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Buddha Quotes

Browse 275 quotes about Buddha.

Buddha Quotes

“BUKKO SAID: TAKING THINGS EASILY AND WITHOUT FORCING, AFTER SOME TIME THE RUSH OF THOUGHT, OUTWARD AND INWARD, SUBSIDES NATURALLY, AND THE TRUE FACE SHOWS ITSELF. That's what I have been telling you. To be a buddha is not a difficult job. It is not some achievement for which you need a Nobel Prize. It is the easiest thing in the world, because it has already happened without your knowing. The buddha is already breathing in you. Just a little recognition, just a little turning inwards... and that has not to be done forcibly. If you do it forcibly you will miss the point. It is very delicate. You have to look inward playfully, not seriously. That's what he means by "taking things easily." Don't take anything seriously. Existence is very easy. You have got your life without any effort, you are living your life without any effort. You are breathing perfectly well without being reminded; your heartbeat continues even in your sleep -- so easy is existence with you! But you are not so easy with existence. You are very close-fisted. You want everything to be turned into an 'achievement'. Enlightenment cannot be an achievement. That which you have already -- how can it be an achievement? The authentic master simply takes away things which you don't have and you believe you have, and he gives you that which you already have. You are having many things which you don't have at all, you just believe that you have them. The master's function is that of a surgeon, to cut all that is not you and leave behind just the essential core -- the eternal being. It is a very easy phenomenon; you can do it on your own. There are no problems and no risk in taking things easily, but people take things very tensely. They take things very seriously, and that spoils the whole game. And remember, life is a game. Once you understand it as a game, a deep playfulness arises on its own accord. The victory is not the point; the point is to play totally, joyously, dancingly. What is called playfulness is very essential in the inquiry of your own being.”

JoyExistenceAchievementEnlightenmentBuddhaLife Is A GameTurning Inward
Book:The Buddha: The Emptiness of the Heart
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“Stories are masks of God. That's a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brother's Grimm. Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth. Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God. So it seemes to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them.”

ChildrenGodStoriesTruthJesusBeliefBuddhaStorytellersJoseph CampbellScheherazadeMasks Of GodThe Brothers Grimm
Book:The Man on the Ceiling
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“Why should we place Christ at the top and summit of the human race? Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than Socrates? Was he more patient, more charitable, than Epictetus? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than Epicurus? In what respect was he the superior of Zoroaster? Was he gentler than Lao-tsze, more universal than Confucius? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior to those of Zeno? Did he express grander truths than Cicero? Was his mind subtler than Spinoza’s? Was his brain equal to Kepler’s or Newton’s? Was he grander in death – a sublimer martyr than Bruno? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the equal of Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race?”

WisdomKindnessAtheismBuddhismPatienceStoicismNewtonShakespeareBuddhaWilliam ShakespeareSocratesSpinozaKeplerIsaac NewtonCiceroEpicurusEpictetusGautama BuddhaJohannes KeplerBaruch SpinozaZenoZoroasterBrunoGiordano BrunoLaoziZeno Of Citium
Book:About The Holy Bible
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“We might be in search of “The Buddha”. Please simplify your search. Instead of “The Buddha” please go on a look out for “Your Buddha”. Its closer than you think and much more powerful than you can even imagine.”

InspirationalSpiritualityLife PhilosophyBuddhismBuddhaReligion And Philoshophy
Book:Life and its Reflection: Through my lens and words: A confused soul's journey within
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“Although wisdom is called immovable, this does not signify any insentient thing, like wood or stone; it moves as the mind is wont to move - forward or back, to the left, to the right, in the ten directions and to the eight points; and the mind that does not stop at all is called immovable wisdom.”

MindWisdomBuddhismWisdom QuotesZenBuddhistBuddhaZen BuddhismZen QuotesImmovable
Book:The unfettered mind: writings of the Zen master to the sword master
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“You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They say just the opposite -- they don't know what they are saying. They say, "When you breathe out, throw out all your misery and negativity; and when you breathe in, breathe in joy, positivity, happiness, cheerfulness." Atisha's method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery and suffering of all the beings of the world -- past, present and future. And when you breathe out, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all the benediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the method of compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings. And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of the world inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms the energy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed into blissfulness... then pour it out. Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like to do it again and again. Try it. It is one of the most practical methods -- simple, and it brings immediate results. Do it today, and see. That is one of the approaches of Buddha and all his disciples. Atisha is one of his disciples, in the same tradition, in the same line. Buddha says again and again to his disciples, "IHI PASSIKO: come and see!" They are very scientific people. Buddhism is the most scientific religion on the earth; hence, Buddhism is gaining more and more ground in the world every day. As the world becomes more intelligent, Buddha will become more and more important. It is bound to be so. As more and more people come to know about science, Buddha will have great appeal, because he will convince the scientific mind -- because he says, "Whatsoever I am saying can be practiced." And I don't say to you, "Believe it," I say, "Experiment with it, experience it, and only then if you feel it yourself, trust it. Otherwise there is no need to believe.”

MagicSelf HelpPositive ThinkingMysticismBuddhaOsho
Book:The Book of Wisdom
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“Modern society tends to operate in ways that isolate us in our littleness. We are encouraged to be consumers and economic units. We are assailed by advertising which carries the constant message that individual indulgence is all that matters. All this serves to weaken our spirit and put our world at risk. As our society becomes more and more spiritually impoverished, it is like a forest drying out in the heat of summer. The danger of a forest fire grows. (…) If the story we are living is not important, then our life will peter into apathy and we will be defenceless against tyranny and oppression. (…) There will always be bad big stories waiting to sweep us away. Indeed, we are already involved in them. By being consumer citizens we collude with all manner of ill: factory farming, armaments production, environmental damage, wars to protect oil supplies, third world debt, to name but a few. It is important to do better than this, to find a more noble story. (…) The Buddha enabled many people to see possibilities for their lives that they had not perceived before they met him. That is the function of a sage. He was able to speak the other person's language and to see their life in terms of the bigger picture how new meaning could be injected into the person's little story so that it began to serve the great story of peace and compassion in the world. He was an inspirer.”

CompassionInner PeaceMeaningful LifeBuddhaModern SocietyInspirer
Book:The Feeling Buddha: A Buddhist Psychology of Character, Adversity and Passion
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“Meditation is a flower and compassion is its fragrance. Exactly like that it happens. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower. Man is also carrying a potentiality for flowering within him. Until and unless the inner being of man flowers, the fragrance of compassion is not possible. Compassion cannot be practiced. It is not a discipline. You cannot manage it. It is beyond you. If you meditate, one day, suddenly, you become aware of a new phenomenon, absolutely strange -- from your being compassion is flowing towards the whole of existence; undirected, unaddressed, it is moving to the very ends of existence. Without meditation, energy remains passion; with meditation, the same energy becomes compassion. Passion and compassion are not two energies, they are one and the same energy. Once it passes through meditation, it is transformed, transfigured; it becomes qualitatively different. Passion moves downwards, compassion moves upwards; passion moves through desire, compassion moves through desirelessness; passion is an occupation to forget the miseries in which you live, compassion is a celebration, it is a dance of attainment, of fulfillment...you are so fulfilled that you can share. Now there is nothing left; you have attained the destiny that you were carrying for millennia within you like an unflowered potentiality, just a bud. Now it has flowered and it is dancing. Now what will happen to the energy? You start sharing. The same energy that was moving through the dark layers of passion, now moves with light rays upwards, uncontaminated by any desire, uncontaminated by any conditioning. It is uncorrupted by any motivation -- hence I call it fragrance. The flower is limited but not the fragrance. Once compassion happens, it is not rooted; it simply moves and goes on moving. Buddha has disappeared but not his compassion. The flower will die but the fragrance that has been released will remain forever and forever.”

CompassionMeditationBuddha
Author:Osho
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“Consider the sunlight. You may see it is near, yet if you follow it from world to world you will never catch it in your hands. Then you may describe it as far away and, lo, you will see it just before your eyes. Follow it and, behold, it escapes you; run from it and it follows you close. You can neither possess it nor have done with it. From this example you can understand how it is with the true Nature of all things and, henceforth, there will be no need to grieve or to worry about such things.”

TruthZenImpermanenceBuddhaNature Of Things
Book:The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind
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“Listen Bhikkhus, just as a buffalo boy recognizes each of his own buffaloes, a bhikkhu recognizes each of the essential elements of his own body. Just as a buffalo boy knows the characteristics and tendencies of each buffalo, a bhikkhu knows which actions of body, speech, and mind are worthy and which are not. Just as a buffalo boy scrubs his animals clean, a bhikkhu must cleanse his mind and body of desires, attachments, anger, and aversions.”

MindBodySpeechAngerAttachmentBuddhaAversionCleanse
Author:Thich Nhat Hanh
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“The first time that Padma, Giten's beloved friend for many lives, attended satsang with Giten, she did not really know how deep the satsang was going. After the satsang she exclaimed astonished: "Did you feel the timelessness, the eternal?" She had gone so deep that it is possible in the inner being, which is the dimension of the timeless, of the eternal. Padma described her experience of satsang with Giten: “I love satsang with Giten. Satsang with Giten is heaven. Satsang with Giten is like coming home. I went into samadhi three times during a satsang weekend with Giten - and I also got a map and an understanding for how to go into samadhi again. I was so scared that I would lose the stillness that I found in satsang in India, but I found the stillness again in satsang with Giten. Previously, I did not think that enlightenment was possible, but now I think it is possible.” The essence of satsang is meditation. Meditation is the art of discovering the light within. Meditation is the art of discovering your own soul. It is only through meditation that we can discover the light within. Otherwise man lives in darkness. Meditation enkindles something that is already latent in all of us, but which needs to be discovered. Normally we are only looking outwards. We never look within ourselves, so our back is turned at our inner source of light. It is being ignored and neglected, and the only ignorance is to ignore our inner being, our source of light within. To know the inner being is the only knowledge. All other knowledge is worthless. It may help you in the world, but it can't help you in eternity. Life is such a small and fast disappearing phenomenon. The real life is something totally different. Seventy or eighty years are nothing compared to eternity. To pay too much attention to this life, and ignoring the inner life is just stupid. But that is what the majority of people are doing, which is why the world is full of stupidity, darkness, ignorance, violence, unconsciousness, misery and suffering. The moment we turn our attention within ourselves, it enkindles a light within. Turning our attention within enkindles a light inside, which knows no end. Once it is enkindled, it starts to spread. First it fills you, then it starts spreading outside you, and ultimately it fills the whole universe. Those who attains to that state, where the inner light becomes as vast as the universe has become an enlightened one, an awakened one, a Buddha, a Christ.”

LifeSufferingChristMeditationEternityBuddhaSamadhiSatsangGnorance
Book:Man is Part of the Whole: Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Compassion, Freedom and Grace
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“The Buddha was not full of shit when he said the cause of suffering could be uprooted and that you can put an end to it once and for all. There is a way out of this mess humanity has found itself in. It’s just that the answer to the cause of suffering — and the way to end it — are nothing at all like what you think they are or imagine they should be.”

SufferingBuddhismEnlightenmentBuddha
Book:Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma
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“If you try to examine your life analytically, asking yourself who you are, finally you will realize that there is something you cannot reach. You don’t know what it is, but you feel the presence of something you want to connect with. This is sometimes called the absolute. Buddha and Dogen Zenji say true self. Christians say God.”

SelfGodSpiritChristianityTrue SelfBuddhaZen BuddhismDogen
Book:Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time
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“The Amida Buddha delivers those who recognize their own weakness and cowardice... Those who admit their own faults and above all, those who believe... A wholehearted trust in Amida Buddha gives peace of mind to those who've known despair. Even the most vicious and evil of sinners will attain salvation and be reborn in paradise... Even a piece of shit like me!”

SinBuddhismSalvationRedemptionBuddhaAmida Buddha
Book:Syndrome 1866 T05
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“Question : WHAT IS LOVE? Osho : It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes. At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics - the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination. You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously - you are not that conscious yet. You cannot do it deliberately; it is n unconscious mechanism. Hence so much possessiveness and so much jealousy become a part, an intrinsic part, of your love. That's why love creates more misery than joy. Ninety-nine percent of it is bitter; there is only that one percent of sugar that you have coated on top of it. And sooner or later that sugar disappears. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a stepping-stone, if you can use it as a meditation. If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released - but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of partaking, can partake. Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available - you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. 'Medicine' and 'meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic. Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help. When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness - because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life.... And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.”

LovePoliticsLustReal LoveDominationBuddhaPossessivenessHitler S Germany
Author:Osho
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