Anthony de Mello Quotations

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.

It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!

Obedience keeps the rules. Love knows when to break them.

People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.

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.

The Master was exceedingly gracious to university dons who visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into their theological speculations. To his disciples, who marveled at this, he said, "Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?

Is there life before death? - that is the question!

If you make me your authority, you harm yourself because you will not see things for yourself, and you harm me too because you refuse to see me as I am.

All that you give to others you are giving to yourself.

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.

The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song — not one. Not two.

Live your life as you see fit. That's not selfish. Selfish is to demand that others live their lives as you see fit.

The only way to change is by changing your understanding.

Those who make no mistakes are making the biggest mistakes of all - they are attempting nothing new.

All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river.

When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.

There's nothing you can do to see — it is a gift.

The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not to be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge.

A disciple said to him, "I am ready, in the quest for God , to give up anything: wealth, friends, family, country, life itself. What else can a person give up?" The Master calmly replied, "One's beliefs about God.

When I speak, you must not listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence.

One always treads with a joyful step when one has dropped the burden called the ego.

Look for competence not claims.

Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality," said the skeptic who was ready for an argument. "Here's one," said the Master. "When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.

One year of life is worth more than twenty years of hibernation.

A zealous disciple expressed a desire to teach others the Truth and asked the Master what he thought about this. The Master said, "Wait." Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the Master would give him the same reply: "Wait." One day he said to the Master, "When will I be ready to teach?" Said the Master, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you.

My life is like shattered glass." said the visitor. "My soul is tainted with evil. Is there any hope for me? "Yes," said the Master. "There is something whereby each broken thing is bound again and every stain made clean." "What?" "Forgiveness" "Whom do I forgive?" "Everyone: Life, God, your neighbor especially yourself." "How is that done?" "By understanding that no one is to blame," said the Master. "NO ONE.

People who want to rise above a well-cooked meal and a well-tailored garment, are out of their spiritual minds.

What is my identity ?" "Nothing," said the Master. "You mean that I am an emptiness and a void?" said the incredulous disciple. "Nothing that can be labeled." said the Master.

To those who seek to protect their ego true Peace brings only disturbance.

My commitment is not to consistency but to the Truth .

The feigning sleeper can delude others he cannot delude himself. The false mystic, unfortunately, can delude both others and himself.

When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.

Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?

Pleasant experiences make life delightful. Painful experiences lead to growth.

The seeker says, "I do not know." That takes honesty. The master says, "I do not know." That takes a mystic's mind that knows things through non-knowing. The disciple says, "I know." That takes ignorance, in the form of borrowed knowledge.

You're not living until it doesn't matter a tinker's damn to you whether you live or die. At that point you live. When you're ready to lose your life, you live it.

the greatest learning of the ages lies in accepting life exactly as it comes to us.

Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.

When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself.

The Master made it his task to destroy systematically every doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now being taken as descriptions. He loved to quote the Eastern saying "When the sage points to the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.

Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.

People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.

You see persons and things not as they are but as you are.

This truth I firmly hold, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding; my life has been a gift, a blessing to the world.

The world is right because I feel good. p. 83, Awareness, copyright 1990

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a world where everybody said, 'We don't know?' The fact is that you're surrounded -God and you don't see God, because you KNOW ABOUT God. The final barrier to the vision of God is your God concept. You miss God because you think you know. The highest knowledge of God is to know God as unknowable. All revelations, however divine, are never any more than a finger pointing at the moon. As we say in the East, 'When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger'.

The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-Tzu's dictum: "Those who know, do not say; Those who say, do not know." When the master entered, they asked him what the words meant. Said the master, "Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?" All of them indicated that they knew. Then he said, "Put it into words." All of them were silent.

A newly married couple said, "What shall we do to make our love endure?" Said the Master, "Love other things together"....

We're crazy, We're living on crazy ideas about love, about relationships, about happiness, about joy, about everything.

Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions.

And increasingly - you know this and so do I we're losing the youth everywhere. They hate us; they are not interested in having more fears and guilt laid on them. They're not interested in more sermons and exhortations. But they are interested in learning about love. How can I be happy? How can I live? How can I taste the marvelous things that the mystics speak of?

"That of the person who sees other human beings as sinners," said the Master.

In many ways we were drugged when we were young. We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause.

When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live.

You are so proud of your intelligence," said the master. "You are like a like a condemned man, proud of the vastness of his prison cell.

So love the thought of death, love it.

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.

The spiritual quest is a journey without distance. You travel from where you are right now To where you have always been. From ignorance to recognition...

We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever. It's only a flash and we waste it. We waste it with our anxiety, our worries, our concerns, our burdens.

Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide. While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith. Faith?" said the Master. He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?" That was fanaticism, not faith. Faith demands a greater courage still: to reexamine one's convictions and reject them if they do not fit the facts.

Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. Stop trying to change reality. That's crazy! Stop trying to change the other person. We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and everybody else. We don't have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you.

Sinners often speak the truth. And saints have led people astray. Examine what is said, not the one who says it.

There is no explanation you can give that will explain away all the sufferings and evil and torture and destruction and hunger in the world! You'll never explain it. Because life is a mystery, which means your thinking mind cannot make sense of it. For that you've got to wake up and then you'll suddenly realize that reality is not the problem, you are the problem.

Nothing has changed but my attitude, therefore, everything has changed.

No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.

All is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well.

The devil has a Ph.D. in perfect logic.

Sin is a refusal to grow, a refusal to love, a refusal to get committed, to be concerned, and to take risks.

A religious belief … is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating - these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers.

If the heart is unobstructed, the result is love.

As soon as you look at the world through an ideology, you are finished. No reality fits ideology.

No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you. No event, condition, situation, or person. Nobody told you this; they told you the opposite. That's why you're in the mess you're in right now. That is why you're asleep. They never told you this. But it's self-evident.

I wish to become a teacher of the Truth.

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.

Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?

Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that.

Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed; after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed.

Take the leap! You cannot cross a chasm in little jumps.

Understand your darkness and it will vanish; then you will know what light is. Understand your nightmare for what it is and it will stop; then you will wake up to reality. Understand your false beliefs and they will drop; then you will know the taste of happiness.

This is what is ultimate in our human knowledge of God, to know that we do not know.

A lost coin is found by means of a candle; the deepest truth is found by means of a simple story.

The important thing is not to know who "I" is or what "I" is. You'll never succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels.

I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking.

There comes a point in your life when you become stark raving insane, commit suicide or become a mystic.

Tell me," said the atheist , "Is there a God really?" Said the master, "If you want me to be perfectly honest with you, I will not answer." Later the disciples demanded to know why he had not answered. "Because the question is unanswerable," said the Master. "So you are an atheist?" "Certainly not. The atheist makes the mistake of denying that of which nothing may be said... and the theist makes the mistake of affirming it.

Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows.

To a visitor who asked to become his disciple the Master said, "You may live with me, but don't become my follower." "Whom, then, shall I follow?" "No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth .

Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything.

To a woman who complained about her destiny the Master said, "It is you who make your destiny." "But surely I am not responsible for being born a woman?" "Being born a woman isn't destiny. That is fate. Destiny is how you accept your womanhood and what you make of it."

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation.

What is the work of a Master?" said a solemn-faced visitor. "To teach people to laugh ," said the Master gravely.

If you don't look at things through your concepts, you'll never be bored. Every single thing is unique.

Has it ever occurred to you that you can only love when you are alone?

A prisoner lived in solitary confinement for years. He saw and spoke to no one and his meals were served through an opening in the wall. One day an ant came into his cell. The man contemplated it in fascination as it crawled around the room. He held it in the palm of his hand the better to observe it, gave it a grain or two, and kept it under his tin cup at night. One day it suddenly struck him that it had taken him ten long years of solitary confinement to open his eyes to the loveliness of an ant.

The human mind makes foolish divisions in what love sees as one.

A disciple, in his reverence for the Master, looked upon him as God incarnate. "Tell me, O Master," he said, "why you have come into this world." "To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters.

There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always warned against the tyranny of the law. 'Obedience keeps the rules,' he would say. 'Love knows when to break them.'

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.

Charity is never so lovely as when one has lost consciousness that one is practicing charity. 'You mean I helped you? I was enjoying myself. I was just doing my dance. It helped you, that's wonderful. Congratulations to you. No credit to me.

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.'