Quotessence
Home / Books / Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within

Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within

Book by Robert A.F. Thurman · 9 quotes · Buddhism, Enlightenment, Awakening

Filter quotes by topic

AllBuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningInfinite LifeReincarnationInfinitySpiritual EvolutionThe Way Of The BodhisattvaBuddhaverseCompassionImmortalityInterconnectionMeditationOnenessSelflessnessShantidevaWisdom

Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within Quotes

“I enjoy experiencing a taste of the feeling that I am infinite. But you have to risk going into a sphere where you can‘t quite remember exactly who you are. You have to negate it anytime you feel the „I“ emerging as a fixed, independent, absolute thing, and then negate it again. It‘s not that nonexistence is your final goal, but that you want to rid yourself of your habitual sense that you exist in a static way. This practice has its thrilling moments of revelation, its unsettling moments of doubt, its quiet moments of mindfulness – all of which add up to a continuous, ever-deepening, evolving flow of liberation. Your infinite life thus becomes grounded in the greatest virtue of all – wisdom. Your wisdom deepens constantly as you gain a deeper and deeper understanding of your own selflessness and your resulting interconnectedness with all other beings. You engage other people with generosity, sensitive and empathic justice, and invincible tolerance, forbearance, and forgiveness. With practice, you gradually erase the division between meditation and action until you are filled with endless joy and bliss. Your newfound freedom energizes your actions in daily life, and you become an inexhaustible source of the infinite life force. Your embrace of beings who feel lost and frightened and abandoned does not ruffle the surface of the great ocean of your happy, loving presence, as you unleash waves of dynamic effort to help them. (p. 72)”

WisdomCompassionMeditationBuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningSelflessness
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image

“I invite you to embrace a new reality. It is not a matter of religion – it is a matter of fact, a matter of science, a matter of experiment, and a matter of awareness. I invite you to awaken to the infinite life you already have, no matter what your worldview. I invite you to take up responsibility for your own evolutionary destiny. I invite you to take advantage of your priceless human opportunity to make a definitive turn toward ultimate security, complete freedom, and unbounded happiness. (p. 23, The Nature of Reality)”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningReincarnationSpiritual EvolutionInfinite Life
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image

“I more and more have come to feel that if anything positive could result from my teaching, any real benefit for any person, it should be that they get just a hint of the reality of their own former and future lives, that they diminish just the tiniest bit their usual „only this one life“ sense of cosmic disconnection, loneliness, alienation, and meaninglessness. I want everyone to be able to see more clearly their culturally common belief that, „My life only began when I was born and it ends when I die. So my responsibility to the universe is limited and even my responsibility to myself is limited. Nothing really matters because we‘ll be nothing in the end.“ If nothing else,I want to help you free yourself from that trap, that imprisoning way of thinking. To intensify your spiritual evolution, the first and most important step you must take is to embrace your boundlessness, take responsibility for your infinite continuity, and live your immortality here and now. (pp. 3-4, The Nature of Reality)”

BuddhismImmortalityReincarnationSpiritual EvolutionInfinite Life
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image

“There is no full stopping of anything, it‘s nonsense to say something can become nothing; your consciousness is a something, just like your body! You are body and mind, spirit and soul – the whole „you“ is what is immortal! Always has been and always will be, living and dying, changing and experiencing. The question is not really whether or not you go on, but rather how are you going to enjoy it? How are your friends going to enjoy you, once you‘re all going to be there together forever?(p. 4, The Nature of Reality)”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningInfinityReincarnationInfinite Life
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image

“From a strictly realistic perspective, should we bet on infinite life and endless consequences to our actions? Pascal would argue that our answer must be a resounding „Yes!“ We might as well assume that there will be a future continuity of our personal consciousness, however changed, however disembodied or re-embodied, however connected or disconnected we remain to the „self“ we experience in this life. If we make that bet on our own future lives, then we will prepare in whatever way we can to assure that we continue in a good way, in a better embodiment and environment. We will become truly responsible for our thoughts and our acts. Even though we may not remember the previous-life self who made those preparations, we certainly will want to enjoy the results. If our bet is misplaced, and our preparations have no effect because we actually do enter oblivion at death, we will simply not exist to regret having made them. But if we wrongly bet on noncontinuity and therefore do not prepare for the future and have to face it unprepared, then we may suffer seriously in our next existence, and we will very much regret our decision. Even if we don‘t remember making it, don‘t know why we are suffering, don‘t know how to fault ourselves for being so unconscious in our previous life, we will still suffer and regret. Pascal‘s wager is therefore a very safe bet – it has a clear-cut positive outcome. Whether our personal life is really terminal at death or in fact infinite in continuity, if we bet, like Pascal, on the existence of our life after death, in whatever form, we will be in the best possible position, however things turn out. (pp. 7-8, The Nature of Reality)”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningInfinityReincarnationInfinite Life
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image

“When you become aware of your selflessness, you realize that any way you feel yourself to be at any time is just a relational, changing construction. When that happens, you have a huge inner release of compassion. Your inner creativity about your living self is energized, and your infinite life becomes your ongoing work of art. (p. 54)”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningInfinite Life
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image

“Thus, once you have adopted such an attitude of infinite interconnectedness, you naturally want to liberate not just yourself but all beings from suffering. The Buddha calls this „the conception of the Spirit of Enlightenment“ it is the soul of the Bodhisattva, the person who dedicates him- or herself to helping all beings achieve total happiness. When you open to the inevitability of your infinite interconnection with other sensitive beings, you develop compassion. You learn to feel empathy for them, to love them, to want their happiness. You want to keep them from suffering, and you do so just as if they were a part of you. You don‘t think your behavior makes you special. You don‘t congratulate yourself for helping others, just as you wouldn't congratulate yourself for healing your own legs when you hurt it. It is natural for you to love your leg because it is one with you, and so it is natural for you to love others. You would certainly never harm another being. As the great Buddhist adept Shantideva (eighth-century Indian sage) wrote, „How wonderful will it be when all beings experience each other as limbs on the one body of life! (p. 27)”

BuddhismEnlightenmentOnenessInterconnectionShantidevaThe Way Of The Bodhisattva
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image

“We have all been each other‘s mothers, fathers, lovers, best friends, and worst enemies, and we will continue to be everything to each other throughout time. So in order for our lives to become completely actualized in enlightened happiness, all other beings must also experience their lives as full of happiness. We can leave out no single being. Like the Three Musketeers, we are „all for one and one for all“. We cannot liberate just ourselves from suffering, because it is impossible to achieve fully perfect bliss if anyone is excluded from it. Infinite interconnection logically mandates infinite responsibility. (p. 24)”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningThe Way Of The Bodhisattva
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image

“How are you going to experience bliss and voidness, wisdom and compassion, if you are a rigid, independent self? You can't enter into the ideal universe, the „buddhaverse“ as I like to call it, of enjoyment, wisdom, and compassion, until you first detach from this world of suffering, this prison that is the fixed and absolute self-image. (p. 67)”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningBuddhaverse
Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
Create image