Quotes from Bhikkhu Bodhi

Truthful speech provides, in the sphere of interpersonal communication, a parallel to wisdom in the sphere of private understanding.

Most beings live immersed in the enjoyment of sensual pleasures. Others, driven by the need for power, status, and esteem, pass their lives in vain attempts to fill an unquenchable thirst. Many, fearful of annihilation at death, construct belief systems that ascribe to their individual selves, their souls, the prospect of eternal life. A few yearn for a path to liberation but do not know where to find one. It was precisely to offer such a path that the Buddha has appeared in our midst.

Speech can break lives, create enemies, and start wars, or it can give wisdom, heal divisions, and create peace. This has always been so, yet in the modern age the positive and negative potentials of speech have been vastly multiplied by the tremendous increase in the means, speed, and range of communications.

Having abandoned past influxes, not creating new ones, he does not go along with desire, nor is he a dogmatist. Released from speculative views, the wise person, free of self-reproach, is not tainted by the world. (19) 914. "He is remote from all phenomena, from whatever is seen, heard, or sensed. With his burden dropped, released,214 the muni, not given to mental construction, does not desist, does not yearn" — so said the Blessed One. (20) [179]

Sam?dhi, as wholesome concentration, collects together the ordinarily dispersed and dissipated stream of mental states to induce an inner unification.

Delusion (moha) means mental darkness: the thick coat of insensitivity which blocks out clear understanding.

One-pointedness of mind explains the fact that in any act of consciousness there is a central point of focus, towards which the entire objective datum points from its outer peripheries to its inner nucleus.

The teaching is concerned with the arising and cessation of suffering, which can be observed in one's own experience. It does not set up even the Buddha as an unimpeachable authority but invites us to examine him to determine whether he fully deserves our trust and confidence.

something may be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be empty, hollow, and false; but something else may not be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be factual, true, and unmistaken.