About Swami Chetanananda | Talks by Swami Chetanananda | Swami Chetanananda Photo Gallery | Links |Nityananda Institute Home
NITYANANDA INSTITUTE
Quotes from talks given by Swami Chetanananda within the last few years.
"If you have a question or two, I will try to respond. I use that term "respond" consideredly; I honestly don't think I have any answers for you, but maybe I have something to share with you."
Swami Chetanananda, Portland, July 26, 2000
"The wonderful thing about spiritual work is that within our practice there are no issues and agendas. You're not here trying to correct anything about yourself, and I'm definitely not here trying to correct you. Spiritual practice is about being able to feel the essence of yourself, your own creative energy, and to awaken and continuously extend that energy to its limits, if you can ever find any."
Swami Chetanananda, Santa Monica, January 22, 2000
"As you go through your day, the thing that you're trying to do here is to release yourself from your own tensions, and learn in the process of releasing this energy to express it lovingly and compassionately and with kindness and thoughtfulness toward other people. You are learning a simple discipline of channeling that energy in a way that allows it to continue to open up."
Swami Chetanananda, Portland, October 28, 1999
"It's really important for you to understand that when it comes to God's grace, there's no favorite. It's not like that. Each person has their own tensions and their own way in which they express their creative energy."
Swami Chetanananda, Portland, October 28, 1999
"The struggle in our lives is to develop the ability to be open to and accepting of and completely loving towards what is. Not what we imagine it is, or what we think it ought to be. And this is especially true of the people whom we share our lives with."
Swami Chetanananda, Santa Monica, January 26, 2000
"I have never tried to be a person who ever said, "Don't do this" or "Don't do that," because in my life I have met so many different kinds of people with so many different kinds of lifestyles, and in order to be a truly infinite person, a truly big person with a truly big heart and a truly big mind, I've always felt that you have to rely on the creative energy, to rely on the love, and to respect that love as it manifests in each and every person."
Swami Chetanananda, Kalachakra for World Peace, Monroe County Public Library, Bloomington, Indiana, August 22, 1999
"Compassion is not feeling sorry for yourself, and compassion is not feeling sorry for anybody else. Compassion is just understanding the difficulty there is in living this human life, and therefore giving everybody that you know as much space as can be given to them to be themselves."
Swami Chetanananda, Portland, July 13, 1999
"What we do here is not about giving you some kind of doctrine or some kind of dogma. What this is really about is awakening you to the potential that is within you. Then it's your job to take the teaching and express this creative energy in the highest and finest way you possibly can."
Swami Chetanananda, Portland, June 16, 2000
"A really good life happens for you when you stop struggling and you keep letting go and you allow the sweetness that is always inside you to function. And then you savor it; you breathe it; you share it where it's appreciated. And in that environment where there's a real flow, it grows."
Swami Chetanananda, Santa Monica, May 1999
About Swami Chetanananda | Talks by Swami Chetanananda | Swami Chetanananda Photo Gallery | Nityananda Institute Home
© 2002 Nityananda Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.
Please contact the Webmaster info@rudrananda.org if you are experiencing technical problems with this website.