85 Quotes From Rediscovering Life: Awakening To Reality By Anthony De Mello

“You could disagree with me and get it. Isn’t that amazing? It means being alert. Be alert. Be watchful. Listen with a kind of a fresh mind. That’s not easy, either­‑listening with a fresh mind, without prejudices, without fixed formulas.” – Anthony De Mello

“Monks and scholars must accept my words not out of respect, but must analyze them the way a goldsmith analyzes gold; by cutting, scraping, rubbing, melting.” – Buddha

“The human mind is such an extraordinary thing. It has invented the computer. It has split the atom. It has sent ships into space. It has not, however, solved the problem of human suffering, of anguish, loneliness, emptiness, despair.”

“For whatever situation I find myself in, I have learned to be self-sufficient.”

“I have learned to cope with every circumstance how to eat well or to go hungry, to be well provided for, or to do without.”

“Why waste even a minute regretting the past?”

“You don’t have to do anything to be happy. You can’t acquire happiness. You know why? Because you have it. You’ve got it right now.”

“The root of sorrow is attachment. The uprooting of sorrow means the uprooting, the dropping of attachments.”

“No attachment, no fear. Ever thought of that? No attachment, no fear.”

“You mean, isn’t it progress when we have jumbo jets and spaceships?” Very clever. I’ll tell you what progress is: Heart progress. Happiness progress. Tell me what’s the use of moving around in an airplane with a heart that is full of misery and emptiness? I’d rather live on the ground in a jungle and be blissfully happy and dancing all day.”

“The biggest enemy of love is attachments. If I desire you, I want to possess you. I can’t leave you free.”

“There’s no fear in perfect love. You know why? Because there’s no desire.”

“Where there is love there is no desire. Desire in the sense of attachment.”

“Attachment means, “I have to get you.” It means “Without you, I will not be happy. If I don’t get you, I won’t be happy. I cannot be happy without you.”

“Love means, I’m perfectly happy without you, darling, it’s all right.” It means, “And I wish you good, and I leave you free. And when I get you, I’m delighted; and when I don’t, I’m not miserable.”

“Here’s a secret formula for you. If you were not actively engaged in making yourself miserable, you would be happy. You see, we were born happy. All life is shot through with happiness. Oh, there’s pain; life is shot through with happiness. Oh there’s pain; of course there’s pain. Who told you that you can’t be happy without pain? Come and meet a friend of mine who’s dying of cancer. She’s happy in pain.”

“We were born happy. We lost it. We were born with the gift of life. We lost it. We’ve got to rediscover it. Why did we lose it? Because we were working actively. They taught us to work actively, no make ourselves miserable. How did they do that? Be teaching us to become attached. By teaching us to have desires so intense that we would refuse to be happy unless they were fulfilled.”

“The moment you see that belief is false, you’re free.”

“You really begin to enjoy things when you’re unattached because attachment brings anxiety. If you’re anxious when you’re holding on to something, you can hardly enjoy it.”

“Happiness cannot be defined.”

“Thrills, fun and pleasure are not happiness. What are they? They’re thrills, they’re fun, they’re pleasure. They’re not happiness. Happiness is a state of non attachment.”

“Don’t resist evil. When they strike you on one cheek, turn and offer the other. When you take away one devil, seven more come. You deal with these things by not fighting them. Because the more you fight them, the more you empower them.”

“If you’re not at peace, believe me, you’re going to do more damage than good.”

“I’m not being controlled by you, only then can there be true love.”

“You know, you have so much energy, when you have no attachments. You’ve got all your energy available to you.”

“When the archer shoots for nothing, he has all his skill. When he shoots for brass buckle he is already nervous. When he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind. He sees tow targets. His skill has not changed. But the prize divides him. He cares. He thinks more of winning than of shooting. And the need to win drains him of power. Isn’t that sublime? If we don’t need to win, we have so much more energy.”

“One joins in the human enterprise of human dreams and visions and goals so marvelously and so creatively as a person who is unattached.”

“For peace of heart, resign as general manager of the universe. I’m not the general manager, I do what I can. I plunge in, and the result is left to God, to life, to destiny.”

“We’re admiring the wrong things.”

“We’re scared about things that are not. We’re tied to things that don’t exist. They’re illusions. They’re falsehoods. They’re beliefs; they’re illusions. They’re falsehoods. They’re beliefs; they’re not realities. The agonies we go through over things that we have-we have convinced ourselves that our happiness depends upon them, but it doesn’t work.

“All upsets exist in you, not in reality.”

“All upset is in you, not in life. Not in reality. Not in the world. It’s in you.”

“Reality is not upsetting. Reality is not problematic. If there was no human mind, there would be no problems. All problems exist in the human mind. All problems are created by the mind.”

“Nothing has the power to upset you.”

“We love to make the world responsible, or people responsible, or life responsible, or God responsible.”

“Spirituality means no longer being at the mercy of an event, a person or anything else. No matter what happens, you do not get upset.”

“We’ve been trained to upset ourselves when someone rejects us, disapproves of us, leaves us, dies on us.”

“We’ve been trained to depend emotionally on people. To not be able to live emotionally without people.”

“There’s an assumption that if you don’t upset yourself, if you don’t train people to upset themselves, they’re not going to do anything.”

“Nothing in this entire world has the power to upset you. Nothing. As a matter of fact, nothing has ever upset you. Nobody has ever hurt you. You stupidly hurt yourself.”

“You don’t have to do anything for liberation and for spirituality. All you have to do is see something, understand something. If you would understand it, you would be free.”

“I’m upset. I’ve upset myself. They did it to me.” Wrong. “I did it to me.” Wrong. It’s your programming that’s doing it to you. It’s the culture that’s doing it to you. This is the way you’ve been brought up; this is the way you’ve been trained.”

“Maturity is when you no longer blame anyone. You don’t blame others; you don’t blame yourself. You see what’s wrong, and you set about remedying it.”

“It wasn’t that thing or that person that upset you. It was your programming.”

“First Step: “Gee, this thing upset me. Second step: “Huh-uh, it wasn’t this thing that upset me; it was my programming that upset me. So, I don’t have to deploy all of my energies fighting that outside thing, right? Right. I Don’t have to spend all my emotional energies blaming that outside thing.” That’ right.”

“He’s not upsetting me. I’m not upsetting me. The programming is upsetting me.” How do you fix this? You know the big Oriental answer? You don’t fix it. You let it be. It will go away. The more you try to fix it, the stronger it gets.”

“Lots of people never change because they’re so determined to change. They’re so determined that they never change. They’re so tense, they’re so anxious, that it gets worse.”

“Just scrape off the exterior culture, we’re all the same.” “

“Life is not rough on us. Life is easy. It’s our programming that is rough on us. Life is easy. Life is delightful.”

“It isn’t you that are causing the upset. It’s your programming.”

“Human relations are never difficult; it’s your programming that’s difficult.”

“It’s possible to live with a guy who’s losing his temper every day and not get upset? Yes.”

“When the letter isn’t received, it’s sent back to the person who wrote it. You don’t receive it, it goes back. You know why you got insulted or why you were upset by the insult? Because you took it, that’s why. Why did you take it?”

“That’s dying to yourself-dropping that programming. You drop it by understanding it for what it is.”

“The more you understand human nature, the less inclined you feel to judge anyone.”

“Learning isn’t the same as intelligence at all. You could have a lot of learning and no awareness of yourself at all.”

“Is it possible people could be tortured and also be at peace? Yes.”

“God is beyond the knowing mind, which is why we call him mystery.”

“Get on with self-observation, self-awareness, self-understanding, self-liberation. Then you will understand better, beyond understand what God is.”

“Do you blame your programming? No, you don’t blame your programming; you understand it.”

“Love is not blaming others. Love is not judging others. Love is not condemning others. Love is understanding.”

“When there is no tension and there is no upset, all of the forces within you are unleashed.”

“When you come to a deeper understanding of reality, is that not the grace of Christ?”

“What’s the major obstacle to love? Our programming. Our obsessive attachments.”

“The best religion in the world is the religion called Love.”

“Sometimes a story says more than a whole day’s lecture because it speaks to the depths within us.”

“The world is full of sorrow. The root of sorrow is attachment. The uprooting of sorrow is dropping attachment. The understanding that attachment is false belief-the false belief that anything or any person can make you happy. True happiness is caused by nothing. True happiness is uncaused. If you ask the mystic why he or she is happy, the answer will be, “Why not?” No block, no obstruction. Why not?”

“Has it ever occurred to you that if something causes your happiness you will become possessive of that thing? That you will become anxious lest you lose it?”

“You will never live until you stop clinging to life. Let go When you cling, happiness dies. If your happiness depends on anyone or anything, that’s not happiness. That’s anxiety. That’s tension. That’s pressure. That’s fear.”

“I began to truly taste life and see how sweet it was when I let go.”

“We’ve been programmed to be unhappy. Anything we’re doing to be happy is going to make us unhappier.”

“You’re attached now only because you falsely believe that without this thing or that person or situation or event, you will not be happy.”

“We see people not as they are but as we are.”

“What you need is not change, but understanding. Understand yourself. Understand others.”

“You’re not here to change the world. You’re here to love the world.”

“They say that love is blind. Rubbish. There’s nothing so clear sighted as love. It’s the clearest sighted thing in the world.”

“There’s only one need, there’s only one emotional need, and that is to love. To love. No other need.”

“We’ve got books on psychology written by the most prestigious psychologists in the world, telling us that that’s the way to be. When people tell you you’re okay, naturally you’re supposed to feel great. And when they tell you you’re not okay, naturally you’re supposed to feel down. This is supposed to be human. I call it being a machine.”

“When you need someone you cannot love that person.”

“To depend on another person for your happiness, that’s evil.”

“Once you stop depending on others, when you extinguish the need for other people-wit’s terrifying because you suddenly become alone. Not lonely, but alone.”

“When you suddenly realize how lovely it is to be alone, how nice not to need others emotionally. And for the first time you understand that you can love people.”

“You know what “loneliness” means? It’s a desperate need for people, to the point that you’re unhappy without people. Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality-by understanding that you don’t need people. At last you can enjoy other people because you don’t need them.”

“Do you know what it means to be with people who have no tension? Because you don’t give a damn whether they like you or not, don’t care what they think of you. Do you know what that means? Freedom. Joy. They can think what they want, they can say what they want. That’s all right. You’re not affected. You’ve gotten the drug out of your system.