Top 50 Surya Das Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “May all beings everywhere with whom we are inseparably connected, be fulfilled, awakened, liberated and free. May there be peace in this world and throughout the entire universe, and may we all together complete the spiritual journey.”

— Surya Das

2. “Learning how to love is the goal and the purpose of spiritual life – not learning how to develop psychic powers, not learning how to bow, chant, do yoga, or even meditate, but learning to love. Love is the truth. Love is the light.”

— Surya Das

3. “So we have to be ready, willing, and able to really transform ourselves, and each other in the world, not just say it and affirm it, “Oh, I want to change”. Intention is important, but so is action.”

— Surya Das

4. “We all have spiritual DNA; wisdom and truth are part of our genetic structure even if we don’t always access it.”

— Surya Das

5. “We each need to make peace with our own memories. We have all done things that make us flinch.”

— Surya Das

6. “Also not being afraid to stand up for what you believe in while taking into account that you could very well be wrong, or maybe there’s another way to look at it- that things are not what they seem to be, and that everything is subjective.”

— Surya Das

7. “You have to go through the darkness to truly know the light. This may sound like a cliche, but it’s true nonetheless. Often the greatest doubts occur just before a breakthrough.”

— Surya Das

8. “Who’s willing to face the unknown- the difficulties, the disappointments, the surprises of the unfamiliar. If you’re going to change, you have to face those things, and who’s able? Who has the skillful means, the knowhow, the perseverance, the help, the fortitude to keep going?”

— Surya Das

9. “There’s many lanes on the highway of enlightenment, they don’t have to be on the razor’s edge like the yellow line dotted in the middle. Balance is appropriate, not too tight, not too loose, the Middle Way as we call it in Buddhist dharma teachings.”

— Surya Das

10. “It’s not like we’re all animalistic people trying to become more spiritual. We’re really living spirit, trying to find out how to live embodied in this nitty gritty world, these corporeal forms, in these fleeting bodies in the material world where everything’s changing and we’re not in control.”

— Surya Das

11. “Everything passes, nothing remains. Understand this, loosen your grip and fine serenity...”

— Surya Das

12. “The secret, or innermost, level of wisdom is pure intuition, clarity, lucidity, innate wakefulness, presence, and recognition of reality. This transcendental wisdom is within all of us – it just needs to be discovered and developed, unfolded and actualized.”

— Surya Das

13. “The Pearl Principle – no inner irritation, no pearl.”

— Surya Das

14. “Don’t wait to find solid ground. Dance in emptiness.”

— Surya Das

15. “When the sunset of life arrives, and its twilight shadows fade away; while dreams of the next begin to appear more vividly; may the inner-light essence of the Buddha, and all the radiant awakened ones, continuously guide us onwards and upwards, on the path of spiritual enlightment.”

— Surya Das

16. “Our lack of compassion stems from our inability to see deeply into the nature of things.”

— Surya Das

17. “Everyone has values, and values their family, values their health, their sanity, their safety and security, and their families, their parents, their children, their pets, their environments, well-being in general.”

— Surya Das

18. “You don’t need to see different things, but rather to see things differently.”

— Surya Das

19. “If we accept and internalize the fact of our own mortality, then, by definition, we have to deal with the essential questions of how we live and spend our allotted time. We have to stop procrastinating, pretending that we have forever to do what we want to do and be what we long to be.”

— Surya Das

20. “I think that today, integration is the name of the game and not separating these things out, and not trying to find the razor’s edge, the narrow path. There’s a lot of lanes in the highway, the trick is not fall into the ditches on either side, like a one sided nihilism, nothing matters life.”

— Surya Das

21. “We’re human beings trying to understand and cultivate what it means to feel divine love. We have to start with small, realistic goals.”

— Surya Das

22. “The heart is an organ of perception.”

— Surya Das

23. “I always thought he gave me that name because I have a kind of outgoing or sunny disposition. And in those days I was kinda blonde and bearded and had an afro and was bushy like a sun. So I don’t know, he named me Surya Das but who knows.”

— Surya Das

24. “Seekers inevitably want to get a better handle on life; we want to figure things out. We know intuitively that the events of our lives are not always arbitrary. We feel connected, however intangibly. We know that it is in our higher self-interest to unravel the mysteries in our own lives. There must be a higher purpose and greater meaning. As we become more and more spiritually evolved, we become more determined to find wisdom and reach a deeper understanding of our lives and our paths.”

— Surya Das

25. “When we ground ourselves in the present moment, we spontaneously connect better with others. We become more responsive and less reactive, listening more deeply and speaking with greater clarity.”

— Surya Das

26. “I started to think more about becoming peace rather than fighting for peace, and the contradiction in terms, and the anger and violence that we were prey to and involved in to some extent in those days.”

— Surya Das

27. “With every breath, the old moment is lost; a new moment arrives. We exhale and we let go of the old moment. It is lost to us. In doing so, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and breathe in the moment that is becoming. In doing so, we welcome the person we are becoming. We repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal. This is life.”

— Surya Das

28. “We learn by doing, not just by thinking. So I feel like beyond Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Judaism, or Christianity we need today to think about a global spirituality. We need to make it very personal and transformative for one self, and each other, together for those who are interested.”

— Surya Das

29. “Spiritually speaking, everything that one wants, aspires to, and needs is ever-present, accessible here and now – for those with eyes to see.”

— Surya Das

30. “Embracing our environment is a good direction, a very spiritual direction. It’s too Aristotelian to separate man from the animals and man; humans from the environment.”

— Surya Das

31. “Other people can’t cause us to be impatient unless we let them do so. In other words, others don’t make us impatient. We make ourselves impatient, through our expectations and demands, fixated attachments and stuckness.”

— Surya Das

32. “So we’re all living spirit. It’s not about isms and schims or religions. Religions are almost like political institutions, but the heart of it is the spirituality.”

— Surya Das

33. “One-half plus one-half does not equal one; one whole plus one whole equals relational wholeness.”

— Surya Das

34. “I realize that was becoming a contradiction in terms, especially after my friend Alison Krauss was shot and killed in Kent State in 1970 on campus by the National Guard.”

— Surya Das

35. “Spiritual joy is devotion, it’s like a virus you know? It’s a benevolent virus, but it spreads. It’s infectious. Ram Dass was like a mentor in those days.”

— Surya Das

36. “Taking the decision-making process away from people disempowers them. It also makes them much less likely to buy into the decision, however right it may be. One’s own conscience remains the ultimate arbiter.”

— Surya Das

37. “I believe that this is the time to become warriors for peace and dialogue, not warmongers or mere worriers.”

— Surya Das

38. “Well there were other Maharajis, so Neem Karoli Baba was his technical name, like there are a thousand Lamas called Rinpoche.”

— Surya Das

39. “There’s plenty going on that’s substantial and transformative, beneficial and authentic. Just because somebody is in the media, it doesn’t mean they’re bad. It may mean they’re the best, and occasionally you know the cream rises to the surface, but not always everything on the surface is cream.”

— Surya Das

40. “Mother Teresa- cream. Exemplars, exemplary models we can learn from and become more like, but we don’t have to imitate them. We can become more authentically ourselves, impeccable and unselfish, and beneficial to many like a wish fulfilling jewel.”

— Surya Das

41. “On the other side, is a substantial, more materialism, everything is real long to the extent we can see or measure it, and things are as real as I think they. That’s way too materialistic or substantialist, because things are not really what they seem to be.”

— Surya Das

42. “To just be – to be – amidst all doings, achievings, and becomings. This is the natural state of mind, or original, most fundamental state of being. This is unadulterated Buddha-nature. This is like finding our balance.”

— Surya Das

43. “We have to know about the world around us: whom and what we’re voting for and how best to address the vital social, political, and economic issues facing our communities, our nation, and our planet. No one person can do it all, yet no one person is exempt from participating. We need and depend upon each other.”

— Surya Das

44. “Like many others, I sometimes find that cooking can be naturally grounding.”

— Surya Das

45. “People sometimes find Buddhism pessimistic, saying there is too much talk about death. It’s essential to understand that Buddhists don’t contemplate death because they are morbid or depressed; they focus on death, mortality, and human frailty as a means of better understanding and appreciating life.”

— Surya Das

46. “We are in the habit of rating our lives in real time – a sad day, a nice visit, a terrible commute, a good meditation – qualifying and quantifying everything. There are actually neither unequivocally good nor bad events, things, or people – only the wanted and the unwanted – and everything is subjective. This is strong medicine; think about it. It’s a matter of perspective.”

— Surya Das

47. “Give up grasping and see things as they are.”

— Surya Das

48. “How can there be peace in the world if we, its inhabitants, are not at peace with ourselves? As long as there is a separation – between “us” and “them,” self and other, “me” as separate and distinct from “you” – conflict remains, and self-transformation is a mere pipe dream.”

— Surya Das

49. “The deep pain we continue to experience reminds us of our love and keeps our hearts open.”

— Surya Das

50. “Don’t follow past thoughts, don’t anticipate the future, and don’t follow illusory thoughts that arise in the present; but turning within, observe your own true nature and maintain awareness of your natural mind, just as it is, beyond the conceptual limitations of past, present, and future.”

— Surya Das