Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes about Heart
My work as a human being is to quiet my mind, open my heart and do what I can to relieve the suffering with as much wisdom, skill, whatever I got.
The giving and receiving is the tricky thing. It's not the gift. It's what the heart says in giving the gift, and from my point of view, one doesn't give or receive - that's a role we have to play. But the gift - it's God's gift. I think that it's better to be souls than roles.
If I'm going to die, the best way to prepare is to quiet my mind and open my heart. If I'm going to live, the best way to prepare for it is to quiet my mind and open my heart.
Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.
The thinking mind is what is busy. You have to stay in your heart. You have to be in your heart. Be in your heart. The rest is up here in your head where you are doing, doing, doing.
When your mind is quiet, you enter into the flow of love, and you just flow from one moment to the next as naturally as breathing. Whatever arises, I embrace it with love in the moment. This is my practice of polishing the mirror to reflect love. In this moment there is just awareness and love. If someone asks me how to get into their heart, I give them this practice: I Am Loving Awareness.
Love flows. Love doesn't know boundaries. The mind creates boundaries. The mind creates the boundary of separate me and you. The heart just keeps embracing and opening out.
Compassion and pity are very different. Whereas compassion reflects the yearning of the heart to merge and take on some of the suffering, pity is a controlled set of thoughts designed to assure separateness. Compassion is the spontaneous response of love; pity, the involuntary reflex of fear.
Souls love. That’s what souls do. Egos don’t, but souls do. Become a soul, look around, and you’ll be amazed-all the beings around you are souls. Be one, see one. When many people have this heart connection, then we will know that we are all one, we human beings all over the planet. We will be one. One love. And don’t leave out the animals, and trees, and clouds, and galaxies-it’s all one. It’s one energy.
Look at the people you don't love and see them as an exercise for you to open your heart.
I think the game is to bear the unbearable with a giggle. With your heart breaking. And then do what you do.
When the heart is open, it's easier for the mind to be turned toward God.
I love everybody and they, in turn, love everybody, and that's spreading love heart to heart to heart. That's my approach to my work.
The suffering is in the mind. The mind. In the mind. Witness it. From your spiritual heart.
I'm a Bhakti, meaning I practice devotional yoga and the heart and love, so I say to people, start with your ego and go down to your heart.
I've firmly come to the conclusion that there are no 'themes' for me anymore. I can't be told who to hate, who to fight, who to subdue - I only see an 'us' in my heart.
I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love everything in the universe. That's all I do all day.
The satsang is - within the mass culture - like little mushrooms here and there, and somebody, maybe a Christian and a Hindu and a Buddhist, come together; doesn't matter, because those are paths. They're paths to the One. But those satsangs are what the world needs. And as I say - heart to heart - that's what satsang is.
So your first job is to work on yourself. The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart.
Suffering brings your heart to bear. It gets you where you are!
I get rid of the thoughts, and I get in my witness, which is down in my spiritual heart. The witness that witnesses being.
Watch how your mind judges. Judgment comes, in part, out of your own fear. You judge other people because you're not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart. If you close your heart to someone, you are perpetuating your suffering and theirs. Shifting out of judgment means learning to appreciate your predicament and their predicament with an open heart instead of judging. Then you can allow yourself and others to just be, without separation.
The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.
Gratitude opens your heart, and opening your heart is a wonderful and easy way for God to slip in.
Institutions don't change the world in fundamental ways. The way the world changes is heart to heart to heart by individuals, not by institutions.