Quotes by Buddhist Teachers - Page 2

I know very little with anything approaching certainty. I know that I was born, that I exist, and that I will die. For the most part, I can trust my brain's interpretation of the data presented to my senses: this is a rose, that is a car, she is my wife. I do not doubt the reality of the thoughts and emotions and impulses I experience in response to these things. . . . Yet apart from these primary perceptions, intuitions, inferences, and bits of information, the views that I hold about the things that really matter to me--meaning, truth, happiness, goodness, beauty--are finely woven tissues of belief and opinion.
Stephen Batchelor
Everything is unfolding based on causes and conditions. Our happiness or suffering is dependent on how we relate to the present moment. If we cling now, we suffer later. If we let go and respond with compassion or friendliness, we create happiness and well-being for the future.
Noah Levine
To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love. (157)
Stephen Batchelor
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
Jack Kornfield
Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history.
Noah Levine
We are born into a realm of constant change. Everything is decaying. We are continually losing all that we come in contact with. Our tendency to get attached to impermanent experiences causes sorrow, lamentation and grief, because eventually we are separated from everything and everyone we love. Our lack of acceptance and understanding of this fact makes life unsatisfactory.
Noah Levine
But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain.
Jack Kornfield
There are many ways that I have hurt and harmed others, have betrayed or abandoned them, caused them suffering, knowingly or unknowingly, out of my pain, fear, anger, and confusion. Let yourself remember and visualize the ways you have hurt others. See the pain you have caused out of your own fear and confusion. Feel your own sorrow and regret. Sense that finally you can release this burden and ask for forgiveness. Take as much time as you need to picture each memory that still burdens your heart. And then as each person comes to mind, gently say:I ask for your forgiveness, I ask for your forgiveness.
Jack Kornfield
Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, when asked how to strike a better balance between family, work and self-realisation says: "You need the intention, good scheduling, and you have to be creative. If you don't find time to practice, one of the three is missing.
Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel
Against The Stream is more than just another book about meditation. It is a manifesto and field guide for the front lines of the revolution. It is the culmination of almost two decades of meditative dissonance from the next generation of Buddhists in the West, It is a call to awakening for the sleeping masses.
Noah Levine
In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.
Jack Kornfield
Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.
Jack Kornfield
Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.
Jack Kornfield
There are several different kinds of painful feelings that we might experience, and learning to distinguish and relate to these feelings of discomfort or pain is an important part of meditation practice, because it is one of the very first things that we open to as our practice develops.
Jack Kornfield
Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.
Jack Kornfield
If we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible for the mind to become settled, collected, and focused in meditation; it is impossible for the heart to open.
Jack Kornfield
To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.
Jack Kornfield
Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.
Jack Kornfield
Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.
Jack Kornfield
The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.
Jack Kornfield
To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.
Jack Kornfield
In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.
Jack Kornfield
No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.
Jack Kornfield
Many people experience a sense of rage and very strong anger toward their parents and others who hurt them. Ultimately that is also a thought. It doesn’t really exist in this very pure and present moment. It doesn’t really exist. So actually what we are really carrying is nothing but a bunch of thoughts. When we let go of those thoughts then nothing else is required. We are free......Whenever you suffer, whenever you struggle, don’t go outside trying to find out what is wrong with your life. Don’t treat your life like you treat your car. When something is wrong with the car we get out, open the hood, see what’s wrong with the engine, and fix it. But life is not like a car. Life is consciousness. Life is not something outside of us. Therefore whenever we feel that we are suffering, tormented, or challenged we should always look into our consciousness. Immediately we discover that we are having a very evil affair with an evil thought. That’s all there is. Just that thought.Such thoughts always come with a specific idea and with some kind of voice: “I am good. I am bad. I am poor. I don’t have this or that. I am not enlightened.” It is always associate with a concept and a belief system. Until we are awakened to the ultimate truth we are completely ruled by our thoughts. Thoughts are always dictating reality to us. So in that sense thought is the ultimate empire of propaganda. Thought is always coloring and defining reality.
Anam Thubten
Ironically, we may discover that death meditation is not a morbid exercise at all. Only when we lose the use of something taken for granted (whether the telephone or an eye) are we jolted into a recognition of its value. When the phone is fixed, the bandage removed from the eye, we briefly rejoice in their restoration but swiftly forget them again. In taking them for granted, we cease to be conscious of them. In taking life for granted, we likewise fail to notice it. (To the extent that we get bored and long for something exciting to happen.) By meditat- ing on death, we paradoxically become conscious of life.
Stephen Batchelor
There will be times, for example, when you feel you are faking it. However hard you try genuinely to practice, it just doesn't feel right. And on the rare occasions it does feel authentic, the sensation is over almost before it began. So, try to be content with your practice, whatever it feels like, even when you are doing little more than paying it lip service, because at least you are making an effort.
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
In meditation which is a continuous flow of staying in the state at all times and in every circumstance there is neither suppression nor production of dwelling and proliferation; if there is dwelling, that is the dharmakaya’s own face and if there is proliferation, that is preserved as the self-liveliness of wisdom, so,“Then, whether there is proliferation or dwelling,”Whatever comes from mind’s liveliness as discursive thoughts, be it the truth of the source—afflictions of anger, attachment, and so on—or the truth of unsatisfactoriness—the flavours of experience which are the feelings of happiness, sadness, and so on—if the nature of the discursive thoughts is known as dharmata, they become the shifting events of the dharmakaya, so,“Anger, attachment, happiness, or sadness,”That does not finish it though; generally speaking if they are met with through the view but not finished with by bringing them to the state with meditation, they fall into ordinary wandering in confusion and if that happens, you are bound into cyclic existence by the discursive thoughts of your own mindstream and, dharma and your own mindstream having remained separate, you become an ordinary person who has nothing special about them. Not to be separated from a great non-meditated self-resting is what is needed . . .Additionally, whatever discursive thought or affliction arises, it is not something apart from dharmakaya wisdom, rather, the nature of those discursive thoughts is actual dharmakaya, the ground’s luminosity. If that, which is called ‘the mother luminosity resident in the ground’, is recognized, there is self-recognition of the view of self-knowing luminosity previously introduced by the guru and that is called ‘the luminosity of the practice path’. Abiding in one’s own face of the two luminosities of ground and path become inseparable is called ‘themeeting of mother and son luminosities’ so, “The previously-known mother luminosity joins with the son.
Patrul Rinpoche
Our future experiences will be colored by the choices we make in the present.
Noah Levine
Your emotional understanding about the preciousness of your human birth comes through conscious, repetitive mind training.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
The point is to be free, not to be crazy.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
As I cooked in the cauldron of motherhood, the incredible love I felt for my children opened my heart and brought me a much greater understanding of universal love. It made me understand the suffering of the world much more deeply.
Tsultrim Allione
What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)
Stephen Batchelor
Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.
Jack Kornfield
If you are fortunate enough to enjoy great success, you should never forget the spirit of the beginner, and not grow indolent and arrogant.
Kentetsu Takamori
On the Brevity of Our TiesTies in this world last only for a time. We are husband and wife, parent and child, for a short period only. Once this reality sinks in, we cannot help treasuring each moment of our brief association.
Kentetsu Takamori
Everyone makes mistakes. Whether we put our mistakes to use depends on how deeply we reflect on our actions. It is desirable to reflect until the tears come. - On Self-Reflection -
Kentetsu Takamori
Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us.Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action. It makes beauty out of all we touch. In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of a whole.
Jack Kornfield
If you put a spoonful of saltin a cup of waterit tastes very salty.If you put a spoonful of saltin a lake of fresh waterthe taste is still pure and clear.Peace comes when our hearts areopen like the sky,vast as the ocean.
Jack Kornfield
Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.
Jack Kornfield
Greed kills us all.
Kentetsu Takamori
As surely as there is a voyage away, there is a journey home.
Jack Kornfield
Imagine a great net spread across the universe. Each juncture is a “being,” and if we imagine that consciousness as a drop of dew, we can see that in each shining drop resides the reflection of every other drop on the net.
Sandy Boucher
We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy “one word” Zen. When asked “What is the highest teaching of the Buddha?” he replied: “An appropriate statement.” On another occasion, he answered: “Cake.” I admired his directness.
Stephen Batchelor
As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.
Chögyam Trungpa
When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.
Jack Kornfield
In our charade with ourselves we pretend that our war is not really war. We have changed the name of the War Department to the Defense Department and call a whole class of nuclear missiles Peace Keepers!
Jack Kornfield
Attachment is conditional, offers love only to certain people in certain ways; it is exclusive. Love, in the sense of metta, used by Buddha, is a universal, nondiscriminating feeling of caring and connectedness.
Jack Kornfield
One of the things that kills Buddhist spiritual life is excessive seriousness.
Gil Fronsdal
Whether we eat, sleep, work, play, whatever we do life contains dissatisfaction, pain. If we enjoy pleasure, we are afraid to lose it; we strive for more and more pleasure or try to contain it. If we suffer pain we want to escape it. We experience dissatisfaction all the time. All activities contain dissatisfaction or pain, continuously.
Chögyam Trungpa
When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory, and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.
Jack Kornfield
You do not need to fabricate at all. Once you utterly let be, involvement in thoughts of past, present and future subside. By letting be, you are no longer involved in the thoughts of the three times. When utterly letting be, wakefulness is vividly present.
Tulku Urgyen
Absent a sense of the preciousness of one's own life, why respect the life of anyone else?
Kentetsu Takamori
How wonderful it would be if people did all they could for one other without seeking anything in return! One should never remember a kindness done, and never forget a kindness received.
Kentetsu Takamori
Many Buddhist temple priests regard their parishioners as possessions and fear their departure as a diminishing of assets.
Kentetsu Takamori
Bliss and suffering, it seems, always go hand in hand.
Kentetsu Takamori
What each of us believes in is up to us, but life is impossible without believing in something.
Kentetsu Takamori
Amida's unimpeded light is the sun of wisdom that destroys the mind of darkness.(Preface in Teaching, Practice, Faith, Enlightenment)
Kentetsu Takamori
No one should ever despair because the entrance to his or her chosen career path is clogged. There is an ancient saying: "The persistent drip wears through stone.
Kentetsu Takamori
The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks. (65)
Stephen Batchelor
Living in a world such as this is like dancing on a live volcano.
Kentetsu Takamori