Quotes About Enlightenment

As much as I loved the model of St. Francis, I realized that I couldn't afford to be poor, because unlike St. Francis, I'm not celibate. I was enlightened that God's call to me was not poverty but generosity and simplicity. And I had to go back to the lesson I learned from my parents: that is, simplicity.

Like most places, America has always had potent strains of anti-Semitism - crude and polished, K.K.K. and country club. But unlike many places, we have always had important strains of philo-Semitism as well; there is a long American tradition, with both Protestant and Enlightenment roots, of really liking Judaism and the Jews.

I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.

You haven't partied until you've partied at dawn in complete silence with Buddhist monks.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.

It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.

Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.

Of those beings who live in ignorance, shut up and confined, as it were, in an egg, I have first broken the eggshell of ignorance and alone in the universe obtained the most exalted, universal Buddhahood.

He realized that the ritualized world he had dismissed as feminine was in fact civilization.

All know the way few actually walk it.

Some feminists have this party-line attitude, and they can be very extremist. The most enlightened characters in my film are women.

We need to start work with the idea that we're going to learn every day. I learn, even at my position, every single day.

What need is there to say more? The childish work for their own benefit, The Buddhas work for the benefit of others. Just look at the difference between them.

Those who have not become enlightened will have to return to another, denser planet that is still involved with negativity, to work out their remaining karma.

You can never learn less; you can only learn more.

Calmness is the criterion of spiritual progress. Plunge the purified mind into the Heart. Then the work is over.

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments.

Work for god, love god alone, and be wise with god. When an ordinary man puts the necessary rime and enthusiasm into meditation and prayer, he becomes a divine man.

There is nobody who is so enlightened that they don't need to work on themselves.

Tantra won't work unless you've been trapped by spirituality. You have to be trapped by spirituality before you can be liberated from it.

If you are going to experience the ecstasy of enlightenment, it is not just going to be a phrase. You've got to work during meditation. So back to the navel center!

Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.

Knowing is not thinking. Knowing begins when thinking ceases, having finished its work. Every new knowing is a joy, for it is a new experience of unity.