Ananda Quotes & Sayings

Thus one should know oneself to be of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss[Sat-Chit-Ananda]. — Adi Shankara

Cannabis affects the brain because brain cells themselves produce cannabis-like neurotransmitters. The first such compound to be identified was christened anandamide, ananda being Sanskrit for "bliss." The proteins that transmit anandamide's message to the brain, the receptors, are mainly located in the striatum (hence the blissful feeling) and in the cerebellum (hence the unsteady gait after taking marijuana), in the cerebral cortex (hence the problems with association, the fragmented thoughts and confusion), and in the hippocampus (hence the memory impairment). But there are no receptors in the brain stem areas that regulate blood pressure and breathing. That's why it's impossible to take an overdose of cannabis, as opposed to opiates. — D.F. Swaab

We have come to think of art and work as incompatible, or at least independent categories and have for the first time in history created an industry without art. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

In Asia, personal relationships are important, but you cannot personalise diplomacy. — Ananda Krishnan

Those who think of their house as only a 'machine to live in' should judge their point of view by that Neolithic man, who also lived in a house, but a house that embodied a cosmology. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Animosity does not eradicate animosity. Only by loving kindness is animosity dissolved. This law is ancient and eternal. (attributed to Buddha) — Ananda Maitreya

Plant the seeds of Love in your hearts. Let them grow into trees of Service and shower the sweet fruit of Ananda. Share the Ananda with all. That is the proper way to celebrate the Birthday — Sathya Sai Baba

We can only suppose that Buddhism has been so much admired mainly for what it is not. A well known modem writer on the subject has remarked that "Buddhism in its purity ignored the existence of a God; it denied the existence of a soul; it was not so much a religion as a code of ethics". We can understand the appeal of this on the one hand to the rationalist and on the other to the sentimentalist. Unfortunately for these, all three statements arc untrue, at least in the sense in which they are meant. It is with another Buddhism than this that we arc in sympathy and are able to agree; and that is the Buddhism of the texts as they stand. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

You are in charge, though." Ananda looked at him calmly. "In the perceptions of outsiders, perhaps. But here? I'm the oldest. I have the most experience. My thoughts carry some weight. When our minds are apart I have certain authority. But when we are connected ... the group mind contains me. I'm just one part of it. The decisions it makes are wiser and more just than the ones I can make alone. The insights it can glean and the truths it can reveal are deeper than those I can glimpse alone. I respect that. I am a piece of this, not its master. — Ramez Naam

The man incapable of contemplation cannot be an artist, but only a skillful workman. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

The Sinhalese people are not, in my opinion, happier or better than they were in the eighteenth century. Talk of progress, and the reality, are not the same. Civilisation is supposed to advance by the creation of new desires, to gratify which the individual must endeavour to improve his position. But in reality it is not quantity, but quality of wants that may be taken as evidence of progress in the Art of Living. No one acquainted with modern Sinhalese taste will pretend that it gives evidence of any improvement in the quality of wants. Indeed, it is sufficiently obvious that quantity, variety, and novelty are not really compatible with quality. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

I danced through chemo and radiation cycles. — Ananda Shankar Jayant

No creature can attain a higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

What we see in a democracy governed by "representatives" is not a government "for the people" but an organized conflict of interests that only results in the setting up of unstable balances of power. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

What I have sought is to understand what has been said. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job, that the price of things is approximate to their real value ... — Ananda Coomaraswamy

Sociologically, I think it is the most important thing going on in the world today. Because you can't change people by force. Communism made a great mistake in trying to inflict its beliefs on everybody. People have to find their own understanding, and if you can offer them an example that will inspire, they will come naturally to it. Ananda tries to offer this inspiring example. — Goswami Kriyananda

We find "Nirvana" rendered by "annihilation" (no one stops to ask of what?), though the word means "despiration", as Meister Eckhart uses the term. I accuse the majority of Christian writers of a certain irresponsibility, or even levity, in their references to other religions. I should never dream of making use of a Gospel text without referring to the Greek, and considering also the earlier history of the Greek words employed, and I demand as much of Christian writers.
To THE NEW ENGLISH WEEKLY, LONDON - January 8, 1946 — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

There is then no sacred or profane, spiritual or sensual, but everything that lives is pure and void. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

Becoming is not a contradiction of being but the epiphany of being. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Beauty is the attractive power of perfection. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

[...] Buddhism has been so much admired mainly for what it is not. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Their nasty whispering made me angry. They had a neat way of tucking their point inside something softseeming and neighborly. The cutting edge was hidden in a joke or a piece of advice. It was like being sliced by a tiny blade hidden in a goose feather; it took a moment to realize the wound. — Ananda Braxton-Smith

Cancer's only one page in my life, and I will not allow this page to impact the rest of my life. — Ananda Shankar Jayant

I have heard some people say I have a low profile. Why should somebody be high profile, anyway? I am just doing my job. — Ananda Krishnan

The traditional arts and crafts are, in fact, "mysteries," with "secrets" that are not merely "tricks of the trade" of economic value (like the so-much-abused European "patents"), but pertain to the worldwide and immemorial symbolism of the techniques, all of which are analogies or imitations of the creative nature in operation — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

To propose an agreement on principles does not involve or imply that the Western world should be Orientalized ; propaganda is out of the question as between gentlemen, and everyone must make use of the forms appropriate to his own psychophysical constitution. It is the European that wants to practice Yoga ; the Oriental points out that he has already contemplative disciplines of his own. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The life or lives of man may be regarded as constituting a curve - an arc of time-experience subtended by the duration of the individual Will to Life. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The contentment of innumerable people can be destroyed in a generation by the withering touch of our civilisation; the local market is flooded by a production in quantity with which the responsible maker of art cannot complete; the vocational structure of society, with all its guild organisation and standards of workmanship, is undermined; the artist is robbed of his art and forced to find himself a "job"; until finally the ancient society is industrialised and reduced to the level of such societies as ours in which business takes precedence of life. Can one wonder that Western nations are feared and hated by other people, not alone for obvious political or economic reasons, but even more profoundly and instinctively for spiritual reasons? — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Apo deepa bhawa"Sanskrit ; Be a light upon yourself
Buddha to Ananda during his last talks — Buddha Gautama

The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

Be lamps unto yourselves. Be refuges unto yourselves. Take yourself no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead, Shall be a lamp unto themselves, Shall betake themselves as no external refuge, But holding fast to the truth as their lamp, Holding fast to the truth as their refuge, Shall not look for refuge to anyone else besides themselves, It is they who shall reach to the very topmost height; But they must be anxious to learn. — Gautama Buddha

From one point of view becoming is a humiliation, and from another a royal procession. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The most awkward means are adequate to the communication of authentic experience, and the finest words no compensation for lack of it. It is for this reason that we are moved by the true Primitives and that the most accomplished art craftsmanship leaves us cold. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

His essential nature is sat-chit-ananda: (Sat) Absolute Being - He encompasses everything because there is nothing outside of him; (Chit) Absolute Consciousness - He is the complete consciousness — Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

We say that what seems to "us" irrational in the life of "savages", and may be unpractical, since it unfits them to compete with our material force, represents the vestiges of a primordial state of metaphysical understanding, and tl'1at if the savage himself is, generally speaking, no longer a comprehensor of his own "divine inheritance", this ignorance on his part is no more shameful than ours who do not recognize the intrinsic nature of his "lore", and understand it no better than he does. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The Avatar is a child to the children, a boy to the boys, a man among men, a woman among women, so that the Avatar?s message might reach each heart and receive enthusiastic response as Ananda. It is the compassion of the Avatar that prompts His every action. — Sathya Sai Baba

A customs man at JFK had asked them to open the suitcases (in case they were smuggling in Indian fruits or sweets, perhaps). 'Ulysses!' the large bespectacled disbelieving customs man had said. 'Are you a student?' Ananda had nodded, though he was in the equivalent of high school. 'I wouldn't read Ulysses unless I was a student!' said the customs man, shutting the suitcase after his glimpse into the tantalising freemasonry of studenthood. A potentially incendiary book then - on the verge of being, but not quite, contraband. And near-unreadable. Ananda — Amit Chaudhuri

Ananda: that joy without which the universe will fall apart and collapse. — Madeleine L'Engle

The vocation, whether it be that of the farmer or the architect, is a function; the exercise of this function as regards the man himself is the most indispensable means of spiritual development, and as regards his relation to society the measure of his worth. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

The man of Self-realization knows a bliss that cannot be compared to anything in this world. His joy is independent of any object or sensory experience. It is an incomparable happiness that cannot be described in words. Such joy is known as sattvik-ananda. — Paramahansa Yogananda

All that is best for us comes of itself into our hands-but if we strive to overtake it, it perpetually eludes us. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The concept (of happiness) is universal. In Buddhism, it is called causeless joy, in Christianity, the kingdom of heaven within, and in Judaism it is called ashrei, an inner sense of holiness and health. Is Islam it is called falah, happiness and well-being, and in Hinduism it is called ananda, or pure bliss. — Marci Shimoff

I think it's all that's holding me together," Kade said. "Then perhaps you should fall apart," Ananda replied. — Ramez Naam

How do you keep cheer when you go from beautiful to bald in three days? — Ananda Shankar Jayant

This is the entire spiritual life, Ananda, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship. When a monk has a good friend, a good companion, a good comrade, it is to be expected that he will develop and cultivate the Noble Eightfold Path. — Gautama Buddha

It is the natural instinct of a child to work from within outwards; "First I think, and then I draw my think." What wasted efforts we make to teach the child to stop thinking, and only to observe! — Ananda Coomaraswamy

The highest octave kundalini is the golden light which occurs in the supraconscious; it is the supraconscious. It's what they call Sat Chit Ananda - existence, consciousness, bliss ... full consciousness. — Frederick Lenz

The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth. — Sri Aurobindo

Industry without art is brutality. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

The Lord is the refuge of all who seek refuge, the saviour of all who have to be saved. He is the Embodiment of Being-Awareness-Bliss (Sat-chit-ananda). He is now at Puttaparthi as the Effulgent Emperor over the region of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. — Sathya Sai Baba

Our hankering for a state of leisure or leisure state is the proof of the fact that most of us are working at a task to which we could never have been called by anyone but a salesman, certainly not by God or by our own natures. Traditional craftsmen whom I have known in the East cannot be dragged away from their work, and will work overtime to their own pecuniary loss.
"Why Exhibit Works of Art? — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The essence of Ananda is both personal and sociological. Personally for people who seek truth or identities of God, it helps to be with other people who share those ideals. Environment is stronger than willpower, and when you are with people who have high ideals, it helps you to grow in your ideals. — Goswami Kriyananda

Man's activity consists in either a making or doing. Both of these aspects of the active life depend for their correction upon the contemplative life (that is, the Hero). — Ananda Coomaraswamy