Buddhism Quotes - Page 12

Like water poured from one vessel to another, metta ﬂows freely, taking the shape of each situation without changing its essence.

Sharon Salzberg

Our actions speak for us & they speak loudly.

Allan Lokos

A modern definition of equanimity: cool. This refers to one whose mind remains stable & calm in all situations.

Allan Lokos

There is no illness that is not exacerbated by stress.

Allan Lokos

Without the ability to be present we are missing much of what the adventure has to offer.

Allan Lokos

Patience is both the tool for and the result of, our efforts.

Allan Lokos

An open beginner's mind is a powerful tool for developing patience.

Allan Lokos

Remind yourself that your mental & emotional health are important.

Allan Lokos

Our work is not to become a better person, but to become present to the perfection we already are.

Allan Lokos

Your emotional understanding about the preciousness of your human birth comes through conscious, repetitive mind training.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Mindfulness has never met a cognition it didn't like.

Daniel J. Siegel

All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others

Sharon Salzberg

The point is to be free, not to be crazy.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.

Thich Nhat Hanh

I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.

Byron Katie

Society is a collection of selves perpetuating their myth.

Chris Matakas

Meditation is doing what you are doing - whether you are doing formal meditation or child care.

Norman Fischer

I had uncovered a widely held but overlooked attachment: our attachment to the view that every problem must have a solution. We delude ourselves that we can think our way out of a problem or we see it as a matter of finding the right person to advise us. We become beggars for our problems, asking numerous people for an opinion. So often, we refuse to relax until a problem is fixed, only to discover our inability to relax was most of the problem.

Sarah Napthali

Most people tend to excuse themselves with the opportunities they have in life, with how many years of school they have, with the people around them. And in doing so, they fail in realizing many other things, such as the fact that not many are lucky enough to give birth to a world bestseller on spirituality, wealth and success in life. Yes, your child may be a little reincarnation of an awesome buddhist monk, of an alchemist or a famous knight templar. Why most people can’t see these things, and keep looking at the past for answers, is something that still puzzles me.

Robin Sacredfire

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

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?

Dalai Lama XIV

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

Dalai Lama XIV

Live in joy, in love,even among those who hate.Live in joy, in health,even among the afflicted.Live in joy, in peace,even among the troubled.Look within, be still.Free from fear and attachment,know the sweet joy of the way.

Gautama Buddha

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk ; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighbouring wood: — in all these I am practising Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussions is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why — and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody’s heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.

D.T. Suzuki

Be aware of yourself without thinking or looking in the mirror

Bert McCoy

There’s surprising relief and regeneration in finding ourselves within a moment of genuine grace, however small or temporary it may be.

Darrell Calkins

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs.In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production.Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal.Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness.Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.'Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature.Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Who says you need to wait until you 'feel like' doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn't that you don't feel motivated; it's that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you're procrastinating on as passing weather, you'll realise that your reluctance about working isn't something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.

Oliver Burkeman

Each being in the universe, therefore, inhabits a private world. It is as if the universe were populated by countless cinemas, each occupied by a single person, each eternally viewing a different film projected by consciousness, each eternally suspending disbelief. For the Yogacara, ignorance and suffering result from believing the movie to be real, from mistaking the projections to be an external world, from thinking that what appear to be external objects are independent of consciousness, and then running after them, desiring some and hating others. For the Yogacara, wisdom is the insight that everything is of the nature of consciousness and the product of one's own projections. With this insight, desire and hatred, attachment and aversion, naturally cease, for their objects are seen to be illusions. With the achievement of enlightenment, the substratum consciousness is transformed into the mirror like wisdom of a buddha.

Donald Lopez

Nostalgia is an illness for those who haven't realized that todayis tomorrow's nostalgia.

Zeena Schreck

Is it a weakness not being able to hate? Or is it preparation for what is inevitable, the ability only to love.

Tom Althouse

To win or lose often depends on set parameters. Expand the bounds of what is possible, and you may come out the true winner, outside the confines of its defining.

Tom Althouse

Time is an illusion, only the keepers of the illusion are real, and the reality they have spun, keeps us, until we set upon the path of the dream.

Tom Althouse

My goal is not to upset the apple cart, but to make it more accessible.

Tom Althouse

In these times where it has seemed dark indeedwhere integrity appears solely buried in legend and lore, it is an opportunity in contrast to the shadows, to create miracles...by choosing first courage, then diligence, standing, opening our mouth and speaking the truth that in rare moments, may ignite the light.

Tom Althouse

More and more obstacles seem to be other people's issues that form in the way of a hand to block one, to take notice of them? Sometimes noticing ahead of time, and taking the time to notice them, makes the hand part of an arm that embraces you. The obstacles become bridges for both to cross over, even if in opposite directions.

Tom Althouse

True strength. There is no conflict with vulnerability or humility. Indeed, vulnerability and humility are essential here, and ultimately what makes strength true. One does not don the mask of strength in response to fear, which is a con, like those crazy small reptiles that stand up on their hind legs and spread useless wings to intimidate as a last resort. You stand there in self-respect for Christ’s sake and take it with some courage, responding in accordance with your honest values, taking sincere responsibility for them. Stand up for who you truly are, not the image you would like to sell, nor shrink to fit into the false harmony around you.

Darrell Calkins

Taking in another’s criticism, even when it’s offered out of love, requires courage.

Sharon Salzberg

... "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world," says an old Buddhist teaching. In other words: Get used to it.

Elizabeth Gilbert

I do not dispute with the world, it is the world that disputes with me. A speaker of Dhamma does not dispute with anyone in the world.

Bhikkus

Rage — whether in reaction to social injustice, or to our leaders’ insanity, or to those who threaten or harm us — is a powerful energy that, with diligent practice, can be transformed into fierce compassion.

Bonnie Myotai Treace

What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of 'you' is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond, but the beyond can never be experienced by you; it is when the 'you' is not there. Why are you trying to experience a thing that cannot be experienced?

U.G. Krishnamurti

The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear.Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set

Sengcan

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.

Tom Althouse

Of course the thinking mind must sooner or later be controlled, developed, and supplied with the force of will for a break-through to non-thinking, a direct experience of non-duality. But at what stage?

Christmas Humphreys

We see that the vast majority of our suffering is needless, and simply arises from the misidentification with our thinking mind.

Chris Matakas

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.

Bodhidharma

By concentration is meant to know that all dharmas (elements of existence), from the very beginning have no nature of their own. They neither come into nor go out of existence. Because they are caused by illusion and imagination, they exist without real existence. They are only the one mind, whose substance admits no differentiation. Those who hold this view can stop the flow of erroneous thought. This is called concentration. (pg. 398, from "A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy," translated and compiled by Wing Tsit-Chan)

Hui-ssu

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.

Bodhidharma

When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.

Gary Snyder

You must know your enemy to beat him at his own game, but be ready as well for the ultimate sacrifice, for nobody comes out of hell without a scratch.

Robin Sacredfire

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

James Hauenstein

But often it is a seemingly irresolvable relationship that teaches us the most, once we're willing to be vulnerable and honest, once we're willing to connect with what Chogyam Trungpa called "the genuine heart of sadness." As warriors in training we do our best to hold the person in our heart without any hypocrisy. One thing we can do with a difficult relationship is to place a picture of the person somewhere we will see it often and think, "I wish for your deepest well-being". Or we can write down the person's name, along with the aspiration that they may be safe, may be happy, may live in peace. Regardless of what specific action we take, our aspiration is to benefit the other person and wish them well.

Pema Chödrön

But as we let go of our repetitive stories and fixed ideas about ourselves--particularly deep-seated feelings of "I'm not okay"--the armor starts to fall apart, and we open into the spaciousness of our true nature, into who we really are beyond the transitory thoughts and emotions. We see that our armor is made up of nothing more than habits and fears, and we begin to feel that we can let those go.

Pema Chödrön

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

So what is a good meditator? A good meditator meditates.

Allan Lokos

To be mindful entails examining the path we are traveling & making choices that alleviate suffering & bring happiness to ourselves & those around us.

Allan Lokos

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

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Buddhism Quotes - Page 12

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