"The Death of Me", p. 150
Awareness (1992)
Context: Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. The only tragedy there is in the world is unwakefulness and unawareness. From them comes fear, and from fear comes comes everything else, but death is not a tragedy at all. Dying is wonderful; it's only horrible to people who have never understood life. It's only when you're afraid of life that you fear death. It's only dead people who fear death.
Anthony de Mello:
135
quotes
147
likes
Anthony de Mello Quotes
"The Death of Me", p. 150
Awareness (1992)
Context: One of your American authors put it so well. He said awakening is the death of your belief in injustice and tragedy. The end of the world for a caterpillar is a butterfly for the master. Death is resurrection. We're talking not about some resurrection that will happen but about one that is happening right now. If you would die to the past, if you would die to every minute, you would be the person who is fully alive, because a fully alive person is one who is full of death. We're always dying to things. We're always shedding everything in order to be fully alive and resurrected at every moment. The mystics, saints, and others make great efforts to wake people up. If they don't wake up, they're always going to have these other minor ills like hunger, wars, and violence. The greatest evil is sleeping people, ignorant people.
"Obstacles to Happiness", p. 78
Awareness (1992)
Context: Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!
As quoted in Approaching God : How to Pray (1995) by Steve Brown, p. 94
Context: Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know — all mystics — Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion — are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.
The Way to Love (1995)
Context: If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. So they are spared the guilt and anxiety that so torment human beings and they are full of the sheer joy of living, taking delight not so much in persons or things as in life itself. As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of the dead. The day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the land of unending joy called the kingdom.
Humanity
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: Much advance publicity was made for the address the Master would deliver on The Destruction of the World and a large crowd gathered at the monastery grounds to hear him.
The address was over in less than a minute. All he said was:
"These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness."
“When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself.”
Violence
Source: One Minute Wisdom (1989)
“Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.”
Wisdom
Source: One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Wisdom
Source: One Minute Wisdom (1989)
“Don't ask the world to change — you change first.”
"The Death of Me", p. 151
Awareness (1992)
Source: Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
Context: Don't ask the world to change — you change first. Then you'll get a good enough look at the world so that you'll be able to change whatever you think ought to be changed. Take the obstruction out of your own eye. If you don't you have lost the right to change anyone or anything. Till you are aware of yourself, you have no right to interfere with anyone else or with the world.
“Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.”
Comprehension
Source: One Minute Wisdom (1989)
“The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change.”
Source: Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
“Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.”
Thought
Source: One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Source: Anthony De Mello : Writings (1999), p. 8
Context: A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: "You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story."
Source: Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
“Wisdom can be learned. But it cannot be taught.”
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 53
“Never complain about what you permit.”
Mike Murdock, in The One-Minute Devotional (1994), p. 168
Misattributed
“My commitment is not to consistency but to the Truth.”
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 31
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 67
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 171
“Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.”
Emptiness
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Source: Anthony De Mello : Writings (1999), p. 76
“To those who seek to protect their ego true Peace brings only disturbance.”
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 33
“One always treads with a joyful step when one has dropped the burden called the ego.”
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 177
"Wrong. Not enough cow dung!"
Spirituality Course", p. 13
Awareness (1992)
“You can will an act of service but you cannot will love.”
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 114
“A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.”
Cultivation
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
“The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song — not one. Not two.”
Identity
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
"Assorted Landmines", p. 148
Awareness (1992)
“If you never condemned you would never need to forgive.”
Judgement
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 91
“Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.”
Flow
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Thought
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
“What is the secret of your serenity?
Said the Master "Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable.”
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 22
“There is no salvation till they have seen their basic prejudice.”
On people accustomed to judging and dismissing the worth of other people based on categorical assessments, in "Assorted Landmines", p. 148
Awareness (1992)
“When I speak, you must not listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence.”
Comprehension
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Fearlessness
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Projection
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
