So Dass Quotes & Sayings

Children copy their parents, friends, and teachers. They will develop the habits of the people around them. So if you want your child to be honest, peaceful and happy you should be that way first. — Baba Hari Dass

Suffering brings me so close to God. — Ram Dass

The dark night of the soul is when you have lost the flavor of life but have not yet gained the fullness of divinity. So it is that we must weather that dark time, the period of transformation when what is familiar has been taken away and the new richness is not yet ours. — Ram Dass

Don't take yourself so personally. — Ram Dass

A man said to Maharajji, "You've promised for years to visit my home and you have never come. I'm not going to come to see you anymore, because you won't visit my home." Maharajji said, "Oh, I didn't understand! It's your home. I had thought it was my home and so I didn't need to visit. — Ram Dass

The body is a boat that carries the soul in the ocean of the world. If it is not strong, or it has a hole, then it cannot cross the ocean, so the first duty is to fix the boat. — Baba Hari Dass

There are wars and poverty and so on - it's based on fear. You can cure that with your being by not being afraid. — Ram Dass

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. — Ram Dass

Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW ... so you stop asking. — Ram Dass

Most of us are convinced that we are our egos, which is who we think we are. The ego is part of our incarnation. It dies with the body, which is why we are so afraid of death. Death scares the hell out of who you think you are, especially if you think you are this body. — Ram Dass

The cosmic humor is that if you desire to move mountains and you continue to purify yourself, ultimately you will arrive at the place where you are able to move mountains. But in order to arrive at this position of power you will have had to give up being he-who-wanted-to-move-mountains so that you can be he-who-put-the-mountain-there-in-the-first-place. The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there
so there the mountain stays. — Ram Dass

We are always learning from each others. Only when we merge inside God would we stop learning. We will understand more as we teach others, so we rely on teaching in order to learn for ourselves. — Baba Hari Dass

The God within is your Spiritual Heart. Your Soul. And in that individual Soul, rests God- rests the One. Go into your soul and your heart-space which can be Awareness, Love, Compassion, etc ... and just BE your heart-space. BE your Soul so that you can LOVE unconditionally. — Ram Dass

For many years before I met Maharajji I was searching, going here and there, studying this and that. I began following strict yogic codes - brahmacharya, 3:00 A.M. risings, cold baths, asanas, and dhyan. It was during a period when I had given up coffee and tea that I met Maharajji. Tea was being offered to all of us, and I didn't know what to do. I said nothing but did not accept a cup of tea, and Maharajji leaned over to me, saying, "Won't you take tea? Take tea! You should drink the tea. It's good for you in this weather! Take tea!" So I drank the tea. With that one cup of tea, all those strict disciplines and schedules were washed away! They seemed meaningless and unnecessary; the true work seemed beyond these things. Now I do whatever comes of itself. — Ram Dass

In our Western culture, although death has come out of the closet, it is still not openly experienced or discussed. Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it. — Ram Dass

So many times each day we support each other informally without ever becoming 'helper' or 'helped.' Perhaps we're finding an article of clothing for a partner, cutting bread for one of the children, collecting the mail for the person at the next desk, holding the coat for someone at a restaurant. — Ram Dass

It's very hard to grow, because it's difficult to let go of the models of ourselves in which we've invested so heavily. — Ram Dass

I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people. — Ram Dass

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. — Ram Dass

We've been proceeding so long on the plane of consciousness, we don't realize we are spiritual beings. Our minds, our senses, and the society around us all say, "Come on, you're getting into fantasy." — Ram Dass

Once a sadhu offered me some land that he had, so that I could have an ashram for fellow Westerners. I asked Maharajji about it. He said, "He wants to give you his attachment. It's not a pure gift. If it were pure he'd just give it to you instead of talking about it." (R.D.) — Ram Dass

Once you have drunk from the water of unconditional love, no other well can satisfy your thirst. The pangs of separation may become so intense that seeking the affection of the Beloved becomes an obsession. — Ram Dass

So you work on yourself as a gift to other human beings. Then you use every situation you have with other human beings as a vehicle to work on yourself by seeing where you get stuck-where you push, where you grab, where you judge, where you do all the stuff. — Ram Dass

Aging has its own beauty. It is a beautiful stage for doing inner work. You have a chance to not be so dependent on social approval. You can be a little more eccentric. You can be more alone. And you can examine loneliness and boredom instead of being afraid of them. There is such an art and a possibility of aging. — Ram Dass

I remember my first visit with my guru. He had shown that he read my mind. So I looked at the grass and I thought, 'My god, he's going to know all the things I don't want people to know.' I was really embarrassed. Then I looked up and he was looking directly at me with unconditional love. — Ram Dass

Faith is in the soul. Belief is thought. Faith is so rich. Faith gives me my spiritual self. — Ram Dass

Ram Dass, Krishna Dass, we all spoke through interpreters. There were good interpreters there, educated people in India speak English but Maharaji was the One, the Baba, Holy Man, mendicant, he didn't speak English. We talked to him and it was hard to know him, he was an ancient holy man and I was a 21 year old seeker. So I never knew what was going on, I mean I don't really know what's going on now, my guess work is a little better perhaps. — Surya Das

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object. — Ram Dass

My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that. — Ram Dass

No one can please everyone. Your mental peace is more important. If you are in peace, then others around you will feel peace. So your best effort should be to work on yourself. — Baba Hari Dass

You experience that you are cut off by being in your mind, and there is a quality that is starving in an individual that is locked in their mind. So when you move to another plane of consciousness which is no longer controlled by your intellect, which is really the sub-system and you move into the meta-system, what you feel at that moment is ... you are the universe, you feel merged with it, you feel thick with the moment, and that richness is so fulfilling. — Ram Dass

I take the dust from the lotus feet of the guru to cleanse the mirror of my mind." So begins a sacred ode to Hanuman. — Ram Dass

It is possible that in the 21st Century the Earth will not be inhabited by humans. One of the great mystics of India, a very simple man up in the mountains, somebody once asked him about the future. He said there will come a time when you'll walk five miles and you may see a light and you'll be so happy to know another being exists. — Ram Dass

So somebody comes along and gets to me. They get me angry or uptight or they awaken some desire in me, wow am I delighted. They got me. And that's my work on myself. If I am angry with you because your behavior doesn't fill my model of how you should be, that's my problem for having models. No expectations, no upset. If you are a liar and a cheat, that's your Karma. If I'm cheated, that's my work on myself. — Ram Dass

When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn't get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don't get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying 'You are too this, or I'm too this.' That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are. — Ram Dass

A Tibetan Lama said to me, "The best place to stand, Ram Dass, is halfway between hope and hopelessness." So I can write a scenario for the 21st century in either direction. One is that it all goes to hell and that it's truly the dark age. — Ram Dass

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another. — Ram Dass

When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn't. — Ram Dass

The soul is not part of the incarnation. It comes into the incarnation. And the soul is not afraid of death because it has done it so many times. — Ram Dass

Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply inner connected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act. — Ram Dass