Quotes from Robert A.F. Thurman

No sane person fears nothingness.

Buddhism is all about science. If science is the systematic pursuit of the accurate knowledge of reality, then science is Buddhism, Buddhism is science.

There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. it should be open to the spirit not to lock itself up in the letter. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death.

You yourself can be god. You really are that, in fact. You, yourself, are reality. You, yourself, are buddha. (p. 18)

Eventually, you reach your goal of complete nondual freedom, the simultaneous nondual experience of supremely liberated cognitive dissonance, wherein you joyfully live the moment-to-moment reconciliation of all dichotomies. (p. 77)

There is no need for you to formally promote certain doctrines: your very presence becomes a teaching example to others, a liberating art that opens their imagination to the potential freedom they also can experience. (p. 79)

We have the assurance of the enlightened beings that reality is goodness, that reality is freedom from suffering, that reality is bliss. So we should never fear to open ourselves to reality, to cast aside our preconceptions and biases, and to open more and more to whatever turns out to be real. You can have faith in enlightenment, faith in evolutionary potential, faith in infinity, faith in your infinite self. (p. 222)

Buddhas have more fun.

The strange thing about the messianic ideal of liberating yourself so that you can free all others is that just trying to adopt it makes you feel happier. Even though you know on some level that there is only so much you can get done in any given period of time, the fact that you do not let go of the determination to do everything gives you immense good cheer. (p. 20)

The first two steps of the path: the recognition of the preciousness of human life, which is endowed with liberty and opportunity, and the awareness of the immediacy of death. (p. 79)

Our minds perform magic all the time. (p. 212)

The world is what the individual makes it. A world of individuals is the intersubjective, collective mind field of all those individuals. Standing on the ground of freedom, we can see things afresh, enter relationships renewed and with a new purpose of sharing freedom and happiness. We can become poets and seers of reality. We can become great adepts, true individuals, agents of compassion. To live in a world is to be constantly creating that world. (p. 215)

A buddha is the butterfly that finally emerges from the cocoon of the human life-form. (p. 63)

Great dangers stalk the globe—the four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, famine, pestilence, and death. There is no mystery about them. They are self-fulfilling prophecies. Joyous, transcendent creativity expresses itself in the positive vision that is the key to defeat the general that commands the four horsemen—despair itself. Trust, hope, and creativity can defeat the horsemen. We must not just call for them. We must develop them step-by-step.

The power of the enlightened being to affect his or her environment is immense. The enlightened mind can landscape worlds, preserve planets, save whole environments, create buddhaverses. The enlightened being is almost like a god. (p. 150)

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)

Silence is the Buddha's greatest expression. It's the Buddha's great teaching, what the Hindus call "You are That" in the Upanishads. "You are the ultimate reality. You are God!" the Hindus boldly declare. But the Buddha's way of affirming that fact is by being silent, because if you are that, after all, if you are what the theists think is God, you already know it yourself. (p. 15)