One Minute Wisdom

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One Minute Wisdom is a book written by Anthony de Mello with various anecdotes and short religious and spiritual stories.

- You can download and read the book on this page: coursesweb.net/blog/one-minute-wisdom

Some anecdotes from the book

Projection

- Why is everyone here so happy except me?
- Because they have learnt to see goodness and beauty everywhere, said the Master.
- Why don't I see goodness and beauty everywhere?
- Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside.

Letting Go

- What must I do for enlightenment?
- Nothing.
- Why not?
- Because enlightenment doesn't come from doing - it simply happens.
- Then can it never be attained?
- Oh yes, it can.
- How?
- Through non-doing.
- And what does one do to attain non-doing?
- What does one do to go to sleep or to wake up?

Discovery

- Help us to find God.
- No one can help you there.
- Why not?
- For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean.

Awareness

- Is salvation obtained through action or through meditation?
- Through neither. Salvation comes from seeing.
- Seeing what?
- That the gold necklace you wish to acquire is hanging round your neck. That the snake you are frightened of is only a rope on the ground.

Autonomy

The Master seemed quite impervious to what people thought of him. When the disciples asked how he had attained this stage of inner freedom, he laughed and said.
- Till I was twenty I did not care what people thought of me. After twenty I worried endlessly about what my neighbours thought. Then one day after fifty I suddenly saw that they hardly ever thought of meat all!

Selflessness

An business man said to the Master:
- What do you do for a profession?
- Nothing. said the Master.
The industrialist laughed scornfully.
- Isn't that laziness?
- Heavens, no. Laziness is mostly the vice of very active people.
Later the Master said to his disciples.
- Do nothing and all things will be done through you. Doing nothing really takes a lot of doing. Try it!

Love

A newly married couple said.
- What shall we do to make our love endure?
Said the Master:
- Love all the other things together.

Nature

A lecturer explained how a fraction of the enormous sums spent on arms in the modern world would solve all the material problems of every member of the human race.
The reaction of the disciples after the lecture was:
- But why are human beings so stupid?
- Because, said the Master, people have learnt to read printed books. They have forgotten the art of reading unprinted ones.
- Give us an example of an unprinted book.
- The songs of birds, the sounds of insects are all trumpeting forth the Truth. The grasses and the flowers are all pointing out the Way. Listen! Look! That is the way to read!

Aim

The Master welcomed the advances of technology but was keenly aware of its limitations.
When an industrialist asked him what his occupation was, he replied:
- I'm in the "people industry".
- And what, pray, would that be? said the industrialist.
- Take yourself, said the Master. Your efforts produce better things; mine better people.
To his disciples he later said.
- The aim of life is the flowering of persons. Nowadays people seem concerned mostly with the perfection of things.

Attachment

- I have no idea of what tomorrow will bring, so I wish to prepare for it.
- You fear tomorrow; --not realizing that yesterday is just as dangerous.

Fearlessness

- What is love?
- The total absence of fear, said the Master.
- What is it we fear?
- Love. said the Master.