Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.
Given the scale of life in the cosmos, one human life is no more than a tiny blip. Each one of us is a just visitor to this planet, a guest, who will only stay for a limited time. What greater folly could there be than to spend this short time alone, unhappy or in conflict with our companions? Far better, surely, to use our short time here in living a meaningful life, enriched by our sense of connection with others and being of service to them.
What is important is to see how we can best lead a meaningful everyday life, how we can bring about peace and harmony in our minds, how we can help contribute to society.
Courage becomes a worthwhile and meaningful virtue when it is regarded not so much as a willingness to die manfully but as a determination to live decently.
Young people are often asked, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' and given advice about how to lead meaningful adult lives, but where's the encouragement to lead meaningful lives right now?
Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don't think there's anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
The Bhagavad-Gita is a true scripture of the human race a living creation rather than a book, with a new message for every age and a new meaning for every civilization.
So long as space remains, So long sentient beings' suffering remain, I will remain, In order to help, in order to serve... I am nothing but a servant to provide to others. So if you provide some happiness, some comfort to others, then your life becomes meaningful. If your life creates problems or suffering to others, then there's no meaning to your existence.
There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, 'You must read this.' I've always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
When I talk to audiences about the size and age of the cosmos, people often say, "It makes me feel so insignificant." I answer, "The bigger and more impersonal the universe is, the more meaningful you are, because this vast, impersonal place needs something significant to fill it up." We've abandoned the old belief that humanity is at the physical center of the universe but more come back to believing we are at the center of meaning.
I have not been part of an active counterculture movement, as it is not the approach that I have personally pursued to create a qualitatively beneficial and meaningful impact on society.
I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers.
People go on postponing everything that is meaningful. Tomorrow they will laugh; today, money has to be gathered... more money, more power, more things, more gadgets. Tomorrow they will love - today there is no time. But tomorrow never comes, and one day they find themselves burdened with all kinds of gadgets, burdened with money. They have come to the top of the ladder - and there is nowhere to go except to jump in a lake.