Best 3315 quotes in «buddhism quotes» category

You've gained some powers by your entrance into other dimensions and you use them to attack others or to make others miserable, then power reverses on you and it pulls you apart because it's not supposed to be used that way.

You've got to make a person aware of how miserable they really are and show them how happy they can be. Otherwise, why should they seek this nebulous goal called self-discovery.

You want to be happy; of course, that isn't how you get to be happy; because if you want to be happy, you are going to be sitting around being unhappy because you're not happy.

You will always see, if this group is a highly evolved group or on the way up, a movement towards oneness.

You will have to put aside some things in your life, habits, ideas, ways of seeing life. You will have to learn new things, and then new things and then new things - forever.

You work many hours. It is the major activity of your life. You can lose a lot of energy or gain a lot of energy from it. Put your full attention into it and do a good job, because it is part of your impeccability.

Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary.

Zen was a reaction. Just as Buddha came into the world and spoke against the fall of Vedanta, so Buddhism lost its essence and became ritual. Zen was a reaction to that.

Zen and Buddhism have produced martial arts, because of the Buddhist injunction against weapons.

Zen is Tantric Buddhism, Vajrayana is tantric Buddhism - these are various forms of it. Tantric Buddhism simply means cutting to the chase.

Zen Buddhism does not preach. Sermons remain words. It waits until people feel stifled and insecure, driven by a secret longing.

Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies.

Zen students see themselves as athletes. Their competitive sport is enlightenment; only with enlightenment do we compete.

A balanced diet” is not so much about protein/fat/carbohydrate ratios. The real ratios to consider, at least for the typical American or European, are energy consumption/expenditure, pleasure/actual need, food/everything else.

[A] being is nothing but a combination of physical and mental forces or energies. What we call death is the total non-functioning of the physical body. Do all these forces and energies stop altogether with the non-functioning of the body?

A beginner’s mind allows you to remain flexible and open, even as you encounter new things that may seem strange or even uncomfortable at first.

A beginner’s mind allows you to remain flexible and open, even as you encounter new things that may seem strange or even uncomfortable at first. It also allows you to experience something mundane from an entirely new perspective, whereas an expert might approach something believing they “already get it.

A blind man’s thoughts almost never have anything to do with the things he is facing.

A boddhisattva is someone who is on the way to becoming a buddha. All of us become boddhisattvas as soon as we start to take our Zen work seriously and the work we do contributes to creating a world in which all good actions become more efficacious.

Absent a sense of the preciousness of one's own life, why respect the life of anyone else?

A Buddha doesn’t observe precepts. A Buddha doesn’t do good or evil. A Buddha isn’t energetic or lazy. A Buddha is someone who does nothing, someone who can’t even focus his mind on a Buddha. A Buddha isn’t a Buddha. Don’t think about Buddhas.

Acceptance IS transcendence.

According to the Buddha's doctrine that they believed in, it was not the caste that defined a person high or low. It was one's deeds that mattered.

According to Zen Buddhists, all things have their existence in The Void. The Void is that which is no-thing, but contains all things within it, or as some Christian mystics state, “God is Nothing; He is Utterly Other; He is the VOID.

Accurately perceiving and following one’s intuition is, I think, the essential human spiritual process. The distractions, confusion, misinterpretations and temptations that oppose that process are enormous. At the same time, there are always clues for how to go about it. The divine is a mystery, so the impulse to really discover, like a child, has to be the core response to anything; that’s the only way beyond the habits, presumptions and prejudices that feed ignorance and fear. To question well, instead of hiding behind a belief or answer, requires the application of the most valued of all human qualities, such as compassion, courage, imagination, respect, humility, devotion, and ultimately love of life itself. This kind of passionate questing is evident in the most admired and, if you will, divine individuals in every culture, religion, and skill throughout history.

A certain amount of native skill and training can allow many individuals to be fairly successful magicians, achieving a surprisingly high ratio of positive results through sorcery.(...) These outer changes, no matter how dramatic, will not necessarily have a deep impact on the deepest levels of your psyche, which is where the process of initiation most meaningfully manifests.' --Zeena Schreck for “Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,” University of Stockholm, Malin Fitger 2004

Achieving the advanced state of no-thought is not about stopping the thinking process, but rather, it’s about cultivating an expansive sensitivity to a level above the thinking mind.

A fearless heart is free of desire, a kind heart finds paradise everywhere.

After all, what Buddhism offers as a solution is universalised indifference - a learning of how to withdraw from too much empathy. This is why Buddhism can so easily turn into the very opposite of universal compassion: the advocacy of a ruthless military attitude, which is what the fate of Zen Buddhism aptly demonstrates.

Ah Buddha, you boastful charlatan. You may have learned nothing after 6 years of suffering, but then what of 7 years? What of 17? What might you have learned from a lifetime of pain? [...] From what I can tell, the wisest man in all these scriptures was the first person Buddha ever tried to teach - an Ajivika named Upaka. Buddha bragged to him of how he achieved nirvana, to which Upaka simply replied: "That may be so," and walked away.

Aggression, Violence, Exploitation, Depression, Despair, Prejudice, War, Intolerance, Poverty, Are all a result of a misunderstanding of the nature of Self.

A great Zen master said just before he died, "From the bathtub, to the bathtub, I have uttered stuff and nonsense." The bathtub in which the baby is washed at birth, the bathtub in which the corpse is washed before burial, all this time I have said much nonsense.

After all, people desire immortality and do not wish to embrace the inescapable reality of death; they long for happiness and shy away from the contemplation of pain; they want to preserve their sense of self, not desconstruction it into fleeting and impersonal components. It is counterintuitive to accept that deathlessness is experienced each moment we are released from the deathlike grip of greed and hatred; that happiness in this world is only possible for those who realized that this world is incapable of providing happiness; that one becomes a fully individuated person only by relinquishing beliefs in an essential self.

Again and again, counteract the agitation and turbulence of the mind by relaxing more deeply, not by contracting the body or mind.

Machik thus maintains that what is conventionally referred to as a "god" is in fact the positive nature of reflexive awareness that characterizes the full potential of the enlightened mind when it is unsullied by discriminative thinking. In contrast, when "demons" are conventionally invoked, one should understand this as the obstruction of the full potential of the Universal Base [kun gzhi; ālaya] by non-aware emotional reactions (nyon mongs; kleśa).

All science is a charted ignorance and belongs to Maya.

All beings tremble before danger, all fear death. When a man considers this, he does not kill or cause to kill.

All mastery is about doing that which the senses tell us cannot be done.

all living creatures are entitled to respect in their own right, not simply because of the utility they may possess for other humans.

All these are versions of the god we actually worship. It is the god of no discomfort and no unpleasantness. Without exception, every being on earth pursues it to some degree. As we pursue it, we lose touch with what really is. As we lose touch, our life spirals downwards. And the very unpleasantness that we sought to avoid can overwhelm us. This has been the problem of human life since the beginning of time. All philosophies and all religions are varying attempts to deal with this basic fear. Only when such attempts fail us are we ready to begin serious practice.

A life that is happy and has no money, is better then a life unhappy with money.

All instruction is but as a finger pointing to the moon; and he whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond.

All of Nature follows perfectly geometric laws. The Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Peruvian, Mayan, and Chinese cultures were well aware of this, as Phi—known as the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean—was used in the constructions of their sculptures and architecture.

All suffering always has a cause. By learning the causes we can know how to end suffering. We can find peace of mind and save ourselves.

All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself. Is there need for lengthy explanation?

Almost all religions from Buddhism to Islam feature either a humble prophet or a prince who comes to identify with the poor, but what is this if not populism? It is hardly a surprise if religions choose to address themselves first to the majority who are poor and bewildered and uneducated.

Although Buddhism is unattainable, we vow to attain it.If it is unattainable, how can we attain it? But we should! That is Buddhism.

Although social and personal circumstances will play their part in contributing to how an individual suffers, in Buddhist thought blame is seen as a "poison" that will only lead to negative actions and will do nothing to reduce suffering.

Although each of us has the right to believe we are suffering, I suppose, there is a definite and ultimately essential distinction to be made between actual suffering, its cause and resolution, and invented or imagined suffering.

Amida's unimpeded light is the sun of wisdom that destroys the mind of darkness. (Preface in Teaching, Practice, Faith, Enlightenment)