“Are you ready for the test?” “Yes.” “Well, what is two plus two?” “Whatever the boss says it is.” The second applicant got the job. Which comes first, orthodoxy or the truth?

When neurotics come to you for help, they seldom seek to be healed, for healing is painful. What they really want is to be made comfortable in their neuroses. Or, best of all, they yearn for a miracle that will heal them painlessly.

Do you wish to catch a glimpse of God? Look intently at creation.

On the street I saw a naked child, hungry and shivering in the cold. I became angry and said to God, “Why do you permit this? Why don’t you do something?” For a while God said nothing. That night he replied, quite suddenly, “I certainly did something. I made you.”

“Here I am with you,” says God, “and you keep reflecting about me in your head, talking about me with your tongue, and searching for me in your books When will you shut up and see?”

In the depth of that silence, he heard it! The tinkle of a tiny bell followed by another, and another and another…and soon every one of the thousand temple bells was pealing out in harmony, and his heart was rapt in joyous ecstasy. Do you wish to hear the temple bells? Listen to the sound of the sea. Do you wish to catch a glimpse of God? Look

A mother could not get her son to come home before sunset. So she told him that the road to their house was haunted by ghosts who came out after dusk. By the time the boy grew up he was so afraid of ghosts that he refused to run errands at night. So she gave him a medal and taught him that it would protect him. Bad religion gives him faith in the

Beware of applying the story to anyone (priest, mullah, church, neighbor) other than yourself. If you do so the story will do you damage. Every one of these stories is about you, no one else.

The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not to be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge.