Quotes About Enlightenment

We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself.

Man beset by anarchy, banditry, chaos and extinction must at last resort turn to that chamber of horrors, human enlightenment. For he has nowhere else to turn.

Both Madison and Thomas Jefferson were influenced by the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu, who defined a "republic" as a self-regulating political society whose mainspring was civic virtue.

Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason.

the question… as always, the question is how to look at the sun without being blinded.

But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.

Think of yourself as your own Zen Master. Such masters would beat their pupils and deliberately lead them to points of maximum doubt and inner tension, knowing such moments precede enlightenment.

See Beyond the Moment

After all, you might argue, we are now so sophisticated and technologically advanced, so progressive and enlightened; we have moved well beyond our primitive roots; we are in the process of rewriting our nature. But the truth is in fact the opposite—we have never been more in the thrall of human nature and its destructive potential than now. And by ignoring this fact, we are playing with fire.

The Light save me from men who think with the hair on their chests. Though I don't know as there are any other kind.

la verdadera educación es ese deseo espiritual que tenemos de conocer la verdad.

If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas

People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists.

Zen is the "spirit of the valley," not the mountaintop.

Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? He had an intuitive feeling, growing rapidly, that what he had stumbled on was no small gimmick. It went far beyond. How far, he didn't know.

Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer.

In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine of Tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," which asserts that everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided. To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened.

Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. The allegory of

Mu means "no thing." Like "Quality" it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, "No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no." It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. "Unask the question" is what it says.

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.

Superioritatea unui om care s-a eliberat de dorin?a de a tr?i este foarte mare.

Ignorance can't be pardoned. Only cured.

Education gives us the power to turn information into meaning.