Quotes About Buddhist

The Dalai Lama calls it "the enemy's gift." From a Buddhist perspective, battling with enemies can help you develop greater compassion for and tolerance of others. "In order to practice sincerely and to develop patience," he says, "you need someone who willfully hurts you. Thus, these people give us real opportunities to practice these things. They are testing our inner strength in a way that even our guru cannot.

Laos is a deeply Buddhist country, and my visit included a traditional Tak Bat ceremony, in which you get up at sunrise and make offerings to Buddhist monks.

I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

Suffering from feelings of inner emptiness, some meditation practitioners may misunderstand and likewise be attracted to the Buddhist notion of 'no-self,' and mistakenly seek doctrinal validation for their feelings of emptiness.

I'm much more Buddhist. I mean, I'm not a Buddhist. I should be so lucky to be a Buddhist, a real Buddhist, but of all the things I investigated, that seems to make the most sense to me.

My mother was a Tibetan Buddhist.

Philosophically, I would say that I am Buddhist.

I am interested in suffering and, in particular, the Buddhist idea that in pain, you can find beauty.

Well, I don't know about my mum; I think she is almost Buddhist in her approach to life in that she's not going to work very hard at any particular thing and she's not going to let any particular thing trouble her. I'm very different. I aspire to things and I worry about things.

The heart qualities of faith, confidence, and trust are actual powers we can cultivate. In Buddhist texts they are likened to a magical gem that settles impurities in water. Faith in the possibility of awakening, confidence in the moment's experience and in the nature of awareness itself, trust in the direction of our lives—all of these settle doubt, confusion, and agitation. They create an inner environment of clarity, stillness, and beauty.

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found. Here we cannot fail to notice how this Buddhist view is diametrically opposed to the Cartesian cogito ergo sum: 'I think, therefore I am.

This spirit of tolerance and understanding has been from the beginning one of the most cherished ideals of Buddhist culture and civilization. That is why there is not a single example of persecution or the shedding of a drop of blood in converting people to Buddhism, or in its propagation during its long history of 2500 years. It spread peacefully all over the continent of Asia, having more than 500 million adherents today.

The whole difficulty of the spontaneity for which the tantrika longs, whether Shaivist or Buddhist, is to succeed in seizing the moment with the same lively agility with which one would seize a venomous snake. Hesitation can be fatal.

as a Buddhist he insists that sharing one's tradition with another "does not mean wanting others to abandon their own spiritual roots and embrace your faith. . . .We must help them return to their tradition," whether it be Christian, Jewish, etc. (Nhat Hanh, 1995, p. 196). Thich

I like change. There's something Buddhist about it - continuous change is wonderful.

As people gradually stopped thinking of suffering as a threat, Buddhist cosmology, which had been constructed on the terror of suffering, steadily lost its connection to everyday reality. What had originally been a living belief turned into myth.

Buddhist cosmology is a spiritual legacy of the past, yet it remains a force capable of stirring the imagination of people today. Like old ceremonial garments no longer worn, it retains an attraction for us and can transport our minds to the spiritual world of ancient and medieval people, in the same way that the Greek myths, though they have lost their significance as a religion, continue to maintain their hold on our imagination.

Buddhist cosmology according to the H?nay?na tradition centers on (1) the realm of Mount Sumeru, (2) dharmas (the Buddha's teachings), and (3) the notion that the Buddha (??kyamuni) is a historical person. In Mah?y?na Buddhism, (1) the various "buddha-realms" are more prominent than Mount Sumeru, (2) the Buddha (or buddhas) takes precedence over dharmas, and (3) the Buddha is a superhuman (cosmological) existence.

The idea of karma and transmigration are the foundation of Buddhist cosmology, whose purpose is to illuminate their nature and relationship to human existence. Unlike the modern scientific view of the cosmos, Buddhist cosmology is meaningless without the human element.

That the object of the Brahmins in giving up beef-eating was to snatch away from the Buddhist Bhikshus the supremacy they had acquired is evidenced by the adoption of vegetarianism by Brahmins.

The gopis seek Krishna, another part of themselves that create ecstasy. The man seeks the woman, the woman seeks the man. The Tantric Buddhist seeks annihilation of the ego.

Career success means making enough money to lead the kind of life you would like to lead as a practicing Buddhist.

Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars.