Don't covet what is commonly called fame and glory: for famous men stand like a heap of cakes in a shop window, and curiosity is a fly in the ointment and a cloud of filthiness; fame is not glory, but misery and humiliation. Thou shalt not covet what is commonly called eternal fame, immortality: for it shall profit you nothing if your memory remains in the memory of future generations after your death, like a shrivelled mummy in a pyramid. What the great men call immortality is not eternal life, not even eternal memory, but oblivion postponed for a few hundred or a few thousand years. Observe these slower oblivionists: how terrifying their squalid, dusty permanence. A royal silence is theirs, a golden and silver crypt-silence. Not their lives, but their deaths, stretching back centuries or decades.
Your glory and your immortality do not depend on your fellow man, for it is in you or it is not in you. The European man does not want to be so great as to fulfil the full potential of his existence, but only as a great lighthouse disappearing into the night. Do not be content with the measurable, but strive only for the whole greatness.
He who has principles or talents, feels himself excellent; he who has scraped together a heap of rubbish, or is praised, feels himself excellent. Recognize that the nightingale sings well, the dog barks well, the sheep eats the grass well, the man eats the sheep, and the grass eats the man's carcass: everything is in its place, everything dances its dance perfectly, and there is no excellence.
The harmony is complete and undisturbed. All the many separate things have independent demands that might disturb harmony: these are brought into harmony by the dance of death. Do not strive for excellence, but strive to achieve harmony within yourself, to be free from all separate demands, and then you will be free from the dance of death.
He who desires happiness is always in a rush, and his rush is in harmony. He who desires harmony is happy.
Don't tolerate in yourself the seeds of any desire to assert yourself. For as you can advance in life, so you will slide back in yourself.
Do not strive for excellence. But that does not mean neglecting your abilities. You will advance in yourself if you make your abilities as full and coherent as possible; no matter how great your abilities are, the main thing is to make the best of them and by them.
Your abilities are the steeds that will carry you to the final house; but you can only enter the house if you keep your steeds outside. Every faculty has its measure; and the final gate is only accessible to that which is immeasurable: the soul itself.
Achieving wholeness is infinitely easy and infinitely difficult. It is as easy and as difficult as saying these three words without lying and self-deception: 'I'm completely pure.' But there are, very few, simple poor people who, without striving for it and without knowing it, possess perfection. All their feelings, thoughts, intentions are pure, everything is good for them as it happens to be offered; if they have to lose property, health, family, life: they resign themselves to that without difficulty. Their life is quiet and peaceful, and their peace can be violated by no one and nothing. From their words you may not derive much, but from their being you may derive the universe itself.
These peaceful, happy people will not attain to perfection, to heaven: they are already there, there is no power that can add to them or take from them. They live on an endless high mountain, from which there is no further.
Man, freed from his individuality, is in common with God. The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.
The man freed from his individuality is not omniscient in the sense that he can tell you how much money is in a closed purse, that he knows tomorrow's newspaper today, that he can answer any question you may have with certainty. What would seem to people to be omniscience: an infinite repository of data; omniscience is not a set, but the knowledge of something simpler than 'one'.
He is not omnipotent enough to turn bread into a calabash; nor can he perhaps lift the sack which a sack-bearer easily carries. What would seem to men omnipotence: the infinite increase of success in life. He is omnipotent in such a way that, while he is going about his ordinary work, he carries in the depths of his being the action-less, complete operation of God.
It is not so omnipresent that if he is present in York, he would also be present in New York. What would appear to men as omnipresence: the full filling of space. It is omnipresent in that it reaches to the existent, to the point of no extension, which includes everything.
The waves are counted by those who listen in the dark, not by those who see the sea.
It's better to live on a mountain than in a valley. But how rich the valley is, my soul, how rich.
Once I was watching a young chariot, not with my eyes, but with my ears, for there was a wall of boards between us. I had known him long ago: a lad of sixteen, simple-minded, full of a corn-colour glow of the senses, which filled him with a sort of incorruptible gaiety; what he coveted he stole, if he could, without his action being touched; the stern power no more asked him what he had taken from whence or why than it did the bird. I listened to this fowl with my ears; he wanted to talk to his elder waggoner companion, he urged him long, but he did not answer, he was asleep. Then the lad began to sing, "I drink, I always drink, my wife is angry with me..." Of course, he didn't have a drink, by all means he didn't have a wife. He had only desire, desire brings one down, wisdom says; yet desire lifted him up, for there was nothing to bring him down, for he was on the ground from the beginning. And his desire carried him not only to the drink, not only to the wife, but far beyond, when they were old married men quarreling, and the wife was roasting him for the drink.
The angel can fly no higher than this male beetle flew from one blade of grass to another.
How perfect-brilliant are all the things of life, only he who no longer desires them knows truly. A robber-murderer, when he kills his victim without mercy, is in such communion with him as never he was in bed; without knowing it, he kills not his victim, but himself; he who realizes this is not horrified, but filled with awe. Or think of the merchant, who piles up money as if the wealth he accumulates would lead somewhere, would be sufficient somewhere: he fights the impossible, a pariah confronts the universe. And that women are beautiful is known only to those who no longer desire them: as the beauty and delicacy of a bone is seen not by the dog that wishes to chew it, but by the man who does not wish to chew it.
A bright face looks out over the forest-covered valley. The tarn answers like a woman.
Everyone feeds on hell, even if they are growing towards heaven.
"I am a woman", radiates the flower; "I am a flower", radiates the woman. "I am a man", emanates the trunk of the creating tree; "I am the trunk of the creating tree", emanates the man.
If you want to question it: the rose disappears behind its fragrance, its colour, its form; the fruit tree opens up. If you want to enjoy it: the rose unfolds; the fruit tree disappears behind its fruit.
A single feeling obscures everything. A single sound deafens everything. A single word obscures everything. Yet: the way is through feeling, hearing, and speaking.
The lamp cannot see its own light. Honey does not feel its own sweetness.
The rainbow bridge is the only one where angels and devils come and go in such a way that you can hardly tell them apart.
Those who wear their names as clothes, hide their heads under their wings, retreat into their dreams.
Whole existence: life-less.
Whole eternity: time-less.
Whole functioning: change-less.
Power total: power-less.
Whole wisdom: thought-less.
Whole love: feeling-less.
Whole goodness: direction-less.
Complete happiness: joy-less.
Full vibration: sound-less.
There is something that remains unchanged.
The essence of everything is this unchanging.
If I get rid of all the eventualities: there is nothing left of me but the same.
Words are separate and pearl-like, things are connected and pile-like. Therefore, words and things just brush against each other.
Thought is complex and unspeakable, truth is simple and unspeakable. Truth can be known only without speech, and therefore only from yourself. Make your soul capable of knowing the truth in it.
What you read here: more than a worldview, and less than a religion.
It is more than a worldview, because it is not a way of seeing things, but a way of feeling things at their common root.
Less than a religion, because it does not speak of divine mysteries, which can only be spoken of in symbols. It has no mention of Christ, God incarnate, who dies and goes to hell for men.
What is said here is not meant to be believed, but to remind you of your true being, your true world.
Csönge, 1944-45