The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.

— Ram Dass

The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.

— Ram Dass

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. Furthermore, it's not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object.

— Ram Dass

We come into relationships often very much identified with our needs. I need this, I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship. And all relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each other's needs at some level or other.

— Ram Dass

We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.

— Ram Dass

When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship - which means something that exists between two or more people - for the most part reinforces people's separateness as individual entities.

— Ram Dass

When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It's a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It's a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification.

— Ram Dass

When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree, and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are to this, or I’m to this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

— Ram Dass

Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being taken their first breath, you help a being taken their last breath.

— Ram Dass

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success - none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.

— Ram Dass