Satish Kumar Quotes & Sayings

Our modern world of old story is completely failing humanity. This is the reason that increasing numbers of people have become and are becoming disillusioned from politics. People don't like voting. Whoever you vote, government gets in. Whatever they promise, they never fulfill. — Satish Kumar

Through yoga, meditation and other spiritual practices, we can learn the ways of personal equanimity. We can also learn how to use language in beneficial ways. — Satish Kumar

If individuals start to walk on the path of spirit and feel a sense of the sacred connectedness, then social, economic and political problems will also begin to get resolved. — Satish Kumar

I and a friend of mine called Mannon talked together, and we both decided to walk this journey. — Satish Kumar

"Pursuit of happiness" implies that we're running after happiness and happiness is running away from us. It also implies that happiness is somewhere out there, in material goods, which we have to pursue, whereas I believe that it is an illusion happiness is not out there, it is within us. — Satish Kumar

I want New Story education to be skilling human beings and young people to provide basic human needs. Technology and all other things are icing on the cake. — Satish Kumar

We live under the power of Modern Consciousness, which means that we are obsessed with progress. Wherever you are is not good enough. We always want to achieve something, rather than experience something. The opposite of this is Spiritual Consciousness. By that I mean you find enchantment in every action you do, rather in just the results of your action. Spiritual Consciousness is not a particular religion but a way of being. — Satish Kumar

That was my real education in the world - I learned politics, the social and cultural life of India, Hindu tradition and religion, and Buddhism. — Satish Kumar

Whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. Whatever increases suffering, that is wrong. The answer is within you. When you are free of pride and prejudice, when you are calm and attentive, a light will shine within you. Through meditation and through being mindful you will find your own knowledge of rightness. You will be your own light. — Satish Kumar

Nature is out there, and we can do what we like to it. We can cut down the rain forest. We can put animals in factory farms and slaughter them as we like. We can over-fish the oceans. We can pollute the rivers. We can pollute the water and change climate. We are somehow superior to nature. We are somehow rulers of nature. — 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? — Satish Kumar

The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning. — Satish Kumar

All the big problems of the world today are routed in the philosophy of separateness and dualism. — Satish Kumar

Now is the moment to live fully, and live in happiness. If there is no happiness today, how can you expect to be happy tomorrow? — Satish Kumar

The scientific world, the materialistic world, the world of commerce, the world of business, the world of individualism, the world of capitalism, world of communism - all these worlds are the old story now. Where we think we exploit nature, we exploit people. Market rules, profit rules, money rules. We work for name, fame, power, money, profit. That's the old story. — Satish Kumar

People are are moving away from the fossil fuel-based economy, to a more renewable economy. That is what is called the 'transition town' movement. There are three hundred towns in Britain that are making this transition. Taking energy from solar power, from wind power, from water power. — Satish Kumar

There is at the moment in the world a battle going on between those who are pursuing materialistic paths-globalizers of economic growth and those hell-bent on this 'big is better' idea-on the one hand, and on the other hand those who are dedicated to spiritual renewal, more small-scale development, more human scale, more sustainability, more crafts and arts. Where human beings are not just sold to companies and money and those kinds of things. Where human beings have a sacred path. — Satish Kumar

At the moment, for example, maybe ten percent of money in the world is related to goods and services. Ninety percent of money is just moving around the world, chasing money. So, money has become the ruler. And we have become the servant. — Satish Kumar

Ego means "I am this body mind" ...
Clarity realise "I am That"
Whereas in real Just awareness is ...
Be Happy and keep smiling ... — Satish Kumar

Of course, we all need to have basic necessities met, such as good health care, good food, good education and good housing. But what is good? Having too much is bad, as having too little is also bad. — Satish Kumar

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 ... — Satish Kumar

We human beings are spiritual beings. We have soul. We have spirit. We have mind. We have consciousness. We want fulfillment, we want happiness, we want satisfaction, we want joy. We want imagination. We want art, culture, music. — Satish Kumar

Each of us needs to eliminate our anger, fear and greed. The roots of social conflicts and political tensions are in personal anger, fear and greed. — Satish Kumar

We need to learn to live in the here and now; this moment is the best moment. Live it fully. — Satish Kumar

I want to see a New Story education, which is not only about intellectual knowledge - not only about measurement - not only about academic achievement. It is also about heart, feelings, emotions, relationship, love, compassion, generosity, beauty. All these values are part of the heart. — Satish Kumar

In addition to world conflicts, the most challenging problem we face today is hunger, deprivation and social injustice. Because we're ruled by separate self-interest, we go on accumulating personal wealth, ignoring the well being of the others. — Satish Kumar

Multinational corporations and a market economy have transformed human beings into instruments of making money. Human beings should be the end. And money should be the means to an end. — Satish Kumar

This gives us more time to attend the inner need. — Satish Kumar

I was pursuing the inner path at the expense of the rest of my being and the rest of the world. — Satish Kumar

What we call 'economic growth' is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat — Satish Kumar

In fact, the environmental crisis is related to the crisis of aesthetics, crisis of social cohesion and the crisis of spiritual values. — Satish Kumar

It is only an illusion that time is running out. This is where the problem of fear arises. We become anxious that "I don't have enough time and I have to do everything quickly." We need to turn our attention away from results, achievements and outcomes. — Satish Kumar

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. — Satish Kumar

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. — Satish Kumar

Earth is a living entity. And if it's a living organism, then we have to have a reverence for all life. Food should be local, organic rather than grown with chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. — Satish Kumar

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

Our relationship with Nature ... best way of forging this relationship ... be a pilgrim and not a tourist on Planet Earth — Satish Kumar

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

We need to develop a sense of sufficiency to be happy. — Satish Kumar

People are increasingly becoming disappointed and disillusioned with politics and business, and especially with the market economy. They are meeting the physical needs of human beings, maybe. They are providing food. But not good and healthy food. — Satish Kumar

If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers. — Satish Kumar

Because the Western civilization is dominated by dualistic thinking, holistic scientists and philosophers don't get the recognition they deserve. — Satish Kumar

You have no skills in your hands. You have no education of understanding the meaning and the purpose and the compassion and the relationship. You have just a profession. — Satish Kumar

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

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

Look at what realists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I tell people who call me 'unrealistic' to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept. — Satish Kumar

The way to healthy living is to shift from quantitative economic growth to quality of life, food, water and air - to shift from craving to contentment and from greed to gratitude — Satish Kumar

If happiness was in money or power, then America should be the happiest country in the world, but it is not. — Satish Kumar

Large numbers of young people are waking up. And they are saying, "We are not here just to work for multinational corporations and make money for them. We are here to live. We have to find the meaning of life." — Satish Kumar

Sometimes I come across a tree which seems like Buddha or Jesus: loving, compassionate, still, unambitious, enlightened, in eternal meditation, giving pleasure to a pilgrim, shade to a cow, berries to a bird, beauty to its surroundings, health to its neighbors, branches for the fire, leaves for the soil, asking nothing in return, in total harmony with the wind and the rain. How much can I learn from a tree? The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer. — Satish Kumar

If we had adhered to the concept of connectedness, then we would not have created nuclear weapons, huge armies and global warming. — Satish Kumar

Instead of seeking success we should look for fulfillment. And fulfillment is giving total attention to the process of living. — Satish Kumar

We depend on the gifts of nature, but these gifts must be received with gratitude and not exploited or abused — Satish Kumar

Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth; Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust; Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace; Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe — Satish Kumar

Fire cannot be put out with more fire. — Satish Kumar

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. — Satish Kumar

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. — Satish Kumar

Monks will have three begging bowls for their food: one for water, one for liquid food, one for dry food. — Satish Kumar

Economy without ecology means managing the human nature relationship without knowing the delicate balance between humankind and the natural world — Satish Kumar

Wars and conflicts begin in the mind, then they are expressed in words and then executed through physical action, so personal transformation is intricately connected with the social and political transformation. — Satish Kumar

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. — Satish Kumar

Education provides you a profession. But not vocation. You do it only because you need to work to earn money to buy your food, buy your clothes, pay the bills. Our life has a greater meaning, and a greater purpose. — Satish Kumar

We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature to relationship with nature. The moment you change from ownership to relationship, you create a sense of the sacred. — Satish Kumar

Happiness is possible only when we are kind to others and contented within. — Satish Kumar

Without the land, the rivers, the oceans, the forests, the sunshine, the minerals and thousands of natural resources we would have no economy whatsoever — Satish Kumar

With slight risk of exaggeration you could say that he walked almost every mile of the Indian land. — Satish Kumar

In the lives of great men, neither did fate give up, NOR DID THEY. — Satish Kumar

Quality and perfection are achieved with time. You do not create a perfect painting or a perfect poem by hurrying. Time is always coming. — Satish Kumar

We are dependent on each other. Therefore, replenishing the soil, replenishing society and being part of one continuum - that's the new story. — Satish Kumar

Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected. — Satish Kumar

This was Mahatma Gandhi's idea, moving from ownership to relationship - seeing that land does not belong to us. We belong to the land. We are not the owners of the land. We are the friends of the land, like friends of the earth. The fundamental shift is in this consciousness that land does not belong to us, we belong to the land. — Satish Kumar

If we had kept the vision of interconnectedness, we would not have created the kind of environmental crisis facing the world today. — Satish Kumar

When you come to the spiritual needs, the emotional needs, the needs of our inner life, then politics and business and technology are completely impotent. They are completely unable to meet and address the needs of human beings. — Satish Kumar

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. — Satish Kumar

The great work of social transformation begins with the first small step of stopping, calming, relaxing, reflecting and acting in a beneficial way. — Satish Kumar

Speed is one of the great curses of modern civilization, obsession with speed leads to quantitative approach; we come to believe that more is better. This is very materialistic, we have to realize that it is the quality of life, quality of relationships, quality of food, medicine, education and everything else which matters. — Satish Kumar

The road to climate stability is straight and the solutions simple, and yet scientists, economists, industrialists and politicians are busy making them complicated — Satish Kumar

Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity, embedded in the arts and crafts. — Satish Kumar

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. — Satish Kumar

The force and the strength for peace will come from people. And that will happen when people start to realize that all the diversity and differences we see of nationalities, of religions, of cultures, of languages, are all beautiful diversities, for they are only on the surface. And deep down we share the same humanity, the global humanity. — Satish Kumar

We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life. — Satish Kumar

We change by changing our consciousness and by saying, money should not be a commodity. Money should be a means to an end. — Satish Kumar

We are not slaves of the market. Our human life has a greater meaning than making money, making profit, and working for the market or for multinational corporations. — Satish Kumar