Buddhism Quotes - Page 5

Oneness and individuality coexist. There is no question about the importance and uniqueness of each individual life. However, difference is no difference. The very difference is equality, is one.

Gyomay M Kubose

Only when I see myself truly is Gautama Buddha is present in me.

Gyomay M Kubose

For me, Buddhism is like a living organism. If it is to flourish outside self-enclosed ghettos of believers, it will have to meet the challenge of understanding, interacting with, and adapting to an environment that is strikingly different from those in which it has evolved.

Stephen Batchelor

Forget self pity, live life! Be the artist of your own life.

Gyomay M Kubose

May we be free of the tyranny of our expectations of others.

Gyomay M Kubose

We do not understand that we are literally able to live and enjoy life only because of other people and things. If one really understands this truth, he cannot help but become humble and appreciate others.

Gyomay M Kubose

We must find the way of love rather than that of being loved.

Gyomay M Kubose

I was encouraged to ask in all seriousness what this life is for, what matters most for myself and others, what non-negotiable values I might even be willing to die for. At the same time, I started to notice the poignant ephemerality of things. I sensed the immanence of death in my bones. I felt the urgency of knowing that this day on earth might be my last. Yet rather than making me gloomy and morbid, such reflections intensified my sense of being alive. They induced a kind of rapture, which snapped me out of the dull routines of the familiar and confronted me with the miracle of life as it unfolds and vanishes each instant.

Stephen Batchelor

No claims were made by him [Buddha] to any unalterable truth, nor did he demand that his teachings should simply be accepted, taken on trust or acquired through an act of faith. Instead he [Buddha] encouraged those who wished to make the spiritual journey he himself had undertaken to experiment for themselves as individuals, retaining what was useful to them and abandoning what was not.

It was my letting go that gave me a better hold.

The possessions themselves were not the problem, it was my relationship with possessing.

A fearless heart is free of desire, a kind heart finds paradise everywhere.

Alan Yuen

To forgive does not mean to forget.

Beyond this life andThis world I'll have it tilMy heart's content:The bright moon that passed overThe horizon before I had my fill.

Saigyō

As a friend of mine told me about Real Happiness: you wrote this one in American.

Sharon Salzberg

O let us live in joy, in love among those who hate! Among men who hate, let us live in love.

Anonymous

Here bhikkhus, some misguided men learn the Dhamma–discourses, stanzas, expositions, verses, exclamations, sayings, birth stories, marvels, and answers to questions–but having learned the Dhamma, they do not examine the meaning of those teachings with wisdom. Not examining the meaning of those teachings with wisdom, they do not gain a reflective acceptance of them. Instead they learn the Dhamma only for the sake of criticising others and for winning in debates, and they do not experience the good for the sake of which they learned the Dhamma.

As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of tolerance. We become patient, with no sense of putting up with anything. We become compassionate, with no sense of separation. And we become wise, with no sense of having to straighten anyone out.

Merchant: 'So you have lived on the possessions of others?'Saddhartha: 'Apparently. The merchant also lives on the possession of others.'Merchant: 'Well spoken...

And so Gotama wandered into the town to obtain alms, and the two Samanas recognized him only by his complete peacefulness of demeanor, by the stillness of his form, in which there was no seeking, no will, no counterfeit, no effort - only light and peace.

Last year, Yoshino,I walked away bending branchesTo point me to blossoms--Which now are everywhere and I canGo where I've never been before.

Saigyō

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.

Albert Einstein

Knowing life's purpose would invest everything one did with meaning.

Kentetsu Takamori

The earth is black in front of the cliff, and no orchids grow.Creepers crawl in the brown mud by the path.Where did the birds of yesterday fly?To what other mountain did the animals go?Leopards and pythons dislike this ruined spot;Cranes and snakes avoid the desolation.My criminal thoughts of those days pastBrought on the disaster of today.

Every day Zuigan used to call out to himself, "Master!" and then he answered himself, "Yes, Sir!" And he added, "Awake, Awake!" and then answered, "Yes, Sir! Yes, Sir!""From now onwards, do not be deceived by others!" "No, Sir! I will not, Sir!"

The Buddha-nature which is ours from the very beginning is like the sun which emerges from the clouds, or like a mirror which, when rubbed, regains its original purity and clarity. (217)

I read of a Buddhist teacher who developed Alzheimer's. He had retired from teaching because his memory was unreliable, but he made one exception for a reunion of his former students. When he walked onto the stage, he forgot everything, even where he was and why. However, he was a skilled Buddhist and he simply began sharing his feelings with the crowd. He said, "I am anxious. I feel stupid. I feel scared and dumb. I am worried that I am wasting everyone's time. I am fearful. I am embarrassing myself." After a few minutes of this, he remembered his talk and proceeded without apology. The students were deeply moved, not only by his wise teachings, but also by how he handled his failings.There is a Buddhist saying, "No resistance, no demons.

The Heart-mantra of Dependent Origination (rten-'brel snying-po [རྟེན་འབྲེལ་སྙིང་པོ]), which liberates the enduring continuum of phenomena and induces the appearance of multiplying relics ('phel-gdung [འཕེལ་གདུང་] and rainbow lights, is:[OṂ] YE DHARMĀ HETUPRABHAVĀHETUN TEṢĀṂ TATHĀGATOHY AVADAT TEṢĀṂ CA YONIRODHO EVAṂ VĀDIMAHĀŚRAMAṆAḤ [YE SVĀHĀ]('Whatever events arise from a cause, the Tathagāta [Buddha, "Thus-gone"] has told the cause thereof, and the great virtuous ascetic has taught their cessation as well [so be it]').

Health, wealth, reputation, and status are all mere ingredients of happiness. The key to true well-being is being able to manage them capably.

Kentetsu Takamori

If you want to take care of tomorrow, take better care of today. We always live now. All we have to do is entrust ourselves to the life we now live.

Dainin Katagiri

Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do with the other end?" This is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical.When the question is, "Master, what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?" Then he replies, "There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool." That is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle zen works on. The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.

The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment. You don't have to look "over there." You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to acquire anything. And you don't have to run off to Tibet, or Japan, or anywhere else. You wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here.So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be.

What makes human life--which is inseparable from this moment--so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again.

Salute to the Smiling Faces of the 21st Century.

Like a lamp, dispelling the darkness of ignorance

Monks, even if bandits were to savagely sever you, limb by limb, with a double-handled saw, even then, whoever of you harbors ill will at heart would not be upholding my Teaching. Monks, even in such a situation you should train yourselves thus: 'Neither shall our minds be affected by this, nor for this matter shall we give vent to evil words, but we shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and we shall not give in to hatred. On the contrary, we shall live projecting thoughts of universal love to those very persons, making them as well as the whole world the object of our thoughts of universal love — thoughts that have grown great, exalted and measureless. We shall dwell radiating these thoughts which are void of hostility and ill will.' It is in this way, monks, that you should train yourselves.

Now seen...now gone,The butterfly flits in and outThrough fence-hung flowers;But a life lived so close to themI envy...though it's here and gone.

Saigyō

The victorious ones have saidThat emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.For whomever emptiness is a view,That one has achieved nothing.

There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of "mind expansion" or "warm healing energy." I don't like drum circles, public nudity or strangers touching my feet.

Buddha once saw a jackal, a wild dog, run out of the forest where he was staying. It stood still for a while, then it ran into the underbrush, and then out again. Then it ran into a tree hollow, then out again. Then it went into a cave, only to run out again. One minute it stood, the next it ran, then it lay down, then it jumped up. The jackal had the mange. When it stood, the mange would eat into its skin, so it would run. Running, it was still uncomfortable, so it would stop. Standing, it was still uncomfortable, so it would lie down. Then it would jump up again, running to the underbrush, the tree hollow, never staying still. The Buddha said, “Monks, did you see that jackal this afternoon? Standing, it suffered. Running, it suffered. Sitting, it suffered. Lying down, it suffered. It blamed standing for its discomfort. It blamed sitting. It blamed running and lying down. It blamed the tree, the underbrush, and the cave. In fact, the problem was with none of those things. The problem was with his mange.” We are just the same as that jackal. Our discontent is due to wrong view. Because we don’t exercise sense restraint, we blame our suffering on externals. Whether we live in Thailand, America or England, we aren’t satisfied. Why not? Because we still have wrong view. Just that! So wherever we go, we aren’t content. But just as that jackal would be content wherever it went as soon as its mange was cured, so would we be content wherever we went once we rid ourselves of wrong view.

There is no miserable place waiting for you, no hell realm, sitting and waiting like Alaska—waiting to turn you into ice cream. But whatever you call it—hell or the suffering realms—it is something that you enter by creating a world of neurotic fantasy and believing it to be real. It sounds simple, but that's exactly what happens.

Lama Thubten Yeshe

Awakening does not mean a change in difficulty, it means a change in how those difficulties are met.

In the first movement, our infancy as a species, we felt no separation from the natural world around us. Trees, rocks, and plants surrounded us with a living presence as intimate and pulsing as our own bodies. In that primal intimacy, which anthropologists call "participation mystique," we were as one with our world as a child in the mother's womb.Then self-consciousness arose and gave us distance on our world. We needed that distance in order to make decisions and strategies, in order to measure, judge and to monitor our judgments. With the emergence of free-will, the fall out of the Garden of Eden, the second movement began -- the lonely and heroic journey of the ego. Nowadays, yearning to reclaim a sense of wholeness, some of us tend to disparage that movement of separation from nature, but it brought us great gains for which we can be grateful. The distanced and observing eye brought us tools of science, and a priceless view of the vast, orderly intricacy of our world. The recognition of our individuality brought us trial by jury and the Bill of Rights.Now, harvesting these gains, we are ready to return. The third movement begins. Having gained distance and sophistication of perception, we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. Now it can dawn on us: we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.

You don't understand. I only prostitute the part of the body that isn't important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don't do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat of Buddha. What you do is very very bad. You should not use your mind in that way

This will never come again

The way is yours for the asking - the way is yours for the taking. The way is as it should be.

Today's satori:Such a change of mind wouldNot exist withoutMy lifelong habit of havingMy mind immersed in blossoms.

Saigyō

Children I implore youget out of the burning house nowthree carts wait outsideto save you from a homeless liferelax in the village squarebefore the sky everything's emptyno direction is better or worseeast is just as good as westthose who know the meaning of thisare free to go where they want

Han-shan

And this is a Buddhist country?” said Matt, “This is a country of lovingkindness and compassion? Hah. I think the Americans would call this ‘tough love.’ ”“That is the paradox of Buddhism,” said Ranjit, “As a young doctor I would see these violent things and wonder why they happened, knowing that it was not something that Buddhists should do. Then I realized we are not born Buddhist. All the focus on channeling anger and dealing with hardship did not emanate from these people…. It was a lesson to these people. We are a land of Buddhists because we need to hear the lessons of Buddha, not because we follow Buddha.”-spoken by Ranjit, the surgeon, after an episode of violence....

Buddhism holds that everything is in constant flux. Thus the question is whether we are to accept change passively and be swept away by it or whether we are to take the lead and create positive changes on our own initiative. While conservatism and self-protection might be likened to winter, night, and death, the spirit of pioneering and attempting to realize ideals evokes images of spring, morning, and birth.

I'd like to dividemyself in order to see,among these mountains,each and every flowerof every cherry tree.

Saigyō

Where would I find enough leatherTo cover the entire surface of the earth?But with leather soles beneath my feet,It’s as if the whole world has been covered.

Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.

We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.

Rise to the challenges that life presents you. You can't develop genuine character and ability by sidestepping adversity and struggle.

The determination to win is the better part of winning.

People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends you truly live. Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions. And only by respecting natural life can humanity continue to exist.

Through countless births in the cycle of existence I have run, not finding although seeking the builder of this house; and again and again I faced the suffering of new birth. Oh housebuilder! Now you are seen. You shall not build a house again for me. All your beams are broken, the ridgepole is shattered. The mind has become freed from conditioning: the end of craving has been reached.

The virtuous man delights in this world and he delights in the next

Strength is Happiness. Strength is itself victory. In weakness and cowardice there is no happiness. When you wage a struggle, you might win or you might lose. But regardless of the short-term outcome, the very fact of your continuing to struggle is proof of your victory as a human being.

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