Anthony De Mello

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.

To a visitor who asked to become his disciple the Master said, "You may live with me, but don't become my follower."

"Whom, then, shall I follow?"

"No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth."

Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.

A disciple said to him, "I am ready, in the quest for God, to give up anything: wealth, friends, family, country, life itself. What else can a person give up?"

The Master calmly replied, "One's beliefs about God."

A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.

The Master was exceedingly gracious to university dons who visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into their theological speculations. To his disciples, who marveled at this, he said, "Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?"

The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-tzu's dictum: Those who know do not say; Those who say do not know.

When the master entered, they asked him what the words meant.

Said the master, "Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?"

All of them indicated that they knew.

Then he said, "put it into words."

All of them were silent.

The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song — not one. Not two.

This is what Wisdom means: To be changed without the slightest effort on your part, to be transformed, believe it or not, merely by waking to the reality that is not words, that lies beyond the reach of words. If you are fortunate enough to be Awakened thus, you will know why the finest language is the one that is not spoken, the finest action is the one that is not done and the finest change is the one that is not willed.

When I speak, you must not listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence.

If you never condemned you would never need to forgive.

The Master is not concerned with what we believe — only with what we see.