Quotes About Enlightenment

Water, foam, and flame are mind. Flowers in the spring and the moon in the autumn are also mind. Each moment is mind. And yet mind can never be destroyed. That's why everything that's real is mind, and the Buddhas along with other Buddhas are mind.

Even as bad as it often gets, we are further along than Dogen could probably have envisioned in his day. I don't know how long it will take to finally get there, but, like Dogen, I believe it is possible.

At every moment, no matter what we're doing, we need to understand that not being a jerk is how someone becomes enlightened. This state has always belonged to us. Cause and effect makes us act. By not being a jerk now, you create the cause of not being a jerk in the future. Our action is not predestined, nor does it spontaneously occur.

Zen is the complete absence of belief. Zen is the complete lack of authority.

Dhammapada. Anyhow,

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.

A person is a Buddha when she acts like a Buddha, when she manifests wisdom. When she fails to do so, she's not a Buddha. Thus a person can be a Buddha one minute and a jackass three minutes later. You don't just become a Buddha at the moment of your first enlightenment experience and then stay a Buddha forever.

I vow to save all beings ...from myself.

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

Beyond the unacknowledged mental gate imprisoned deeply within the gloomy unknown of the ignorant mind lies your answer.

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.

You remember, you once told me somethin' that made me see the world in an entirely new way." "And that was?" Tress asked. "Here, try on these spectacles.

Maya Angelou talk about how when we know better, we do better.

We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.

Dear Abba, I have had glimpses of enlightenment, quicksilver encounters that have allowed me to say a little more of who You are. But they've just been the tip of the iceberg. Give me the eyes to not merely notice but see. Give me the ears to not only hear but listen. Give me the courage to further touch Your scars. I want to taste more and digest more of the riches of the mystery that is You. Help me come to my senses, and know You better.

Tibetan Buddhists talk a lot about rebirth, both the rebirth of normal unenlightened people and that of enlightened beings such as the Dalai Lama, who is thought to be a reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. By contrast, Zen Buddhists rarely talk in detail or in literal terms about rebirth or reincarnation.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." According to Dante, these lines are written over the gates of Hell. Zen masters, by contrast, have high hopes for going to Hell. For them, out of bottomless compassion, we should want to go to Hell. When asked by a college student in America if he thought people go to Heaven after they die, the modern Rinzai Zen master Fukushima Keid? replied: "Only the ego wants to go to Heaven!

Whereas some schools of Buddhism distinguish more sharply between the preparatory practice of concentration and the liberating practice of insight, Zen views concentration and insight as two sides of the same coin: when the mind is cleared, settled, and focused, it naturally attains insight and manifests its innate wisdom.

Zen meditation is meant to bring an end to the delusory and destructive ego, not to serve it as a means for achieving its ends.

Faith does play an important role in Buddhism, including in Zen: faith as preliminary trust and ultimately faith as true self-confidence.

Zen is not, in the end, a Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Indian path. It is a path for all human beings who are sincerely interested in coming to know themselves.

The profoundest lessons are not the lessons of reason; they are sudden strains that permanently warp the mind.

God not only loves the obedient - He enlightens them.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.