Quotes About Spirituality

If you want to believe in reincarnation, you have to believe that this life, what you're living through right now, is the afterlife. You're missing out on the afterlife you looked forward to in your last existence by worrying about your next life. This is what happens after you die.

We live forever by practicing the Buddha Way right now. If we wind up being reborn after we pass from this life, that's fine. If not, that's okay too.

The very sense of wondering is God wondering.

He had the saffron robes, the shaved head, and that mellow spiritual way of talking that let you know here was a guy who had truly achieved a rare state of inner with-it-ness.

So I do fear death in the sense that I find the prospect of dying pretty scary. But I no longer fear that I will one day be annihilated and cease to exist.

God is not the possession of any religion. If anything, religion can be a path away from God. God cannot be bound up inside churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. Those are just community centers where people gather to hang out with their friends. God is no more to be found in those places than he is in rock clubs or back-alley bars. God is in the wilderness, and God is in the city. Everywhere you go God is there. God walks with you. God is you, and God is the very act of walking.

If you don't want to be grabbed by God," Zen teacher Jiyu Kennet said, "don't stare at a wall. Definitely don't sit still.

Often statues depicting the Buddha's moment of enlightenment show him touching the ground. This symbolizes that his enlightened state included a firm grounding in this reality instead of serving as an escape from it.

Buddhism started not when Shakyamuni had his great revelation by himself. Lots of people had done that before. It began when he made his first efforts to transform that into a communal practice. Buddhism, then, is not something you do by yourself.

You can do zazen by yourself. You do Zen Buddhism with other people.

When we forget God we make as big a mistake as we do when we insist that our concept of God is the only one that matters. When we forget God we treat one another and the world we live in as objects. We fail to recognize that whenever we harm someone else or the world we live in, we only harm ourselves.

There is no separation between creator, creation, and created thing. You simply admit that you are an extension of the creation, a part of it, accepted by it. Eventually the effort becomes how to live within the intention of the creator. To find this out and follow this Way, is to live.

I never entered a monastery as a full-time live-in monk, which many people consider the only way to practice what D?gen preached. But this would ignore the fact that D?gen taught a number of lay students throughout his life and, indeed, recommended zazen as a daily practice not only for those who live in monasteries but also to anyone interested in self-discovery.

So Buddhism is not the worship of a guy named Buddha; it's learning to manifest your unique inner Buddha.

When we're tempted to give up, we must remember God is long-suffering, change is a process, and repentance is a pattern in our lives.

Joseph Smith taught that true faith is more than knowing there is a God. It is knowing God—knowing His attributes and His relationship to us. It is knowing that He has a plan for us and that we are living in accordance with that plan (see Lectures on Faith, 3: 2–5).

As a painter paints pictures on a wall, the intellect goes on creating the world in the heart always.

Would you choose water over wine?

He who searches for inward things sees not with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of the soul.

One must die at the present level to be reborn onto a higher plane not just in the physical state, but also in the conscious and emotional state.

Some imagine the difference between heaven and hell to be a matter of geography. Not so. The difference is much more evident in the individuals who dwell there.

In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished.

You said their prayer - is this the religion you believe in, then?" "I believe in them all." Vin frowned. "None of them contradict each other?" Sazed smiled. "Oh, often and frequently they do. But, I respect the truths behind them all.

You are a god. To me, at least. It doesn't matter how easily you can be killed, how much Breath you have, or how you look. It has to do with who you are and what you mean.