Quotes About Enlightenment

What matters in learning is not to be taught, but to wake up.

I wanted to tell you this, too: consciousness is a bad thing. Consciousness is a dead thing. Free yourselves from consciousness! It is high time. All that is needed is to strip off this garment: nothing very difficult about that. Tear the skin from your body, for it is not a true skin, it is a cellophane tissue that blocks the pores, that asphyxiates. Peel the tissue off, peel it off.

It would be something that another person had written down without understanding its significance; just a sentence or two that would be like a flash of light.

One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.

Once again, we are reminded that awakening, or enlightenment is not the property of Buddhism, any more than Truth is the property of Christianity. Neither the Buddha nor the Christ belongs exclusively to the communities that were founded in their names. They belong to all people of goodwill, all who are attentive to the secret which lives in the depths of their breath and their consciousness. (14)

It is important never to separate love and knowledge, compassion and wisdom. A wisdom without compassion is closed upon itself and does not bear fruit. A compassion without wisdom is a madness and a cause of suffering.

You are only a disciple because your eyes are closed. The day you open them you will see there is nothing you can learn from me or anyone. What then is a Master for? To make you see the uselessness of having one. Anthony de Mello

The fundamental conflict in the spiritual quest is that ego desires spiritual enlightenment, but ego can never achieve spiritual enlightenment. Self cannot achieve no-self. That's why anyone who wants to sell enlightenment must first reduce it to more manageable proportions; to something ego can achieve. Enlightenment Lite: Less demanding, feels great. Enlitenment.

book and magazine publishers aren't in the business of enlightenment. They're in the business of selling books and magazines, not truth, and they know that seekers will gladly pay to be reassured that, common sense aside, they can wake up and stay asleep; awakening within the dreamstate being a much more marketable solution than waking up from it. Such

It's very simple: If Buddhism is about awakening, people should be waking up. If it's not about awakening, they should change the name.

What do you know? The answer is: I Am.

All fear is ultimately fear of no-self. "And what is enlightenment," I ask Sarah, "but a swan dive into the abyss of no-self?

Dedicating one's life to lofty spiritual ideals is every bit as life-defining and purpose-giving as the quest for heaven or power or money or love. Just because there's a flashing neon sign above the door that says "Free Enlightenment! The Shortest & Easiest Way! The One True Path!" doesn't mean that what goes on inside is really about enlightenment, or that the people who go in really want it.

The fundamental conflict can only be resolved by altering the equation. Yes, it's cheating, but everyone's okay with it. Spiritual enlightenment gets redefined as something attainable by ego, and now the equation works to everyone's satisfaction. Ego gets to continue the noble quest and a thriving spiritual industry continues to thrive. Of course, no one gets the grail, but if you understand the fundamental conflict, you'll see that no one really wanted it anyway.

The various forms of spirituality and religion are not the path to truth, but the antidote to it.

Here's all you need to know to become enlightened: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what's true until you know.

The price. Of truth. Is everything.

Ask yourself. Who am I? If you do it, you will become enlightened. There is no possible alternative. The only way self-inquiry can fail to work is if you fail to do it.

One who has seen his true nature no longer regards life as being full of menace and misery as most people do. His previously mistaken sense of personal volition and responsibility has disappeared in such freedom and joy that life is now just an amusing spectacle like a game or a dream, in which he has no real part. Ramesh Balsekar

The misconception about enlightenment stems from, or is at least compounded by, the fact that most of the world's recognized experts on the subject of enlightenment are not enlightened.

An easy way to distinguish between caterpillars and butterflies is to remember that the enlightened don't attach importance to anything, and that enlightenment doesn't require knowledge. It's not about love or compassion or consciousness. It's about truth.

Maya is the fear that permeates us so fully that we don't know it's there. Maya is the organizing principle of emotional energy in the fear-based, segregated state, and Maya is inherently mysterious.

Yes, I have an ego and it looks similar to the one I dropped to, as you say, achieve nirvana. But then I came back all enlightened and everything, and I needed something to wear. I look around and there's my discarded ego lying in a pile on the floor so I slip into it and here I am.

The subject of enlightenment itself is one of the biggest arenas of naiveté, ignorance, self-deceit, and confusion in contemporary spirituality. A close second to enlightenment is the category of "mystical" or "spiritual" experiences.