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Quote by Robert A.F. Thurman

“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)”

Quote by Robert A.F. Thurman

Book:Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within
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Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within

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Robert A.F. Thurman

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Book:Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe
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“Humanity needs three major revolutions: Firstly, the revolution of the elimination of arms production all over the world. Secondly, the revolution of abandonment of all religions while keeping only a small number of spiritual grounds, such as the concept of god or the spirit of the universe. And thirdly, the revolution of killing death by a powerful mobilization of science!”

DeathHumanityRevolutionMehmet Murat Ildan QuotesReligion QuotesArms RaceRevolutionsSpiritual RevolutionArms ProductionConcept Of God
Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
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“The ecological crisis is only an externalization of an inner malaise and cannot be solved without a spiritual rebirth of Western man […] It is still our hope that as the crisis created by man's forgetfulness of who he really is grows and that as the idols of his own making crumble one by one before his eyes, he will begin a true reform of himself, which always means a spiritual rebirth and through his rebirth attain a new harmony with the world of nature around him. Otherwise, it is hopeless to expect to live in harmony with that grand theophany which is virgin nature, while remaining oblivious and indifferent to the Source of that theophany both beyond nature and at the centre of man's being […] Few are willing to look reality in the face and accept the fact that there is no peace possible in human society as long as the attitude toward nature and the whole natural environment is one based on aggression and war. Furthermore, perhaps not all realize that in order to gain this peace with nature there must be peace with the spiritual order. To be at peace with the Earth one must be at peace with Heaven.”

SufismSufi WisdomRepentenceEcological AwarenessSpiritual RevolutionSpiritual Ecology
Book:Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man
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“Between the unenlightened human being and the Enlightened one, the Buddha, there are a number of intermediate degrees, embodied in different people at different stages of spiritual development. Most people are still short of Enlightenment, to a greater or lesser extent, but at the same time they are not wholly unenlightened. They stand somewhere between the unenlightened state and the state of full Enlightenment, and thus make up the spiritual hierarchy, the higher reaches of which can be referred to as the Bodhisattva hierarchy. By now we know enough about Bodhisattvas to have an appreciation of the intensity of their aspiration and commitment to the spiritual life. But even among Bodhisattvas there are degrees of spiritual attainment. The principle of spiritual hierarchy is very important.”

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Book:The Bodhisattva Ideal : Wisdom and Compassion in Buddhism
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“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The great eleventh-century Nalanda pandit Lama Atisha understood this well, and with a mighty heart of wise compassion he set out to marshal the Buddha‘s eighty-four thousand teachings – found in hundreds of scriptures and thousands of verses – into a logical, sequential, and practical road map to help guide spiritual seekers on the path, from ordinariness to liberation on to full and final awakening. This unique style of teaching came to be called Lam Rim, or the Gradual Path to Enlightenment, and, attesting to its beauty and effectiveness, has been preserved in all lineages and schools of Tibetan Buddhism for the past thousand years. One of the unique features of the Lam Rim is that it recognizes an alternative to the path of sudden, spectacular enlightenment and instead proposes a more modest, gradual awakening. From the beginning of Tibet‘s history of receiving dharma transmission from India, with the great debates involving the eighth-century Indian scholar Kamalashila, it was clear that for the masses the gradual process of studying, contemplating, and embodying insights over the course of a sustained, lifelong practice would be most appropriate and beneficial. While all methods have their validity and are useful for practitioners of various dispositions, the gradual approach explained in these pages is as relevant to modern students as it was to Tibetans centuries ago. – Geshe Tenzin Zopa”

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Book:Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human
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“Enlightenment is possible – for everyone. However, I don‘t think we will all awaken spontaneously in the way contemporary spiritual teachers Krishnamurti or Eckhart Tolle did. Most of us will never experience a voice from on high, a flash of life-altering insight, stigmata, or a transcendent miracle. Anything is possible, but the odds are not in our favor. What these teachers experienced is like winning the lottery. Yet, from the Buddhist perspective, most of us have already won the lottery: against all probability, we have been born as human beings with intact senses and a bit of interest in pursuing something spiritual. This is even more remarkable when we consider the obstacles and temptations of our materialistic culture, in which spirit is thrown out with the bathwater of religious dogma, God is proclaimed dead, consciousness is reduced to epiphenomena of the brain, and life‘s purpose is made a hedonic scramble on a treadmill to nowhere. What is far more likely than sudden enlightenment is gradual awakening. Following a systematic educational process like a college curriculum, gradual awakening builds on incremental insights into who we truly are, learning to care for ourselves and others, and discovering creative ways to engage the problems we all face. This gradual process of awakening doesn‘t offer an escape hatch to another realm of reality or disavow our human wounds, limits, and foibles in this realm; rather it embraces and transforms them, because the only way out is through.”

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Book:Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human
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