Buddhism Quotes - Page 14

Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more completely. Perhaps the best way to phrase it is to say that meditation showed me that the other side of anxiety is desire. They exist in relationship to each other, not independently.

Mark Epstein

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze.A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that?Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind.In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday.Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us.It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral.All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

Mary Rose O'Reilley

Perhaps the day will come where the validity of one's spirituality will be judged not by the correctness of one's theology but by the authenticity of one's spiritual life. When that day comes, an authentically spiritual Buddhist and an authentically spiritual Christian may find that they have more in common with each other than they do with those in their respective religions who have failed to develop their spirituality. (Beyond Religion, p. 98)

David N. Elkins

We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don´t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home.Meditation, then, is bringing the mind home.

Sogyal Rinpoche

Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.

Huang Po

When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation.

Donna Quesada

Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us—and our beloveds—healthier.

Sharon Salzberg

We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That’s a fact but one we fight.

Sharon Salzberg

Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us—and our beloveds—healthier.

Sharon Salzberg

We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That’s a fact but one we fight.

Sharon Salzberg

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

There is no God in Buddha’s teachings. There is no religious ritual in Buddha’s teachings. All that there is, is simple “Karma” or “Work” – that is the “Dhamma” or “Duty” or “Religion” he preached.

Abhijit Naskar

Until we begin to question our basic assumptions about ourselves and view them as fluid, not fixed, it’s easy to repeat established patterns and, out of habit, reenact old stories that limit our ability to live and love ourselves with an open heart.

Sharon Salzberg

Living in a story of a limited self—to any degree—is not love.

Sharon Salzberg

Identifying the source of our personal narratives helps us to release its negative aspects and re-frame it in ways that promote wholeness.

Sharon Salzberg

To truly love ourselves, we must challenge our beliefs that we need to be different or better.

Sharon Salzberg

As soon as we ask whether or not a story is true in the present moment, we empower ourselves to re-frame it.

Sharon Salzberg

Maybe what we really need is to change our relationship to what is, to see who we are with the strength of a generous spirit & a wise heart.

Sharon Salzberg

You don't have to love yourself unconditionally before you can give or receive real love.

Sharon Salzberg

So often we operate from ideas of love that don’t fit our reality.

Sharon Salzberg

One foundation of loving relationships is curiosity, keeping open to the idea that we have much to learn even about those we have been close to for decades.

Sharon Salzberg

I once found an ego, crawling around and trying to shine on me. I took it in my arms and the ego turned itself into a virus. First it took over my mind, then my heart, and finally attempted to destroy my soul by corrupting me with fear and guilt. Therefore, with as much energy as I could gather, I trapped the ego within my anger and pulled it out of me. Once on the floor, the ego begged me for mercy and compassion, promising to give me joy in return. I allowed it once again into my life, and again, it tried to hurt me once more, this time with abandonment. So I unveiled the ego for what it truly was, and that was resentment filled with desire for power, a power the ego was feeding from me, from my compassion and willingness. Now unprotected by deceit, the ego shown itself weak and scared. In panic, it run from me, boasting a delusional victory. And when it looked back, searching for another chance, I stepped on it. But believe me, it hurt me far much more than it hurt the ego.

Robin Sacredfire

While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.

Mark Epstein

The teaching of the sexual tantras all come down to one point. Although desire, of whatever shape or form, seeks completion, there is another kind of union than the one we imagine. In this union, achieved when the egocentric model of dualistic thinking is no longer dominant, we are not united with it, nor am I united with you, but we all just are. The movement from object to subject, as described in both Eastern meditation and modern psychotherapy, is training for this union, but its perception usually comes as a surprise, even when this shift is well under way. It is a kind of grace. The emphasis on sexual relations in the tantric teachings make it clear that the ecstatic surprise of orgasm is the best approximation of this grace.

Mark Epstein

Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.

Mark Epstein

Beliefs are a powerful thing. I often travel the world and sometimes the local waitresses attending me are nervous if they can’t speak English. Now, when this happens, I point at the pictures in the menu. However, I’ve noticed that the ones with the strongest beliefs, the most nervous ones, still do a mistake in my order. Another interesting things to notice in these situations is that, when I correct them, by pointing again at what I ordered before, they recognize their mistake, but get angry, as if their mistake was my fault, and that’s called irresponsibility. Now, when you combine irresponsibility with the wrong beliefs, you have a a very dumb person. That’s what stupidity is, it’s a human being doing the wrong things with the wrong beliefs and never ever accepting any responsibility for it. That’s how those with the lowest spiritual conscience behave in general with themselves and others.

Robin Sacredfire

Observe & accept what ever arises & know that everything is as it needs to be.

Allan Lokos

While meditating we are simply seeing what the mind has been doing all along.

Allan Lokos

When we teach a child patience we offer them the gift of a dignified life.

Allan Lokos

True patience is grounded in wisdom & compassion.

Allan Lokos

We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.

Sharon Salzberg

I cannot say this too strongly: Do not compare yourselves to others. Be true to who you are, and continue to learn with all your might.

Daisaku Ikeda

Accepting the reality of change gives rise to equanimity.

Allan Lokos

Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes,Or any searcher know by mortal mind,Veil after veil will lift--but there must be Veil upon veil behind.

Edwin Arnold

Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.

Thich Nhat Hanh

It is recorded in the monastic rules that a monk once performed an abortion on a girl; the Buddha judged his action seriously wrong, which incurred him the highest offense in the monastic rule. A monk committing this kind of wrongful deed must be expelled from the monastic community. The Buddha considered the embryo to be a person like an adult, so the monk who killed the embryo through abortion was judged by Buddhist monastic rules as having committed a crime equal in gravity to killing an adult. In the commentary on the rule stated above, it is stated clearly that killing a human being means destroying human life from the first moment of fertilization to human life outside the womb. So, even though the Buddha himself did not give a clear-cut pronouncement about when personhood occurs, the Buddhist tradition, especially the Theravada tradition, clearly states that personhood starts when the process of fertilization takes place.

Soraj Hongladarom

This kind of renunciation, in fact, has often been the strength, born of necessity, of the world's disinherited, of those who do not fit in with their surroundings or with their own body or with their own race or tradition and who hope, by means of renunciation, to assure for themselves a future world where, to use a Nietzschean expression, the inversion of all values will occur.

Julius Evola

But, the true reason for the success of such new expositions [translated Eastern religious texts] is to be found where they are the most accommodating, least rigid, least severe, most vague, and ready to come to easy terms with the prejudices and weaknesses of the modern world. Let everyone have the courage to look deeply into himself and to see what it is that he really wants.

Julius Evola

If one does not make an ego out of gender, one would still know whether one is a man or a woman, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender—whatever else we may think of. But those identities need to fit very loosely and be worn very lightly. All sense of privilege or deprivation that has developed around one’s gender identity, all rigidity regarding proper roles and behaviors for the various genders, must be cut through.

Rita M. Gross

Many Buddhist temple priests regard their parishioners as possessions and fear their departure as a diminishing of assets.

Kentetsu Takamori

A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life.

Christopher Hitchens

Bliss and suffering, it seems, always go hand in hand.

Kentetsu Takamori

It is the nature of the Kali Yuga that most human beings are now held back from spiritual liberation due to the gravity of inertia, apathy and laziness, (known in Sankrit as the quality of tapas) that overwhelms this age. Despite this seemingly gloomy prognosis, there is a way out of this predicament for those with the will and stamina to awaken from the rampant lethargy, within and outside of themselves, to take action.

Zeena Schreck

A boddhisattva is someone who is on the way to becoming a buddha. All of us become boddhisattvas as soon as we start to take our Zen work seriously and the work we do contributes to creating a world in which all good actions become more efficacious.

David Brazier

Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam. Dust off some of your old parables. You have about fifteen minutes.' Sam held out his hand. "Give me some tobacco and a paper.

Roger Zelazny

What each of us believes in is up to us, but life is impossible without believing in something.

Kentetsu Takamori

The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.

Tom Robbins

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. . . Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. . . Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.

Pema Chödrön

The thought manifests the word;The word manifests the deed;The deed develops into habit;And habit hardens into character;So watch the thought and its ways with care,And let them spring forth from loveBorn out of compassion for all beings.As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become.

Juan Mascaró

Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.

Mahatma Gandhi

If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.

Albert Einstein

The erruption of feelings & emotions that follows a near-death exerience, or any event that causes us to stop & look deeply at the reality of our lives, is ripe with the potential for insight & clarity.

Allan Lokos

Because the development of inner calm & energy happens completely within & isn’t dependent on another person or a particular situation, we begin to feel a resourcefulness and independence that is quite beautiful—and a huge relief.

Sharon Salzberg

We train the mind so that we can enjoy greater peace, happiness, wisdom & equanimity.

Allan Lokos

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

Being a senior doesn't automatically make one wise but the wise & foolish alike have things to teach us.

Allan Lokos

Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here & now.

Sharon Salzberg

That's why it's called a practice. We have to practice a practice if it is to be of value.

Allan Lokos

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Buddhism Quotes - Page 14

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