Quotes About Enlightenment

Complete enlightenment COULDN'T possibly be a good thing. Balance is key. Neither dark nor light should win. Humanity only wins through balance .

If complete enlightenment demands relinquishing the self, then complete enlightenment implies the acceptance of mortality. Not that there isn't more to being enlightened than accepting that our lives are brief and end when we did. But I do think it's a requirement.

Know your body, understand your mind & embrace your spiritual path.

To cast off the delusive way of ordinary consciousness while sitting on a cushion in a quiet room is only the beginning. The student must learn to live in the ordinary world, while yet retaining the quality of his experience of absolute samadhi.

Katsuki Sekida, Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy (New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1975; Boston: Shambhala, 2005).

Let go of your small self and become your true self.

The final discovery is the discovery of knowledge.

The world is truly beautiful solely in the eyes of a true philosopher.

It's okay if you don't like science," he said, "but that doesn't mean you can just ignore things you don't understand. It'll come back to haunt you.

Self-liberation' implies the instantaneous dissolution of whatever enters into awareness.

I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up.

There are no secrets . . . just stuff you haven't learned yet.)

And he had wondered if it would end that way for him too - one more ragged pilgrim on the road toward some bankrupt enlightenment, endlessly sorting information while the truth rolled on, untouched, beneath his very nose.

People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.

It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.

The truth will not necessarily set you free, but truthfulness will.

Increasing consciousness = increasing complexity.

Buddhist discipline is designed to transmute trishna, or egoic narcissism, into Karuna, Divine Narcissism; that is, to transmute self-love, which excludes love of others, into Self-love, which is love of others.

The progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken.

Zen people almost never talk about hell or sin. For the real problem is ignorance, especially ignorance about our true identity.

Disappointment is the fast track to enlightenment because it accelerates our coming to terms with reality.

Enlightenment is not an achievement; it is just the seeing of reality as it is. In fact, nirvana is simply what is. We have been staring at it all our lives, and yet so few of us get it. The fact is that life is at the same time lamentable and beautiful. When we realize this humorous and absurd beauty of life, what can we do but to burst into laughter?

The Zen experience is what happens when you lose yourself in the moment. It feels as if the whole world stops, and you have a supreme sense of harmony and peace. But in fact, what actually stops is your ego-process. When the ego-process stops, so stop your expectations, desires, worries, and anxiety. Then you find yourself living in the present, overtaken by joy and filled with peace.