Quotes About Enlightenment

You can't force someone to see the truth, just like you can't force a blind man to see.

The truth about who we really are, beyond all appearances, is knowledge worth seeking.

A true initiate will never force anyone who has not reached a certain level of maturity to accept his truth.

The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

Be a lamp to yourself. Be your own confidence. Hold on to the truth within yourself as to the only truth.

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.

Outside and above the mind there is the play of a consciousness which is lighted by the higher Truth, but man is not conscious of it and of that he has to be conscious.

Beauty is the brilliance of truth.

Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth.

We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth hidden in isolated facts. When we know that this One in us is One in all, then our truth is revealed.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

They will set aside what they have believed about the world, divesting themselves of all preconceptions, all judgments.... They will do it, then they will send their minds out to seek the truth.

Does one really have to fret About enlightenment? No matter what road I travel, I'm going home.

Such a Zen dialogue is basically a contest, but it's really an anti-contest. It's a kind of reverse or paradoxical contest. It works like this: two people talk, and the first one who speaks from the ego loses. The one who wants to win is certainly going to lose.

In India, there is a word that means both "cessation" and "satisfaction" as a single linked concept. The word is nirvana.

a beginning meditator can sometimes get a taste of the stage that, according to the Visuddhimagga, immediately precedes enlightenment.

It's not intuitively obvious that noting Gone would bring fulfillment, but many people over the ages have discovered this, hence the Sanskrit word nirvana. Are there any other counterintuitive "Gone goodies"? Indeed, yes. There is one more major one.

Gone points to the Source of your own consciousness.

If science were to make enlightenment massively available to humanity, we should expect to see numerous and stunning positive improvements in the human situation: dramatic reduction in conflict and violence from the interpersonal level to the international level, reduction in crime and substance addiction, vast improvement in the global baseline of physical and mental health, and probably even a general elevation of human intelligence.

But in my experience as a teacher, enlightenment usually sneaks up on people. Sometimes they don't quite realize how enlightened they've become over time because they have gradually acclimatized to it.

Enlightenment is not a peak from which you descend over time. It is a plateau from which you ascend, further and further as the months, years, and decades pass.

And Anwin said, "It turned out just as an enchantment should." "But Anwin, it wasn't an enchantment really, it just—" "Yes, child, it was the greatest enchantment of all." He winked at the prince. "Gillie understood all along what the enchantment was.

All we can do is to try in each moment, whatever we are doing, to practice the Buddha Way; we just keep opening the hand of thought and continuing to practice. There is no time when one can say, "I'm finished—now I have finally reached the level of an enlightened person.

Pain was simply pain, pleasure was simply pleasure; for him they were no longer part of the cycle of suffering.