Quotes About Enlightenment

the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves.

The word bodhisattva refers to those who have committed themselves to the path of compassion.

Not harming ourselves or others in the beginning, not harming ourselves or others in the middle, and not harming ourselves or others in the end is the basis of enlightened society. This is how there could be a sane world. It starts with sane citizens, and that is us. The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.

Buddha: Hatred never ceases by hatred But by love alone is healed.

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.

When the world is filled with evil, Transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi.

we can regard ourselves as already awake; we can regard our world as already sacred.

there is nobody on the planet, neither those whom we see as the oppressed nor those whom we see as the oppressor, who doesn't have what it takes to wake up.

the Enlightenment has been held responsible for the evils of the modern age, and much scorn has been directed at its supposed superficial rationalism, foolish optimism, and irresponsible Utopianism.

While the Enlightenment was a family of philosophers, it was something more as well: it was a cultural climate, a world in which the philosophers acted, from which they noisily rebelled and quietly drew many of their ideas, and on which they attempted to impose their program.

The Enlightenment may be summoned up in two words: criticism and power.

God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with.

An open mind is not an end in itself but a means to the end of finding truth.

If we seek the truth without realizing how far we are from it, we will be dogmatists. If we realize how far we are from the truth but do not seek it, we will be skeptics. If we both seek the truth and realize how far we are from it, we will be wise.

When the worldly toys in which we foolishly place our hopes for happiness are taken away from us, our foolishness is also taken away, and this brings us closer to true happiness, which is not in worldly things but in wisdom.

Peter Kreeft

We are by now well into the eighteenth century, when the Enlightenment identified the search for knowledge as the highest form of human activity. It was a time for scientists to wipe the metaphysical dust from their eyes.

The more you learn, the more acutely aware you become of your ignorance

As the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds. RABBI NACHMANN OF BRATZLAV

The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.

In this very breath that we now take Lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us.

The Zen expression "Kill the Buddha!" means to kill any concept of the Buddha as something apart from oneself. To kill the Buddha is to be the Buddha.

That American [Philip Kapleau] was asking us whether it is possible for him to attain enlightenment in one week of sesshin. Tell him this for me: don't say days, weeks, years, or even lifetimes. Tell him to vow to attain enlightenment though it take the infinite, the boundless, the incalculable future.4

the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds. RABBI NACHMANN OF BRATZLAV