Best 3315 quotes in «buddhism quotes» category

The Japanese think it strange we paint our old wooden houses when it takes so long to find the wabi in them. They prefer the bonsai tree after the valiant blossoming is over, the leaves fallen. When bareness reveals a merit born in the vegetable struggling.

The left-hand path adept seeks to liberate him/herself from passive subjection to the illusory nature of Maya, thus freeing the consciousness from the binds of self-created delusion.

The leaves that remain are only a very small part of the tea. The tea that goes into me is a much bigger part of the tea. It is the richest part. We are the same; our essence has gone into our children, our friends, and the entire universe. We have to find ourselves in those directions and not in the spent tea leaves.

The life-tree of practice is single-minded application.

The light in me only wants to reach the darkness in you.

The main shift, you see, is from placing self at the center of our thoughts to putting others there. It is-what do you say?-a paradox that the more we can focus our thoughts on the well-being of others, the happier we become. The first one to benefit is oneself. I call this being wisely selfish.

The manifestation of the free mind is said to be lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

The mess we are making of our planet is caused by our own greed, hatred, and delusion. Aside from the existential afflictions of aging, death, and at least some of the illnesses, every instance we see of human misery, injustice, affliction. or sufficient and pain will, upon sufficient and sometimes even cursory investigation, be shown to be rooted in the attachment, aversion, or ignorance of some person or some group of people together.

The means and the results, the good and the bad, are within all of us who are aware and care.

The mind is a useful tool but not a very good friend.

The mind is limitless, in its creations.

The modern scientist attempts to step outside of himself in order to observe himself, an attempt that is always doomed to failure. You cannot make an object out of your subjective experience, but you know that consciousness exists, simply because you exist.

The monks find comfort, contentment, and even joy in the simplest of tasks, living each moment to its fullest by grounding themselves in the present.

The more we genuinely care about others the greater our own happiness & inner peace.

The more we explore, understand, and even come to appreciate our own self-destructive mental attitudes, the more control we gain over our minds.

The more we have outside ourselves the harder it is to get inside ourselves.

The name one gives is inessential. What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by other name would smell as sweet.

The more we surrender to what cannot be, the better we control what can be.

The most important and uniquely glorious element of Buddha’s character was that, he did not compel his pupils to be slaves either to his teachings or to himself, but like a conscientious human, demanded from his followers to accept his words not merely out of regard for him but after subjecting them to a thorough examination. And this is where Buddha stands out from the crowd of self-proclaimed prophets.

The most important step in developing skillful speech is to think before speaking.

The most expected thing you can expect is what's unexpected.

The nature of yearning is urgent so as to guarantee evolution, change.

The only path wide for us all is love.

The only real flesh was the flesh that existed in his imagination. Since, therefore, he regarded the flesh as an ideal abstraction, rather than as a physical fact, he had relied on his spiritual strength to subjugate it.

The perfume of incense reminds us of the pervading influence of virtue, the lamp reminds us of the light of knowledge and the flowers, which soon fade and die, reminds us of impermanence.

The person you are mad at for being late could be dead.

The picture we present to ourselves of who we think we ought to be obscures who we really are.

The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous.

The practice of lovingkindness can uplift us & relieve sorrow & unhappiness.

The possessions themselves were not the problem, it was my relationship with possessing.

The practice of mindfulness aims for a still and lucid engagement with the open field of contingent events in which one’s life is embedded. All events are ontologically equivalent: mind is not more “real” than matter, nor matter more “real” than mind.

The practice of breath awareness relieves tension by shifting attention to the present, and the mental pressures of worries, concerns, and ambitions lift.

The present isn’t more capable of causing mental pain than the past or the future.

The primary reason that I’m not a representative of specific groups or schools of thought is that that choice gives me the freedom to look at these groups and thoughts from the inside and the outside. I’m trying to be honest in that role—what really works here and what does not? That is, I have nothing to sell or win by any given position. I’m promoting a similar process for any person I interact with in my work, including toward me. Investment in a given idea or group tends to immediately shut down options for perception, and then choice. Prejudice, bigotry and arrogance breed from that. One is forced to think a certain way to stay within the group or thought, and then to defend against apparent opposition. This constructs and feeds the kinds of adamant separation and conflict we see so many manifestations of on every level. In many cases, it’s also the cause of deep internal conflict in most individuals, yet it isn’t really addressed.

The purest definition of “religious” is: relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality.

The pursuit of happiness is one of the most common symptoms of intellectual immaturity.

The question under all this: How to get the idler to accept and engage the yearning? And that, my friends, is a deep and subtle question that will take a while to master, and the mastering of it will require redefining the presumption of what mastery even is. It is certainly not control. Mastery of anything is, more than anything else, the transformation of work into play. Giving orders and answers, never making mistakes, and having around you others with the opinion that you are great has nothing at all to do with it. Read carefully: to yearn for, to be compelled by, is being called to play.

The reality of nature, the reality of life is oneness. But we humans have such a strong egotistic nature. We are the ones who create dualism; we are the ones who talk about two sides: front and back, right and wrong, me and you. As soon as life is dichotomized, tension is created.

There are so many stereotypes, prepackaged concepts and platitudes out there in our thinking on the divine, and the associated emotions those produce; it’s very difficult to transcend. But that’s ultimately what experiencing the divine is all about: transcending stereotypes, concepts and platitudes. As soon as one falls back on an acceptable definition or understanding, it disappears. It’s like water; the moment you try to grasp it, you lose it.

There is an actual and palpable hierarchy of emotional, mental and physiological intensity that corresponds to the actual capacities and limitations of human beings. In other words, there does exist a real and definable scale of suffering, and of joy.

There are some things that don’t function as one would assume. For example, the impulse and linear thinking associated with the search for happiness most often produce questions like, “What’s in it for me?” or “How do I get what I want?” Paradoxically, if you will, that very question pushes authentic happiness away. Now, to try to explain that to someone in such a way that they hear and are interested by the idea is going to probably involve some paradox and non-linearity.

There exists a direct link, or harmony, between the past, the present and the future. This has been misinterpreted, or exaggerated in both directions, either by the assumption that everything is random, or that there is already a predetermined destiny. There is an actual link, and there is a lot of mystery or room to play and invent.

There is a correlation between how hard life seems to us and how easy we expected it to be.

There is a correlation between how seriously we take life and the number of problems we have.

There is a lot of work ahead of us, as we endeavor to rescue the planet from ourselves, and we are likely to be at this work for a very long time. Perhaps we could come at it from the wisdom of the non-self perspective, rather than the passions of the "world is mine" point of view.

There is a pivot point, however, to become an adult. That transition comes from recognizing and acting in accordance with your own deepest impulses. On the responsibility front, that means acting in harmony with your conscience, not because you’re going to be punished if you don’t, or paid for it if you do (heaven, enlightenment, salvation, or whatever), but because you know it to be right. On the freedom front, that means acquiescing to your deepest inspirations, following what truly compels you, even when it’s difficult to do so. These two principles brought together in the same time and space is what integrity is all about. And it is only through such integrity that you resolve conflict between the two of them: what you “know to do” and what you “want to do.

There is beauty all around us, and the light finds us when we realize, we are all part of that beauty and worth the cherishing. If we despise any, we journey to despise ourselves. See all as beautiful, even if they choose to see themselves through you, as being less than so. We have the power to see for each, and be the reflection of what they may yet see.

There is a whole swathe of nervous German professors who fear something like a Buddhist inundation and a decline of the intellectual West. Rest assured, the West will not collapse and Europe will never become a Buddhist empire. Anyone who reads the Buddha's speeches and converts to Buddhism as a result may well have thereby found some kind of solace for himself - yet in place of the path that the Buddha might show us, all that person has opted for is an emergency exit.

there is found a third level of religious experience, even if it is seldom found in a pure form. I will call it the cosmic religious sense. This is hard to make clear to those who do not experience it, since it does not involve an anthropomorphic idea of God; the individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance. Indications of this cosmic religious sense can be found even on earlier levels of development—for example, in the Psalms of David and in the Prophets. The cosmic element is much stronger in Buddhism, as, in particular, Schopenhauer's magnificent essays have shown us. The religious geniuses of all times have been distinguished by this cosmic religious sense, which recognizes neither dogmas nor God made in man's image. Consequently there cannot be a church whose chief doctrines are based on the cosmic religious experience. It comes about, therefore, that we find precisely among the heretics of all ages men who were inspired by this highest religious experience; often they appeared to their contemporaries as atheists, but sometimes also as saints.

There is no "I" as such apart from others.