Satish Kumar

“Someone, somewhere, needs to take courage to break the cycle of violence. Forgiveness is superior to justice. Being kind and compassionate to those who are good to you is easy. True forgiveness and compassion come only when one is able to forgive even those who have committed barbaric acts. If Angulimala is capable of renouncing violence, then tell me, your Majesty: is your civilized society also capable of being truly civilized and renouncing violence?”

“We then came to the Soviet Union. One day we were walking and carrying our banner and distributing a few leaflets in Russian to people, and we met two women on the road.”

“So, at the age of nine, I became a monk, and from then on I was there practicing that kind of nonviolence.”

“It became extremely important that we go and see the four heads of the governments, and the message was delivered, with the tea packets, to all these heads.”

“I grew with it, and I used to go to see the monks, who had no possessions, even more extreme than my mother.”

“With slight risk of exaggeration you could say that he walked almost every mile of the Indian land.”

“So it is with the mind, Nandini. Allow it to be in balance. Avoid extremes: the middle way is better. Neither force the mind too hard into concentration nor let it wander aimlessly. Meditation is to pay attention, to be aware of your breathing, your posture, your feelings, your perceptions, your thoughts, and all that passes through your mind and the mind itself; whatever is going on within you and between you and the universe. Meditation is not just sitting for an hour here or an hour there; meditation is a way of life. It is practiced all the time. There is no separation between meditation and everyday living. When you have ceased to be bound by the past or by the future, when you are fully present in the here and now, then it is meditation.”

“Kennedy had been assassinated a month or so before. So we walked to the grave of John Kennedy and ended our walking symbolically at the Arlington National Cemetery.”

“Monks will have three begging bowls for their food: one for water, one for liquid food, one for dry food.”

“Within the moment of now, there is presence of ever there, As It is;, Invisible; Nothingness; of Still and silent awareness; in substratum; witnessing itself which U in real R...It has nothing to do with Your mind, Your body appearance and Your world...Wisdom is to let it recognize and and realize itself...Often in Ignorance of IT, ignorant start believing "In the Moment", "As It Is" words, which point towards IT (awareness), ignorantly for the appearing body, appearing mind and appearing creation...Be Happy and Keep Smiling...”

“Remaining aware of awareness, witnessing it thru every experience within without one, is the way and the goal both...Be Happy and keep smiling...”

“That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food.”

“This gives us more time to attend the inner need.”

“I and a friend of mine called Mannon talked together, and we both decided to walk this journey.”

“One was a book I read by Mahatma Gandhi. In it was a passage where he said that religion, the pursuing of the inner journey, should not be separated from the pursuing of the outer and social journey, because we are not isolated beings.”

“If you can kill animals, the same attitude can kill human beings. The mentality is the same which exploits nature and which creates wars.”

“If we remove ourselves from the world, we are pretending that we can follow our own individual enlightenment and let the rest of the world go to hell, so to speak.”

“I was pursuing the inner path at the expense of the rest of my being and the rest of the world.”