Quotes About Enlightenment

When we resist change, it's called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that's called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for this is freedom—freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.

And now as long as space endures, As long as there are beings to be found, May I continue likewise to remain To drive away the sorrows of the world. —The Way of the Bodhisattva, v. 10.55

As we change our own dysfunctional habits, we are simultaneously changing society. Our own awakening is intertwined with the awakening of enlightened society. If we can lose our personal appetite for aggression and addiction, the whole planet will rejoice.

Good or bad, happy or sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.

May bodhichitta, precious and sublime, Arise where it has not yet come to be; And where it has arisen, may it never fail, But grow and flourish ever more and more.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move.

There is a teaching on the three kinds of awakening: awakening from the dream of ordinary sleep, awakening at death from the dream of life, and awakening into full enlightenment from the dream of delusion.

We commit to doing all it takes to free ourselves completely from all our varieties of confusion and unconscious habit and suffering, because these prevent us from being fully there for others. In the language of Buddhism, our ultimate commitment is to attain "enlightenment." In essence, this means knowing fully who we really are.

Those who go in bliss naturally includes the buddhas, but it also refers to our own potential. We, too, can free ourselves from the hopes and fears of self-centeredness. The bliss of perceiving reality without these limitations is our birthright. Thus Shantideva doesn't bow down to something outside himself, but to his own capacity for enlightenment.

The principle of nowness is very important to any effort to establish an enlightened society.

The way to reunite with bodhichitta is to lighten up in your practice and in your whole life. Meditation

Even if you were the Buddha himself, if you were a fully enlightened person, you would experience death, illness, aging, and sorrow at losing what you love. All of these things would happen to you. If you got burned or cut, it would hurt.

Everything that occurs is not only usable and workable but is actually the path itself. We can use everything that happens to us as the means for waking up. We can use everything that occurs—whether it's our conflicting emotions and thoughts or our seemingly outer situation—to show us where we are asleep and how we can wake up completely, utterly, without reservations.

that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable. Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth.

Dharma is the study of what is , and the only way you can find out what is true is through studying yourself.

As Buddhists, we might say, "My ego causes me so many problems." Then we might think, "Well, then, we're supposed to get rid of it, right? Then there'd be no problem." On the contrary, the idea isn't to get rid of ego but actually to begin to take an interest in ourselves, to investigate and be inquisitive about ourselves.

Renunciation is realizing that nostalgia for samsara4 is full of shit.

The more we connect with a bigger perspective, the more we connect with energetic joy. Exertion is touching in to our appetite for enlightenment. It allows us to act, to give, to work appreciatively with whatever comes our way.

be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

Buddha nature, cleverly disguised as fear, kicks our ass into being receptive.

For me, the martial arts is a search for something inside. It's not just a physical discipline.

The old Atlantean sciences from the tribe of enlightenment, of which there are only a few remnants and chards left in this world, were medicine, law, computers, and the performing arts.

Rae Chorze Fwaz was a mystery school. A mystery school is an occult order comprised of people who study meditation, enlightenment and psychic and occult arts.