Quotes About Enlightenment

And just as a path that goes to a mountain does not cause the mountain, the path of practice leads us to this highest freedom, but does not cause it.

Not Seeing Dukkha Is Dukkha

It is the truth that liberates, not your efforts to be free.

and the liberating insight into how suffering in our lives is born from ignorance and ends through wisdom.

No one can practice for us. The Buddhas just point the way.

To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad thing come forth and experience themselves is awakening.

Do no harm, act for the good, purify the mind." The flowering of all the great traditions of Buddhism derives from the teachings in this one simple verse.

the five aggregates" (khandhas, in Pali) of experience: material elements, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness.

In short, the five aggregates of clinging are dukkha.

Defects of Samsara The fourth reflection that turns our minds toward the Dharma is the reflection on the defects of samsara. Samsara is a Pali and Sanskrit word that means "perpetual wandering," or the wandering through the endless cycles of existence.

Hearing the Dharma and sharing it with others is the fifth skillful action. Words have power, and many people have become enlightened simply by attentive listening to the teachings. Listening itself is an art.

Better than one hundred years lived without seeing the arising and passing of things / Is one day lived seeing their arising and passing."2 What does this say about what we value and work for in our lives, and about the liberating effect of seeing directly, in the moment, the truth of change?

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

Yes, now I see. But I still don't think I understand.

Age is not the flight of years; it is really the dawn of wisdom and Divine knowledge in you.

There is no religion higher than truth.

But oh!—this so queer sensation between my eyes, in my lower forehead—is it the third eye, of enlightenment? Opening, at last?

Lack of knowledge causes fear, and knowledge removes it.

Nothing better is possible until we cease to be mental savages in industry and business, and become men and women. This can only come about by the rise of the whole race to a higher viewpoint. And this can only come about by the rise of such individuals here and there as are ready for the higher viewpoint.

The inconceivable idea of the sun.You must become an ignorant man againAnd see the sun again with an ignorant eyeAnd see it clearly in the idea of it.

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne. We shall return at twilight from the lecture Pleased that the irrational is rational

Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

You must become an ignorant man again And see the sun again with an ignorant eye And see it clearly in the idea of it.

The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.