Quotes About Buddhism

Buddhism is more about an ethic and philosophy than an actual religion.

The term fraud alludes to a saying of the Buddha which the Mahayanists were fond of quoting: "All conditioned things are worthless, unsubstantial, fraudulent, deceptive and unreliable, but only fools are deceived by them. Nirvana alone, the highest reality, is free from deception." Two classes of facts are here distinguished-the deceptive multiple things on one side, and the true reality of the Absolute on the other.

In the present period of history we find ourselves in one of the worst possible cosmic ages, with Buddhism in full decline, and the people everywhere singularly obtuse about matters spiritual, and incredibly dimwitted when confronted with the wisdom of the sages.

The last five hundred years: It is well known from the Scriptures of all schools that after the Buddha's Nirvana the Dharma will progressively decline, and that every five hundred years a decisive change for the worse takes place... "The last five hundred years, when Buddhists will be strong in nothing but fighting and reproving, and the Dharma itself becomes practically invisible.

Buddhist tradition, in fact, distinguishes two classes of people, the "common worldlings" and the "saints" (arya), who occupy two distinct planes of existence, respectively known as the "worldly" and the "supramudane." The saints alone are truly alive, while the worldlings just vegetate along in a sort of dull and aimless bewilderment. Not content with being born in the normal way, the saints have undergone a spiritual rebirth, which is technically known as "winning the path.

Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, nor does form differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form.

I believe forgiveness is possible for everybody, for everything, but I'm a Buddhist.

Theosophy tries to bridge the gulf between Buddhism and Christianity by pointing to the fundamental spiritual truths on which both religions are built, and by winning people to regard the Buddha and the Christ as fellow-laborers, and not as rivals.

Just studying Buddhism, then meditating and going to Buddhist monasteries, talking to Buddhist monks, combined with the Thai people themselves, changed the way I look at the world.

Thanks to my Buddhist faith, to the positivity that arose from prayer, I put the optimism of determination before the pessimism of logic and reason.

The decline of Buddhism in the Ganges heartland and the peninsula occurred before the Turkish conquest.

As Buddhist teachers often point out, knowledge, in the sense of prajña, is not knowledge about anything. There is no abstract knower of an experience that is separate from the experience itself.

Eventually light prevails, you just have to be patient. So practice Buddhism, learn to be enlightened, put a smile on your face, go find a great teacher, meditate, and stay funny.

While there may have lived an individual teacher who gave the ancient wisdom its peculiarly "Buddhist" coloring, his personality is completely overshadowed, as he must have wished it should be, by the eternal substance with which he identified himself. In other words, "the Buddha is only anthropomorphic, not a man".

A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that Nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect.

In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering.

The teachings of Buddhism, and of Eastern spirituality generally, focus on the primacy of the mind.

We spend our lives lost in thought. The question is, what should we make of this fact? In the West, the answer has been "Not much." In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering.

According to the Buddhist teachings, human beings have a distorted view of reality that leads them to suffer unnecessarily. We grasp at transitory pleasures. We brood about the past and worry about the future. We continually seek to prop up and defend an egoic self that doesn't exist. This is stressful—and spiritual life is a process of gradually unraveling our confusion and bringing this stress to an end.

Unlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y.

Buddhism was too subtle for him then, as it is today. To the evolved mind of the Gautama Buddha, any desire was an obscene distortion, even the desire for God. Mustafa is one of those passionate souls who were made for Islam, the warrior religion.

I am moonlighting for the Buddha.

One thing that these Buddhists have certainly gotten right is that attention to attention is the key to taking control of your mental life.

Having abandoned the taking of life, refraining from killing, we dwell without violence, with the knife laid down, scrupulous, full of mercy, trembling with compassion for all sentient beings.