451 Quotes About Selflessness

When you switch your focus from the “we” to the “me”, the goal from “team” to “self”, you upset the balance of the whole. Consequentially, that redistribution of effort impedes success.

How we treat people defines humanity.

However, maitri is not just being kind and nice. It is the understanding that one has to become one with the situation. That does not particularly mean that one becomes entirely without personality and has to accept whatever the other person suggests. Rather, you have to overcome the barrier that you have formed between yourself and others. If you remove this barrier and open yourself, then automatically real understanding and clarity will develop in your mind.

If we lack the proper antidotes of emptiness and bodhichitta, we will not be able to control our minds when frightening appearances manifest. It is considered a sign of progress in this practice if we go unconscious, and then, when we wake up, have forgotten our names and whose bodies we have! This is the ceasing of clinging to the body.

Extravagant love, as in every generation before us, has been ridiculed and scorned. it is seen as wasteful and reckless overspending. But extravagant love, the offering of everything, the emptying of the pockets of our life, is the essence of true Christianity.

I do not need your guilt, nor do I care for it. This is not about you. If you feel guilty, then use that to change things for the better. Otherwise, your feelings mean nothing.

When the forest gives you a fistful of fruits, they are yours; but when it reveals to you a thicket of trees laden with fruit, it is entrusting you to call the whole village.

In spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he was absolute. He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some one else’s behalf.

[Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner belonged to] that small army of brave people who made it their duty, without thought of themselves or hope or expectation of reward, to strive for unpopular causes.[Chapman Cohen on the death of noted freethinker and peace advocate Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner]