Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When someone says to me "I want to be enlightened." I immediately take a vacation because I know that the person isn't serious. I've never met anyone who's serious about enlightenment
The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.
We can continue our quest for improvement or not. We can search for happiness, enlightenment, security or identity or not. The search is not wrong; it is unrelated to the actual world.
What women have done is developed a survival mechanism, and it's a fascinating one and it's been effective and justified, in my opinion. That is the ability to manipulate men sexually.
You have developed the second attention much more than you realize and you use it more than you realize as a woman. That's why I feel women can attain enlightenment more easily than men.
It is vain to think that we choose, that our own energy, our own intellect will create the possibility of us experiencing a higher order of existence. Liberation is to know you are that.
Enlightenment has nothing to do with physical knowledge. It is the experience of existence. Existence is infinite. There are countless universes and creations taking place simultaneously.
I want to offer the possibility that Jesus was truly, as he proclaimed, a savior. Not the savior, not the one and only Son of God. Rather Jesus embodied the highest level of enlightenment.
Ashrams often become places where there is a hierarchy and a pecking order and not much enlightenment. That is what some people are drawn to. But that has nothing to do with enlightenment.
The path to enlightenment is really very simple - all we need to do is stop cherishing ourself and learn to cherish others. All other spiritual realisations will naturally follow from this.
By nature, it's impossible to describe enlightenment! How do you plan on sharing your enlightenment? Hahaha, that's impossible. Wake up! That'll be the end of the world if you ever succeed!
I think that technology is essentially a continuation of a divestment of theological power that's been happening since The Enlightenment. It's the idea that God can see and hear everything.
Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.
We live in an age that's repeating itself endlessly. We're getting closer again to the techno-chic world we saw in Atlantis that occurs in countless planes. It's indigenous to enlightenment.
We need a new imprinting. We need the imprinting of enlightenment, of freedom. That comes through our association with a higher being. So classically what occurs is that one meets a teacher.
I think it may not be a coincidence that the rise of printing and book publication and literacy and the phenomenon of best sellers all preceded the humanitarian reforms of the Enlightenment.
While confronting the problems of the present, I often find myself thinking back to the world of books as it was experienced by the Founding Fathers and the philosophers of the Enlightenment.
There is a still point in eternity. There is a still point where all things intersect. There is a still point beyond life, time, and death. Your experience of the still point is enlightenment.
Hackerspaces are the digital-age equivalent of English Enlightenment coffee houses. They are places open to all, indifferent to social status, and where ideas and knowledge hold primary value.
Enlightenment doesn't mean you stop being a student. Being a student is a state of mind. Enlightenment simply means that you are everything and everywhere. It doesn't preclude being a student.
Not a few patients, however, suffering from certain forms of mental disorder, regain a high degree of insight into their mental condition in what might be termed a flash of divine enlightenment.
Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, Nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, The ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.
You are not seeking to attain some future state. That is the fallacy of many spiritual seekers. They have an image of some state - enlightenment, or whatever they call it - they want to achieve.
Even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or completion in the future. So don’t seek to become free or desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present.
Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment.
The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.
Today for the first time, at least in this country, you don't have to use those powers to survive. Our societal structure now provides the possibility to survive without using sexual manipulation.
It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.
The later stages of the enlightenment process are trickier, and it is really essential to have a teacher then. You need correction, direction, and most of all you need a master's auric empowerment.
What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?
Much of the time your attention is directed towards the world of sexuality, it's done through the second attention of a woman - not simply in your physical presence but from thousands of miles away.
The Zen of doing anything is doing it with a particular concentration of mind, a calmness and simplicity of mind, that brings the experience of enlightenment and, through that experience, happiness.
Our society is the product of several great religious and philosophical traditions. The ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Christianity, Judaism, humanism and the Enlightenment have made us who we are.
We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself.
I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.
I hope you will attain enlightenment. I am here to tell you that you already have! But you don't know... The difference between the Buddha and us is the confidence in knowing that he was enlightened.
It is not the responsibility of the enlightened teacher to bring the student to enlightenment. That may be true in the classroom, but in the world of enlightenment you have to find it, enter into it.
It is called enlightenment, nirvana, God, truth, call it what you will. There is no activity other than the eternal activities of the universe, perfect being, the awareness of all suchness, knowledge.
Anyone who seeks enlightenment is going to encounter opposition, whether it is from their society or from non-physical forces or friends or whatever it is. Be strong enough to go through that and win.
There are those who will seek to block you. There are also non-physical forces. To win in the world of enlightenment, it is necessary to be able to will away these forces, to see they're insubstantial.
There are billions of people on earth. They are all transmitting thoughts and impressions, most of which are not directed towards enlightenment. If you are not focused, you will pick up these energies.
Zen Master Dogen has pointed out that anxiety, when accepted, is the driving force to enlightenment in that it lays bare the human dilemma at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it.
In Gnosticism, the physical world did not ultimately matter - which meant physical suffering did not matter either. Seeking 'enlightenment' meant cultivating an attitude of detachment, even indifference.
By asseting the creation myth, in which God is a man over ealier creation myths in which God was viewed as a woman, men hoped to prove that the position of supremacy that they had assumed was Divine Law.
Women have developed the second attention because they were repressed, because they were manipulated, because they were used as property, as chattel, historically, for thousands of years and still today.
The fact is that all the important political philosophers and scientists from the great Aristotle on, with the exception of those of the French Enlightenment and Mill, have sided with the powers that be.
There is a flaw with words, they always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment
The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.
Enlightenment is the natural state of consciousness, the innocent state of consciousness, that state which is uncontaminated by the movement of thought, uncontaminated by control or manipulation of mind.
One of the Age of Enlightenment's most hypnotic images is Ledoux's rendering of his neoclassical theater of 1775 - 1784 in Besancon, surreally reflected in the colossal eye of an unidentified cosmic being.