gratuitousness.

una actitud muy parecida al nishkama karma de la tradición india, o lo que él llama la mística de las acciones no lucrativas

la gente trata de ganar el mundo y cómo, al hacerlo, pierde su vida. Y es que viven unas vidas vacías, monótonas, sin alma...

Qué he de hacer para amar a mi prójimo?». «Dejar de odiarte a ti mismo». El discípulo meditó larga y seriamente estas palabras y regresó a decirle al Maestro: «Pero si yo me amo demasiado a mí mismo... Si soy un egoísta y un egocéntrico... ¿Cómo puedo librarme de ello?». «Sé cordial contigo mismo, y tu ego quedará satisfecho y te dejará en libertad para amar a tu prójimo».

The symphony of life moves on but you keep looking back, clinging to a few bars of the melody, blocking your ears to the rest of the music

If you seek kicks or thrills, get ready for depression. Do you want your drug? Get ready for the hangover. One end of the pendulum swings to the other.

And there's not a single evil in the world that you cannot trace to fear. Not one.

But what you're really telling me is that you want to be desired. You want to be applauded, to be attractive, to have all the little monkeys running after you. You're wasting your life. Wake up! You don't need this. You can be blissfully happy without it. Your society is not going

no one joins in the human enterprise of human dreams and visions and goals so marvelously and so creatively as the person who is unattached

Primera verdad: estás aferrado a una falsa creencia, a saber, la de que sin una cosa o persona determinada no puedes ser feliz.

Every child has a god in him. Our attempts to mold the child will turn the god into a devil. Children come to my school, little devils, hating the world, destructive, unmannerly, lying, thieving, bad-tempered. In six months they are happy, healthy children who do no evil.

Segunda verdad: si te limitas a disfrutar las cosas, negándote a quedar apegado a ellas, es decir, negándote a creer que no podrás ser feliz sin ellas, te ahorrarás toda la lucha y toda la tensión emocional que supone el protegerlas y conservarlas.

Yet my experience is that it's precisely the ones who don't know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life.