Satish Kumar Quotes

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.

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

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 ...

We need to develop a sense of sufficiency to be happy.

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.

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."

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.

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

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

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 Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

This gives us more time to attend the inner need.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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