Quotes About Buddha

If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball.

I often wonder when I make a film - I'm thinking of making a film of the Buddha - and I often wonder: If Buddha had all the elements that are given to a director - if he had music, if he had visuals, if he had a video camera - would we get Buddhism better?

There are an infinite number of ways in which people suffer. Therefore, there must be an infinite number of ways in which the Dharma is made available to people." What he meant by Dharma was the universal teachings of the Buddha on suffering and the possibility of liberation from suffering.

When your own painful experiences inspire you to the extent that you become truly determined to break free of suffering, that is what the Buddha taught as the attitude of "renunciation.

The word buddha, however, simply means "awake" or "awakened." It does not refer to a particular historical person or to a philosophy or religion.

I was reminded of a proverb: 'When a clay Buddha statue sails across the river, it can hardly protect itself.

We cannot see Beauty till we let go our hold of it. It was Buddha who conquered the world, not Alexander - this is untrue when stated in dry prose - oh when shall we be able to sing it? When shall all these most intimate truths of the universe overflow the pages of printed books and leap out in a sacred stream like the Ganges from the Gangotrie?

If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow.

I have been blessed often by Buddha, but equally by America.

To live another's dharma, to try to be a Buddha or to be a Christ because Christ did it, doesn't get us there; it just makes us mimickers

The pure Buddha, the mind that is clear of attachment, exists anywhere in perfect harmony with all the forces around it.

One can go down the line and see that every claim that Jesus made of Himself challenged my culture's most basic assumptions about life and meaning. (It is important to remember, of course, that these basic religions within the Indian framework are also not in concert with each other. Buddha was a Hindu before he rejected some of Hinduism's fundamental doctrines and conceived in their place the Buddhist way. Islam radically differs from Hinduism.) Ironically

The Christ idea and the Buddha idea are perfectly equivalent mythological symbols. Two ways of saying the same thing: that a transcendent energy consciousness informs the whole world and informs you.

Understanding "no-self" does not come from destroying something we call "self" or "ego." The great awakening or discovery of the Buddha revealed that there was no self, no permanent I, to begin with. So if there is nothing we have to get rid of, then understanding selflessness very simply comes from careful awareness of what actually is happening moment to moment.

Actions of the Mind The last three unskillful actions the Buddha pointed out are actions of mind. These are subtler than actions of body or speech and take keen investigation to explore and understand. The first of them is covetousness, the wanting mind, the feeling that we never have enough.

In this very straightforward teaching, the Buddha helps us understand the practice of freedom with a mature and long-ranging vision. Freedom is not simply doing what we want when we want it. That is addiction. Freedom is the wisdom to choose wisely.

BALANCING THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES Mindfulness also works to balance what the Buddha called "the five spiritual faculties": faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.

The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, expressed it well: Live, you say, in the present; Live only in the present. But I don't want the present. I want reality; . . . I only want reality, things without time present.3 And the Buddha

The second skillful action is morality (sila in Pali). In his praise of Ghatikara above, the Buddha Kassapa reiterates the five basic precepts of nonharming: refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and taking intoxicants.

One of the oldest recitations of faith in Buddhism is taking refuge in what is called the Triple Gem: the Buddha himself, that person who awakened under the Bodhi Tree twenty-five hundred years ago; the Dharma, the truth, the law, and the body of teachings; and the Sangha, which means, in particular, the order of monks and nuns and, more generally, the community of wise beings. "I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha.

The Buddha's teaching is never about blind belief, but about the wisdom of our own inquiry.

The freedom of thought allowed by the Buddha is unheard of elsewhere in the history of religions. This freedom is necessary because, according to the Buddha, man's emancipation depends on his own realization of Truth, and not on the benevolent grace of a god or any external power as a reward for his obedient good behaviour.

A man and only a man can become a Buddha. Every man has within himself the potentiality of becoming a Buddha, if he so wills it and endeavours. [...] Man's position, according to Buddhism, is supreme. Man is his own master, and there is no higher being or power that sits in judgment over his destiny.

The Buddha says: 'Never by hatred is hatred appeased, but it is appeased by kindness. This is an eternal truth.