Quotes About Enlightenment

French Enlightenment philosophers liked to use slavery as a symbol of human oppression, and particularly political oppression. "Man is born free but is everywhere in chains," wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract in 1762. A generation of crusading lawyers put Enlightenment principles into action by helping slaves sue for the right to be treated as ordinary French subjects.

Meditation... disolves the mind. It erases itself. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass.

You know, Rose said, You're not the first man in history who thinks his cock is the path to wisdom. You're not the first man to make his hard-on into the Holy Grail.

Coffeehouses were centers of self-education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation, and, in some cases, political fermentation. But above all they were clearinghouses for news and gossip, linked by the circulation of customers, publications, and information from one establishment to the next. Collectively, Europe's coffeehouses functioned as the Internet of the Age of Reason.

I walked 500 miles just to see a halo, when I opened my eyes I was blind as can be.

Stultorum cavea mundus est.

There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.

Your answers lie here," Rovender said, gesturing around the library.

As the dark forces try to attack a person, a family, or a nation, angelic forces are ever-ready to give help. They come to your assistance once you shift yourself toward their direction and create some kind of contact with the Forces of Light. Knowing about this creates a kind of balance in our consciousness. The enemies of Light are against seven principles: Beauty, Goodness, Righteousness, Joy, Freedom, enlightenment, and expansion of consciousness.

From the Dzogchen point of view, that does not mean that one's relative concept of ego is something to get rid of. The practitioner needs to understand it for what it is. The ego exists only on the relative level and does not have real inherent existence. After becoming enlightened, the aspect of the relative existence of ego is still there, not changed.

To attain enlightenment, according to Dzogchen, is not to go beyond the conditioned mind as much as knowing and understanding that the conditioned aspect is a manifestation of the unconditioned.

El TODO es Mente viviente infinita. ¡El iluminado lo llama Espíritu!

Individuals who undergo spiritual transformation as a result of their experiences, Mack said, are more "open to other realities beyond space/time…

Throughout time, certain consensus beliefs have imprisoned us, kept us from evolving as a species, as individuals.

Covered by the web of disturbing emotions, One is a sentient being. Freed from disturbing emotions, One is called a buddha. – Nagarjuna

Whenever ego suffers from fear of death & your practice turns to seeing impermanence, ego settles down.

This unconditional wakefulness is described in the Sanskrit term bodhicitta

Whatever depends on conditions Is empty of inherent existence, What excellent instruction could there be, More amazing than these words?

my first book, Women of Wisdom.

What we call demons are not materially existing individuals with huge black forms, frightening and terrifying anyone who sees them. A demon means anything which hinders liberation.

At first a yogi feels his mind Is tumbling like a waterfall; In midcourse, like the Ganges, It flows on slow and gentle; In the end, it is a great Vast ocean, where the lights Of child and mother merge in one. — The Song of Tilopa (988–1069)

It can be so empowering for us to understand, even on a conceptual level, that we are enlightened in our true nature.

All sentient beings are buddhas, but they are covered by temporary obscurations. When these are removed, they are truly buddhas enlightened.

May I quickly attain complete enlightenment, and having attained the state of a buddha, may I guide all sentient beings to liberation and the awakened state itself.