Excessive attachment to sense pleasures leads to bondage, and detachment from sense pleasures leads to liberation; therefore it is the mind alone that is responsible for bondage or liberation.
People will ask me: Don’t you believe in God? No, I don’t. I believe in two things above all: Nature and Love. Nature is all-powerful. Love is how I understand the good. It might have been nice to believe in God, often defined as all-powerful and good, but combining the two like that has always posed too much of a contradiction for my poor mind to believe in.
Even as a mirror reflects an object held close to it, one’s behavior reflects as the ego-sense in one’s consciousness. But if held at a distance, ego-sense does not arise.
It is inevitable that a tragedy should arouse sorrowful feelings. Still, out of that sorrow itself comes a feeling of triumph – the victory of the human will over the most adverse circumstances. And thus out of sorrow and defeat come joy and victory.
