Quotes About Buddhism

The question is not whether but how Buddhism will change as it enters further into Western societies.

I study and practice Zen Buddhism because I experience it as illuminating and liberating. I remain personally engaged with this tradition because I continue to experience it as capable of leading me to truth and liberation, rather than, for example, because it is the tradition that I happen to have been raised in or the one that is most socially convenient for me to adhere to.

And as I stumbled onto Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, it was the first time I had ever read any sort of philosophy that really made a tremendous amount of sense. What I liked that was missing from my experience of Christianity growing up was a sort of acceptance, a sort of being OK with being imperfect and not focusing on the sin.

I've been practicing Buddhism for a while. So, I call myself a Jew-Bu, because my tribe is still Jew. But my philosophy and my practice is really Buddhist.

If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing.

Gotama did for the self was Copernicus did for the earth: he put it in its rightful place, despite its continuing to appear just as it did before. Gotama mo more rejected the existence of the self than Copernicus rejected the existence of the earth. Instead, rather than regarding it as a fixed, non-contingent point around which everything else turned, he recognized that each self was a fluid, contingent process just like everything else.

The root cause of suffering is explained as the second of the Buddha's truths. Quite simply, it is our own desire for sensual pleasure and our attachment to the objects of the senses that cause us so much pain. Being deluded concerning the reality of this world, we react to the phantoms of our perceptions with lust or anger. We are filled with desire or hatred, pride or jealousy, and all such conceits cause us to act in a way that gives pain to ourselves and others.

Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter.

In Buddhism, when you have a problem, YOU have a problem. It's yours. When you get over the tantrum you inevitably throw about the injustice of this, it's actually quite nice. If YOU have the problem, you also have the ability to solve it.

When I'm a Buddhist my family hates me. When I'm the Buddha they love me.

Do Buddhists believe in God, or not?" Ellie asked on their way to have dinner with the Abbot. "Their position seems to be," Vaygay replied dryly, "that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist." As

Buddhism teaches that joy and happiness arise from letting go. Please sit down and take an inventory of your life. There are things you've been hanging on to that really are not useful and deprive you of your freedom. Find the courage to let them go.

This is the nonduality principle of Buddhism: there is nothing to throw away. If a person has never suffered, he or she will never be able to know happiness. If a person does not know what hunger is, he or she will never know the joy of eating every day. Thus pain and suffering are a necessary condition of our understanding, of our happiness.

Discussing God is not the best use of our energy. If we touch the Holy Spirit, we touch God not as a concept but as a living reality. In Buddhism, we never talk about nirvana, because nirvana means the extinction of all notions, concepts, and speech. We practice by touching mindfulness in ourselves through sitting meditation, walking meditation, mindful eating, and so on.

The Buddha said this: The object of your practice should first of all be yourself. Your love for the other, your ability to love another person, depends on your ability to love yourself. If you are not able to take care of yourself, if you are not able to accept yourself, how could you accept another person and how could you love him or her?

According to the Buddha, life is available only in the here and now, the present moment. He said, "The past is already gone, the future is not yet here. There's only one moment for you to live, and that is the present moment." If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life.

Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. Only when we touch our true nature can we transcend the fear of non-being, the fear of annihilation. An American friend, whose name is Elly Kleinman, said to me Nothing is born, nothing dies. Although he did not practice as a Buddhist but as a company owner, he found the same truth the Buddha discovered.

What most people call power Buddhists call cravings. The five cravings are for wealth, fame, sex, fancy food, and lots of sleep. In Buddhism, we speak of the five true powers, five kinds of energy. The five powers are faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight. The five powers are the foundation of real happiness; they are based on concrete practices

In the light of Buddhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding.

When we direct our attention toward our suffering, we see our potential for happiness. We see the nature of suffering and the way out. That is why the Buddha called suffering a holy truth. When we use the word "suffering" in Buddhism, we mean the kind of suffering that can show us the way out.

Precepts in Buddhism are not imposed by some outside authority. They arise from our own insight based on the practice of mindfulness. To be attached to the form without understanding the essence is to fall into what Buddhism calls attachment to rules.

the four sacred and wonderful truths of Buddhism. The Four Noble Truths are: first, there is suffering; second, there is a path or a series of conditions that has produced the suffering; third, suffering can be ended—happiness is always possible; and fourth, there is a path that leads to the cessation of suffering, to happiness.

The bad things, don't do them. The good things, try to do them. Try to purify, subdue your own mind. That is the teaching of all buddhas.

Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, how much merit he had earned by building temples all over the country. Bodhidharma said, "None whatsoever." But if you wash one dish in mindfulness, if you build one small temple while dwelling deeply in the present moment — not wanting to be anywhere else, not caring about fame or recognition — the merit from that act will be boundless, and you will feel very happy.