Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Flaky devotionalism, bowing and scraping and sucking up to the teacher is very phony. It is counterproductive to enlightenment and spiritual development. What is necessary is mutual respect.
In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life. Death is the mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected.
Self discovery doesn't not seek to bring you answers about your personal life or philosophically comfort you about life and death. What it does is bring you into reality as perception itself.
Buddhism is yoga. Yoga started, who knows when? A long time ago, when the first person found that they could still their thoughts and experience eternity and access the higher planes of mind.
If you are going to set out to develop mystical powers to impress your friends and do other things to your enemies, the difficulty with it is that you will not be moving towards enlightenment.
Firstly, as a Buddhist monk, I hold that violence is not good. Secondly, I am a firm believer in the Gandian ethic of passive resistance. And thirdly, in reality, violence is not our strength.
Every individual who eats flesh food, whether an animal is killed expressely for him or not, is supporting the trade of slaughtering and contributing to the violent deaths of harmless animals.
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not of the East, nor of the West.... My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.
That the object of the Brahmins in giving up beef-eating was to snatch away from the Buddhist Bhikshus the supremacy they had acquired is evidenced by the adoption of vegetarianism by Brahmins.
I didn't really understand that Vipassana is a relatively new form of Buddhism that was based on the storage of pain. So the idea is that every time you don't scream, that's your Buddhist side.
The Buddhists say if you meet somebody and your heart pounds, your hands shake, your knees go weak, that’s not the one. When you meet your ‘soulmate’ you’ll feel calm. No anxiety, no agitation.
There's a kind of training, when you are sitting in a session in the Japanese tradition or any of the Buddhist traditions, taking your lotus posture or whatever it is. That's what you're doing.
Much though he recites the sacred texts, but acts not accordingly, that heedless man is like a cowherd who only counts the cows of others - he does not partake of the blessings of the holy life.
I'm not a preacher, but I preach. I'm not a Buddhist, but I chant. I'm not race theorist, but I have questions and ponderances around the complexities of race and class and culture wherever I am.
As Buddhist teachers often point out, knowledge, in the sense of prajña, is not knowledge about anything. There is no abstract knower of an experience that is separate from the experience itself.
Whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings...that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
Those... who find delight in freedom from attachment in the renunciation of clinging, free from the inflow of thoughts, they are like shining lights, having reached final liberation in the world.
Writing generally, it may be said that in design, roof, and general aspect, Japanese Buddhist temples are all alike. The sacred architectural idea expresses itself in nearly the same form always.
There is pleasure when a sore is scratched, But to be without sores is more pleasurable still. Just so, there are pleasures in worldly desires, But to be without desires is more pleasurable still.
And finally, be assured that Zen asks nothing even as it promises nothing. One can be a Protestant Zen Buddhist, a Catholic Zen Buddhist or a Jewish Zen Buddhist. Zen is a quiet thing. It listens.
The point of the spiritual revolution is not to become a good Buddhist, but to become a wise and compassionate human being, to awaken from our life of complacency and ignorance and to be a buddha.
Let go the past, let go the future, and let go the present (front, back, middle). Crossing to the farther shore of existence, with mind released everywhere, do not further undergo birth and decay.
In the esoteric teachings, a transference process takes place between teacher and student where knowledge is actually transmitted from one to the other. This requires that the student be receptive.
On Easter or Christmas Day, my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.
The creation of a more peaceful and happier society has to begin from the level of the individual, and from there it can expand to one's family, to one's neighborhood, to one's community and so on.
We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is. We suffer because we try to make pleasurable what is painful, to make solid what is fluid, to make permanent what is always changing.
The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage! Like the apparent distances in a picture, things have no reality in themselves, but they are like heat haze.
What the warrior renounces is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself more available, more gentle and open to others.
Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.
People over-focus on teachers as an excuse to avoid their own life, and that way they fail to take responsibility for themselves. They have this feeling that the teacher will just take care of them.
The thing about Buddhism is that it stresses attainment of something ineffable, that is where it differs from other religions in that it's more correct. We live in a world with promises of paradise.
One who does not rouse themself when it is time to rise, who, though capable, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle person will never find their way to true knowledge.
So if we love someone, we should train in being able to listen. By listening with calm and understanding, we can ease the suffering of another person. [True Love. A Practice for Awakening the Heart.]
When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.
As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world, raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world
Buddhism is perception, gaining control of the mind and directing one's attention, to raise the kundalini energy so that it flows with such volatility and force that we simply perceive life correctly.
Knowledge of the Enlightenment Cycle, of the ways that inner dimensions and nirvana work, lifts you far above the transient sorrows, pains, pleasures and joys that the unenlightened masses experience.
Find out for yourself what is truth, what is real. Discover that there are virtuous things and there are non-virtuous things. Once you have discovered for yourself give up the bad and embrace the good.
Don't blindly believe what I say. Don't believe me because others convince you of my words. Don't believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts.
We seek to unify ourselves with the endless light of truth, of God, of nirvana. We recognize the infinite playing through all beings and all forms, but we only have to concern ourselves with ourselves.
Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. What you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.
Rid of craving and without clinging, an expert in the study of texts, and understanding the right sequence of the words, he may indeed be called "In his last body", "Great in wisdom" and a "Great man."
Get your emotions under control and your life under control. Work really hard and don't make a big deal out of yourself. Have humility. Believe in yourself. Don't get a fanatical fixation on a teacher.
The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.
The perfect man of pagans was the perfection of the man there is; the perfect man of christians, the perfection of the man there isn't; the buddhists' perfect man, the perfection of not existing a man.
Even if only a few individuals try to create mental peace and happiness within themselves, and act responsibly and kind-heartedly towards others, they will have a positive influence in their community.
Buddhists understand that today and all other days have turned out the way they have because of karma. The interconnection of one moment with another moment, of one action with another action, is karma.
As the conceptual, material world increases its hold on us, and inanimate objects become more lifelike, we humans must become more human. Open hearts, kindness and care-these are our most precious gifts.
If one stays too long with friends They will soon tire of him; Living in such closeness leads to dislike and hate. It is but human to expect and demand too much When one dwells too long in companionship.
Since we desire the true happiness that is brought about by a calm mind, and such peace of mind arises only from having a compassionate attitude, we need to make a concerted effort to develop compassion.