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Enlightenment Quotes

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Enlightenment Quotes

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

“There was a famous Zen master whom people would seek out to become enlightened. He was strict and would occupy people with things having nothing to do with seeking enlightenment. You see, that is the only way to achieve enlightenment; by not focusing on achieving it. Then, one day it will just come to you.”

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

“Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be. Not the saint you're striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You're already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, look in, let go.”

“The very desire to seek spiritual enlightenment is in fact nothing but the grasping tendency of the ego itself, and thus the very search for enlightenment prevents it. The 'perfect practice' is therefore not to search for enlightenment but to inquire into the motive for seeking itself. You obviously seek in order to avoid the present, and yet the present alone holds the answer: to seek forever is to miss the point forever. You always already are enlightened Spirit, and therefore to seek Spirit is simply to deny Spirit.”

“Duality is the real root of our suffering and of all our conflicts. All our concepts and beliefs, no matter how profound they may seem, are like nets which trap us in dualism. When we discover our limits we have to try to overcome them, untying ourselves from whatever type of religious, political, or social conviction may contain us. We have to abandon such concepts as 'enlightenment', 'the nature of the mind', and so on, until we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence.”

“When we understand clearly that inner peace is the real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous enthusiasm to practice”

“Healing comes when the individual remembers his or her identity—the purpose chosen in the world of ancestral wisdom—and reconnects with that world of Spirit.”

“Meditation on the self is the highest form of true method-less meditation, for it brings self-awareness – which is beyond the everyday joy and sorrow. True meditation does not put you in control of your sorrow, rather it takes your mind beyond that very sorrow, as well as joy, into the kingdom of contentment – a kingdom without ideology – without cognitive extremes, such as radical rationalism, radical romanticism or radical emotionalism. In that kingdom, you simply are a human, with no name, no nationality, no tradition, no culture, no religion, no gender and no social image – simply a human.”

“Enlightenment is not about attaining an ultimate level of intelligence or intellect. It is regained by shedding all the ideas, illusion and binds thrust on you and that you then so readily accrue.”

“We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency, change. That everything changes is the basic truth of each existence. When we realize the everlasting truth of “everything changes” and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in Nirvana.”

“On my journey from the fantastical to the practical, spirituality has gone from being a mystical experience to something very ordinary and a daily experience. Many don’t want this, instead they prefer spiritual grandeur, and I believe that is what keeps enlightenment at bay. We want big revelations of complexity that validates our perceptions of the divine. What a let down it was to Moses when God spoke through a burning bush! But that is exactly the simplicity of it all. Our spiritual life is our ordinary life and it is very grounded in every day experience. For me, it is the daily practice of kindness, mindfulness, happiness, and peace.”

“Om is the things, Om is the ingredient, Om is the container and the content of this universe.”

“Om is that God of love. Like a loving mother Om cleans us of our clutters collected through many incarnations.”

“I am Not, but the Universe is my Self.”

“... for as the reality of light cannot be proved or described in terms of visible shape, the reality of the infinite cannot be proved in terms of the finite. For this reason every attempt to prove the existence of God by logic is a foregone failure. Logic cannot reach God. It may travel backwards in time from effect to cause, effect to cause, but as long as it stays in time, as it must, it cannot touch the eternal. That which doesn't not begin with the infinite cannot end with it.”

“Nothing Yet Everything (The Sonnet) I am no sufi, yet, Every sufi is my reflection. I am no advaitin, yet, Every advaitin is my reflection. I am no mystic, yet, Every mystic is my reflection. I am no buddha, yet, Every buddha is my reflection. I am no humanist, yet, Every humanist is my reflection. I am no humanitarian, yet, Every humanitarian is my reflection. I am nothing, that's why I am everything. Or perhaps, I'm everything, that's why I'm nothing!”

“Human is a speck of order upon the fabric of chaos - tiny yet evident, fragile yet unflinching - a daring dot in the vastness of the universe - brutal to its historic core, forged from the jungle ore, yet eyes aiming at infinite stars, with heart healing from past woe.”

“You are always going to meet disturbances outside yourself, it's the experience of living ~ There will be dark days and there will be days of laughter and somewhere in between you'll create a healthy balance within yourself and call it a life. We can't stop the storm, but we can learn to watch it pass.”

“We spend so much time trying to change others – in part – because we do not deeply believe in and embrace ourselves as we already are. And so more often than not we do not learn to trust and utilize our gifts and power whole-heartedly enough to pursue and fulfill our own passions, purpose and possibilities.”

“The knowledge a student seeks is already inside the school bag she carries. She goes to school to transfer that knowledge inside her mind. At the end of the year, the entire bag is supposed to become part of her mind. Your ideas and beliefs about God are like a school bag you carry around. They are supposed to burn and become an integral part of you. Don’t fall in love with the bag. It is supposed to go.”

“The mystery and art of living are as grand as the sweep of a lifetime and the lifetime of a species. And they are as close as beginning, quietly, to mine whatever grace and beauty, whatever healing and attentiveness, are possible in this moment and the next and the next one after that.”

“The hilarious irony is that Buddhists - who deny the existence of the self - are the most self-obsessed people you can find. The idea of karma is a clear marker of self-obsession. People actually believe that the vast cosmos is infatuated about what they do - as opposed to completely indifferent - and goes to all the trouble of rearranging itself to teach them personal karmic "lessons.”

“A veil over the Knowledge of the Self (Gnan) is agnan, and a veil over the Vision of the Self (Darshan) is adarshan. What would be the outcome of agnan and adarshan? Kashay (anger-pride-deceit-greed). And what is the result of Gnan-Darshan? Samadhi (freedom from the effects of mental, physical, and externally-induced problems).”