“If I am transparent enough to myself, then I can become less afraid of those hidden selves that my transparency may reveal to others. If I reveal myself without worrying about how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone. It is enough that I must die alone. I am determined to let down, whatever the risks, if it means that I may have whatever is there for me.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 26) | ★ Featured in Matt’s Blog.
“One of the luxuries of being a psychotherapist is that it helps to keep you honest. It’s a bit like remaining in treatment all of your life. It helps me to remain committed to telling and retelling my tale for the remainder of that pilgrimage that is my life. Research in self-disclosure supports my own experience that the personal openness of the guru facilitates and invites the increased openness of the pilgrim. But I operate not to help the patient, but to help myself. It is from the center of my own being that I am moved to share my tale. That it turns out to be so helpful to the patient is gravy.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 24)
“I find that most people who believe ‘society’ is going to judge their failures harshly are actually just surrounded by 1-2 people who judge their failures harshly—usually a friend or family member. Ultimately, you want to surround yourself with people who understand that trying and failing are a natural part of life and will encourage you to overcome mistakes. If those people aren’t around you right now, make an effort to find them and surround yourself with them as soon as possible.”
Mark Manson
“What the guru knows that the seeker does not is that we are all pilgrims. There is no master, and there is no student.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 19)
“When the Hasidic pilgrims vied for who among them had endured the most suffering who was most entitled to complain, the Zaddik told them the story of the Sorrow Tree. On the Day of Judgment, each person will be allowed to hang all of his unhappiness on a branch of the great Tree of Sorrows. After each person has found a limb from which his own miseries may dangle, they may all walk slowly around the tree. Each is to search for a set of sufferings that he would prefer to those he has hung on the tree. In the end, each man freely chooses to reclaim his own personal set of sorrows rather than those of another. Each man leaves the tree wiser than when he came.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 17)
“As a therapist, I know that though the patient learns, I do not teach. Furthermore, what is to be learned is too elusively simple to be grasped without struggle, surrender, and experiencing of how it is.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 7)
“All of the truly important battles are waged within the self. It is as if we are all tempted to view ourselves as men on horseback. The horse represents a lusty animal-way of living, untrammeled by reason, unguided by purpose. The rider represents independent, impartial thought, a sort of pure cold intelligence. too often the pilgrim lives as though his goal is to become the horseman who would break the horse’s spirit so that he can control him, so that he may ride safely and comfortably wherever he wishes to go. If he does not wish to struggle for discipline, it is because he believes that his only options will be either to live the lusty, undirected life of the riderless horse, or to tread the detached, unadventuresome way of the horseless rider. If neither of these, then he must be the rider struggling to gain control of his rebellious mount. He does not see that there will be no struggle, once he recognizes himself as a centaur.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 7)
“Never believe anything unless you have experienced it. Never form any prejudice, even if the whole world is saying that something is so, unless you have encountered it yourself.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 131)
“Though the patient enters therapy insisting that he wants to change, more often than not, what he really wants is to remain the same and to get the therapist to make him feel better. His goal is to become a more effective neurotic, so that he may have what he wants without risking getting into anything new. He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 4)
“The therapist is an observer and a catalyst. He has no power to ‘cure’ the patient, for cure is entirely out of his hands. He can add nothing to the patient’s inherent capacity to get well, and whenever he tries to do so he meets stubborn resistance which slows up the progress of treatment. The patient is already fully equipped for getting well.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 4)
“Enjoy silence; but know that silence is not against noise. Silence can exist in noise. In fact, when it exists in noise only then is it real silence. The silence that you feel in the Himalayas is not your silence; it belongs to the Himalayas. But if in the marketplace you can feel silence, you can be utterly at ease and relaxed, it is yours. Then you have the Himalayas in your heart, and that’s the true thing!”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 128)
“Out of all virtues simplicity is my most favorite virtue. So much so that I tend to believe that simplicity can solve most of the problems, personal as well as the world problems. If the life approach is simple one need not lie so frequently, nor quarrel nor steal, nor envy, anger, abuse, kill. Everyone will have enough and plenty so need not hoard, speculate, gamble, hate. When character is beautiful, you are beautiful. That is the beauty of simplicity.”
Ela Bhatt, via Essentialism (Page 246)
“If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest your time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live. Will you choose to live a life of purpose and meaning, or will you look back on your one single life with twinges of regret? If you take one thing away from this book, I hope you will remember this: whatever decision or challenge or crossroads you face in your life, simply ask yourself, ‘What is essential?’ Eliminate everything else.”
Greg McKeown, Essentialism (Page 237)
“Doubt is not bad. Negativity is a totally different thing. Negativity means you have already taken a position—against. Doubt means you don’t have any position; you are ready to inquire, with open mind. Doubt is the best point from where to begin. Doubt simply means a quest, a question; negativity means you already have a prejudice, you are bigoted. You have already decided. Now all that you have to do is somehow to prove your prejudice right. Doubt is immensely spiritual. But negativity is something sick.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 123)
“When faced with so many tasks and obligations that you can’t figure out which to tackle first, stop. Take a deep breath. Get present in the moment and ask yourself what is most important this very second—not what’s most important tomorrow or even an hour from now. If you’re not sure, make a list of everything vying for your attention and cross off anything that is not important right now.“
Greg McKeown, Essentialism (Page 221)
“Recently I had taught a full day on Essentialism to an executive team in New York. I had thoroughly enjoyed the day and had felt present throughout. But by the time I returned to my room I felt a sudden pull in a million directions. Everything around me was a reminder of all of the things I could be doing: check my e-mail, listen to messages, read a book I felt obligated to read, prepare the presentation for a few weeks from now, record interesting ideas that had grown out of the day’s experiences, and more. It wasn’t just the sheer number of things that felt overwhelming, it was that familiar stress of many tasks vying for top billing at the same time. As I felt the anxiety and tension rise I stopped. I knelt down. I closed my eyes and asked, ‘What’s important now?’ After a moment of reflection I realized that until I knew what was important right now, what was important right now was to figure out what was important right now!”
Greg McKeown, Essentialism (Page 220)