Quotes About Enlightenment

While there may have lived an individual teacher who gave the ancient wisdom its peculiarly "Buddhist" coloring, his personality is completely overshadowed, as he must have wished it should be, by the eternal substance with which he identified himself. In other words, "the Buddha is only anthropomorphic, not a man".

Not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution.

Let there be light. This

As a student I thought there was a formula of some kind that I would get hold of somewhere, and thereby become and artist. There is a formula, but it has not been in books. It is really plain old courage, standing on one's own feet, and forever seeking enlightenment; courage to develop your way, but learning from the other fellow; experimentation with your own ideas, observing for yourself, a rigid discipline of doing over that which you can improve.

who seek to know Him fully, as He has already blessed

A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that Nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect.

It's not the accumulation of knowledge, but the realization of the self that marks the true power of the warrior.

the deepest goal of spirituality is freedom from the illusion of the self—

But the deepest goal of spirituality is freedom from the illusion of the self—and to seek such freedom, as though it were a future state to be attained through effort, is to reinforce the chains of one's apparent bondage in each moment.

Witnessing the misadventures of supposedly enlightened adepts and their devotees can be depressing. But it can also be amusing.

In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering.

In my view, the realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life.

Leaving aside the metaphysics, mythology, and sectarian dogma, what contemplatives throughout history have discovered is that there is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves; there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self.

The ultimate wisdom of enlightenment, whatever it is, cannot be a matter of having fleeting experiences. The goal of meditation is to uncover a form of well-being that is inherent to the nature of our minds. It must, therefore, be available in the context of ordinary sights, sounds, sensations, and even thoughts. Peak experiences are fine, but real freedom must be coincident with normal waking life.

Once one recognizes the selflessness of consciousness, the practice of meditation becomes just a means of getting more familiar with it.

My goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that the conventional sense of self is an illusion—and that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment.

The realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts, but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life.

Socrates—were

Knowledge squared is wisdom, and wisdom squared is virtue.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

He shook his head. Some people think that they like music,but they have no idea what it's really about. They're kindding themselves. Then there are people who feel strongly about music, but just aren't listening to the right stuff. They're misguided. And then there are people like me. ... People like you, I said. What kind of people are those? ... The kind who live for music and are constantly seeking it out, anywhere they can. Who can't imagine a life without it. They're enlightened.

No reading can be called a vice.

we all still bask in the glow and the warmth of Mr. Franklin's rising sun." Sounds good.