Buddhism Quotes - Page 3

We agreed that at least to some extent the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha's 1st noble truth of suffering & the dissatisfactory nature of the material world. The punks see through the lies of society & the oppressive dictates of modern consumer culture. Very few punks though seem to take it further & attempt to understand the causes & conditions of the suffering & falsehoods, unfortunately punks rarely come around to seeing that there is actually a solution & a path to personal freedom. My own life's experience w/ both Dharma practice & punk rock inspired me to try to bridge the gap between the two. I've tried to help point out the similarities, while also acknowledging the differences, & to show those of my generation who are interested that they can practice meditation & find there the freedom we have been seeking in our rebellion against the system.
Noah Levine
The picture we present to ourselves of who we think we ought to be obscures who we really are.
Mark Epstein
I shall live here in the rains,There in winter,Elsewhere in summer," muses the fool,Not aware of the nearness of death.
Gautama Buddha
Karma means ‘action’. Like many, you misunderstand its nature. Past misdeeds can be corrected before your karma ripens: it is not some pre-determined fate. It is what you do now that counts.
John Dolan
Everyone burns, as the Buddha says, in their own way. Some burn with anger, some with lust, some with a desire for vengeance, some with fear. But inside us burn many fires, not just one. We are legion, we contain a multitude.
John Dolan
You have compassion but by itself it is not enough. It is almost as if you carry around inside you some dead thing. Some heavy black cinder in your heart that burdens you; a ponderous anchor that tethers you to the past. Until you can burn it away, you can never truly live in the present, in the now. Until you can live in the now, you cannot see things as they really are. Meantime you are a man who is wilfully blind. You have eyes and yet you will not use them.
John Dolan
There was a small glass vase between us, three gladioli in a few ounces of water. One of the gladioli had dropped a petal- brushstroke of purple on fine white cloth. Rinpoche drank the last sip of his tea, then set the cup aside, took the petal with his thumb and second finger, placed it on the middle of the saucer in front of him, and turned the cup upside down to cover it."I feel a lesson coming on," I said..."The flower is the good inside every person," he said. "The cup is like a wall, to protect. Many people have that wall.""Armor" I said. He nodded. "Why?""Because to live without the cup means you must feel the world as the world really is.
Roland Merullo
[The Buddha] is not dividing himself into worthy and unworthy pieces; he is one being, indivisible, immune from the tendency to double back and beat up on himself. He has seen the worst in himself and not been taken down.
Mark Epstein
To be free, to come to terms with our lives, we have to have a direct experience of ourselves as we really are, warts and all.
Mark Epstein
Intruding upon a dimension rightfully ours, modern medicine robs us of the dignity of what people in the past regarded as most precious: that final moment of death.
Shinmon Aoki
I have found that we need to maintain relationships with all spheres of society: the local community, politicians from all parties, business leaders, artists, and farmers....We don't favor one kind of person over another, or one political party over another...My goal is for them to use the method and concept of Chan practice to benefit their work and their organizations....That is our duty.
Sheng-yen
People go through life blindly, ignoring death like revellers at a party feasting on fine foods. They ignore that later they will have to go to the toilet, so they do not bother to find out where there is one. When nature finally calls, they have no idea where to go and are in a mess.
Ajahn Chah
God is another word for Love.
Stacy Snapp-Killian aka StacyK
Death for [the Buddhist] is the shadow on the face of life, for the opposite of death is birth, not life; that which is born must die. Life has no opposite, for life goes on; only its forms must change unceasingly. It is life which creates, uses and then destroys each form of life, whether yours or mine or that of the mountain, the empire or the fly.
Christmas Humphreys
By-passing all scriptures and all that any teacher has to say, we shall, while respecting every finger that points to the moon, be mindful only of the moon. This habit will make it easier to understand the truth that every statement is wrong, whenever made by any man, for it was made in duality and is therefore one-sided, incomplete, and in the final synthesis its opposite is just as true!
Christmas Humphreys
We find our own way to right action, and tread it as we go. He who tells his neighbour what he, the neighbour, should do in given circumstances is a fool. He does not and he cannot know. 'If I were you' is a silly beginning to any remark. You are not, and you never will be anyone else. Mind your own business; it is, or should be, a full-time task for twenty-four hours a day.
Christmas Humphreys
We see, at least with intellect, that beyond both true and false is truth; that there is beauty beyond our present views on the beautiful and ugly; that pleasure-pain can now alike be transcended, and that some day we shall truly see that 'form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form'.
Christmas Humphreys
Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a person, to act, to take risks, to image things differently, to make art. The more I prize Gotama's teachings free from the matrix of Indian religious thought in which they are entrenched and the more I come to understand how his own life unfolded in the context of his times, the more I discern a template for living that I can apply at this time in this increasingly secular and globalized world.
Stephen Batchelor
No sane person fears nothingness.
Robert A.F. Thurman
What a nuisance is the friend who must have this and that, whose likes and hates are infinite, with bitter and loud voiced complaint about the whole of circumstance? How pleasant are the truly great who, wanting nothing, are content with anything. Accepting all things in a world of illusion as born of cause-effect they live in a mind above the opposites, and we call them great because they do so.
Christmas Humphreys
There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. it should be open to the spirit not to lock itself up in the letter. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death.
Robert A.F. Thurman
He was the least spiritual of all the monks here, accepting nothing without proof. This skepticism was simultaneously his greatest asset and his greatest impediment.
Amy Thomson
The entire teaching of Buddhism can be summed up in this way: Nothing is worth holding on to.
Jack Kornfield
Impermanence and selflessness are not negative aspect of life, but the very foundation on which life is built. Impermanence is the constant transformation of things. Without impermanence, there can be no life. Selflessness is the interdependent nature of all things. Without interdependence, nothing could exist.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If we get rid of all wishful thinking and dubious metaphysical speculations, we can hardly doubt that – at a time not too distant – each one of us will simply cease to be. It won’t be like going into darkness forever, for there will be neither darkness, nor time, nor sense of futility, nor anyone to feel anything about it. Try as best you can to imagine this, and keep at it. The universe will, supposedly, be going on as usual, but for each individual it will be as if it had never happened at all; and even that is saying too much, because there won’t be anyone for whom it never happened. Make this prospect as real as possible: the one total certainty. You will be as if you had never existed, which was, however, the way you were before you did exist – and not only you but everything else. Nevertheless, with such an improbable past, here we are. We begin from nothing and end in nothing. You can say that again. Think it over and over, trying to conceive the fact of coming to never having existed. After a while you will begin to feel rather weird, as if this very apparent something that you are is at the same time nothing at all. Indeed, you seem to be rather firmly and certainly grounded in nothingness, much as your sight seems to emerge from that total blankness behind your eyes. The weird feeling goes with the fact that you are being introduced to a new common sense, a new logic, in which you are beginning to realize the identity of ku and shiki, void and form. All of a sudden it will strike you that this nothingness is the most potent, magical, basic, and reliable thing you ever thought of, and that the reason you can’t form the slight idea of it is that it’s yourself. But not the self you thought you were.
Alan W. Watts
Greater than all the joysOf heaven and earth,Greater still than dominionOver all the worlds,Is the joy of reaching the stream.
Gautama Buddha
You are as the yellow leaf.The messengers of death are at hand.You are to travel far away.What will you take with you?You are the lampTo lighten the way.Then hurry, hurry.When your light shinesWithout impurity or desireYou will come into the boundless country.Your life is falling away.Death is at hand.Where will you rest on the way?What have you taken with you?You are the lampTo lighten the way.Then hurry, hurry.When your light shines purelyYou will not be bornAnd you will not die.
Gautama Buddha
Like a caring motherholding and guarding the lifeof her only child,so with a boundless heartof lovingkindness,hold yourself and all beingsas your beloved children.
Gautama Buddha
To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.
Gautama Buddha
Sit down and have a cup of coffeeWith your firm conviction that they're out to get youSit down and have a cigarette with your awful fear of deathI saw Milarepa at the all-night diner sharing a table with his personal demonsHe said You've got to invite them in with compassion on your breath Stop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as pain and sorrowStop pushing away, you're just making it hardStop putting it off, 'cause it'll be back to kick your ass tomorrowBreathe in, breathe out, let down your guardSit down and start shooting the shitWith the fear that you'll never measure up to your idealsSit down and have a bottle of beer with the ache of all you've lostI saw Milarepa at the coffee house having a Danish with his hurts and hatredsHe said You've got to invite them in, or you pay ten times the cost.Stop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as fear and loathingStop pushing away, you're just making it worseStop putting it off, cause it'll be back again in different clothingJust pop the clutch and go into reverseInvite them in and let them be there while you learn to stand itInvite them in and give them room to stomp and shoutWhen they can come and goThey won't be always pounding on your doorIf you let them in you can let them out.Sit down and have a conversationWith the loneliness that's eating you aliveSit down and watch a sunset with your overwhelming rageI saw Milarepa at the corner bar buying a round for the monsters in his heartHe said They're really not so bad when they're let out of their cageStop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as pain and sorrowStop pushing away, you're just making it hardStop putting it off, 'cause it'll be back to kick your ass tomorrowBreathe in, breathe out, let down your guard
Allison Lonsdale
While most streams of Buddhism take a contemplative stance on passion, pleasure, and pain, Sufism encourages us to be open to our passions - to dive into the sea, to become at one with the beauty and power of the waves.
Charlotte Kasl
[Buddhism] takes us beyond a kind of self-centered narcissism because instead of identifying with the content of our experience, we identify with awareness itself.
Charlotte Kasl
Buddhism is more a philosophy for living rather than a religion or dogma - it's about being awake, free from illusions and fear, so that compassion and loving kindness permeates all of our relationships.
Charlotte Kasl
I am not a Buddhist. Yet there is a Buddhist story that I hold dear. A monk walks in a forest, and chances upon a tiger. The tiger chases him, and the monk runs until he comes to a cliff. With the tiger on his heels, the man grasps a vine and clambers down. Another tiger appears at the bottom. As the man hangs there, a mouse crawls from a crevice just beyond his reach and begins to gnaw the vine. Death above, death below, and death in between. He sees a big ripe strawberry near his mouth. It is delicious.In this moment, flying miles above the strawberry fields of California's San Joachin Valley, I think that I would change the ending of this story. Instead of giving the doomed man a strawberry, what if we leave him alone with the two tigers, the mouse, and the fraying vine? For the last time, his arms grow tired, he feels a familiar ache deep in his muscles. For the last time he catches his breath, feels a rasping in his throat and lungs. He feels this, and a thousand other things. It is all delicious.
Derrick Jensen
We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.
Gautama Buddha
A more common explanation for the feeling of being Old in Soul is tied up in Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation, or metempsychosis. Interestingly, this is most likely where the origin of the phrase “Old Soul” came from in the first place.
Aletheia Luna
If he makes himself as good as he tells others to be, then he in truth can teach others. Difficult indeed is self-control.
Anonymous
All beings tremble before danger, all fear death. When a man considers this, he does not kill or cause to kill.
Anonymous
When we stop distancing ourselves from the pain in the world, our own or others, we create the possibility of a new experience, one that often surprises because of how much joy, connection, or relief it yields. Destruction may continue, but humanity shines through.
Mark Epstein
He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.
Gautama Buddha
Enlightenment does not mean getting rid of anything. It means changing one's frame of reference so that all things become enlightening.
Mark Epstein
First, rely on the spirit and meaning of the teachings, not on the words;Second, rely on the teachings, not on the personality of the teacher;Third, rely on real wisdom, not superficial interpretation;And fourth, rely on the essence of your pure Wisdom Mind, not on judgmental perceptions.
Gautama Buddha
When you die, you want to die a beautiful death. But what makes for a beautiful death is not always clear. To die without suffering, to die without causing trouble to others, to die leaving behind a beautiful corpse, to die looking good -- it's not clear what is meant by a beautiful death. Does a beautiful death refer to the way you die or the condition of your corpse after death? This distinction is not clear. And when you start to stretch the image of death to the method of how to dispose of your corpse as befitting your image of death, everything grows completely out of hand.
Shinmon Aoki
Words!The Way is beyond language,for in it there is no yesterday no tomorrow no today.
Xinxin Ming
The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is simply to release any images and emotions.
Jack Kornfield
We should not allow ourselves to be deceived by our outward show of ‘civilized’ manners and ‘cultured’ social behavior into believing that self-concern, desirous attachment, aversion, and indifference are steadily losing their hold over us.
Stephen Batchelor
Buddhism does not deny the existence of gods—they are described as powerful beings who can bring rains and victories—but they have no influence on the law that suffering arises from craving. If the mind of a person is free of all craving, no god can make him miserable. Conversely, once craving arises in a person's mind, all the gods in the universe cannot save him from suffering.
Yuval Noah Harari
After all, people desire immortality and do not wish to embrace the inescapable reality of death; they long for happiness and shy away from the contemplation of pain; they want to preserve their sense of self, not desconstruction it into fleeting and impersonal components. It is counterintuitive to accept that deathlessness is experienced each moment we are released from the deathlike grip of greed and hatred; that happiness in this world is only possible for those who realized that this world is incapable of providing happiness; that one becomes a fully individuated person only by relinquishing beliefs in an essential self.
Stephen Batchelor
A maggot is just another life form.
Shinmon Aoki
Every effort to understand destroys the object studied in favor of another object of a different nature; this second object requires from us a new effort which destroys it in favor of a third, and so on and so forth until we reach the one lasting presence, the point at which the distinction between meaning and the absence of meaning disappears: the same point from which we began.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Individuals create themselves through their moral choices. By freely and repeatedly choosing certain sorts of things, an individual shapes their character, and through their character their future.
Damien Keown
itt was snowing as if you could hear wolves howling
Dick Allen
[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.
Steve Hagen
It is such a mistake to assume that practicing dharma will help us calm down and lead an untroubled life; nothing could be further from the truth. Dharma is not a therapy. Quite the opposite, in fact; dharma is tailored specifically to turn your life upside down—it’s what you sign up for. So when your life goes pear-shaped, why do you complain? If you practice and your life fails to capsize, it is a sign that what you are doing is not working. This is what distinguishes the dharma from New Age methods involving auras, relationships, communication, well-being, the Inner Child, being one with the universe, and tree hugging. From the point of view of dharma, such interests are the toys of samsaric beings—toys that quickly bore us senseless.
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rockIf you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,maybe you can grasp it.
Dick Allen
The Buddhist ideal of awakening implies that we can sever our links with our evolutionary past. We can raise ourselves from the sleep in which other animals pass their lives. Our illusions dissolved, we need no longer suffer. This is only another doctrine of salvation, subtler than that of the Christians, but no different from Christianity in its goal of leaving our animal inheritance behind. But the idea that we can rid ourselves of animal illusion is the greatest illusion of all. meditation may give us a fresher view of things but cannot uncover them as they are in themselves.
John Gray
all living creatures are entitled to respect in their own right, not simply because of the utility they may possess for other humans.
Damien Keown
The self is a self-made Procrustean bedof little comfort
Ulf Wolf
Zen has a pronounced iconoclastic tendency, and regards the study of texts, doctrines, and dogmas as a potential hindrance to spiritual awakening, relying instead on humour, spontaneity, unconventionality, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression to communicate the idea of enlightenment
Damien Keown
Is it necessary to believe in the existence of the six realms and the heavens and hells to be a Buddhist? Not necessarily. It is possible to interpret these as, perhaps, referring to other dimensions of existence, parallel universes, or simply states of mind.
Damien Keown

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