Top 100 Buddha's Quotes
#1. I went on a Buddha jag. I read 'Confession of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor and Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha, which is a great book.
Denis O'Hare
#2. If a man's thoughts are muddy, If he is reckless and full of deceit, How can he wear the yellow robe? Whoever is master of his own nature, Bright, clear and true, He may indeed wear the yellow robe.
Gautama Buddha
#3. It is often thought that the Buddha's doctrine teaches us that suffering will disappear if one has meditated long enough, or if one sees everything differently. It is not that at all. Suffering isn't going to go away; the one who suffers is going to go away.
Ayya Khema
#4. I will purify my bodily actions through repeated reflection. I will purify my verbal actions through repeated reflection. I will purify my mental actions through repeated reflection. That's how you should train yourself.
Gautama Buddha
#5. Remember my words: Be truthful, be kind to one another, and you will attain peace. We will meet again in another life.
Jeanne M. Lee
#6. The secret of happiness lies in the mind's release from worldly ties.
Gautama Buddha
#7. We are told that if you are not occupied with the mind all the time, then you will invite the devil. It is such a heightened misconception that people are going crazy just because of this. An empty mind is not the devil's home but an empty mind is the home of the Buddha.
Anandmurti Gurumaa
#8. A karate practitioner should possess two things : wicked hands, and Buddha's heart
Soke Behzad Ahmadi
#9. A man asked Gautama Buddha, "I want happiness."
Buddha said, "First remove "I," that's Ego, then remove "want," that's Desire.
See now you are left with only "Happiness.
Gautama Buddha
#10. What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?
Buddha
#11. It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Gautama Buddha
#12. The Buddha's message was simple but profound. Neither a life of self-indulgence nor one of self-mortification can bring happiness. Only a middle path, avoiding these two extremes, leads to peace of mind, wisdom, & complete liberation from the dissatisfactions of life.
Henepola Gunaratana
#13. In four ways ... should one who flatters be understood as a foe in the guise of a friend: He approves of his friend's evil deeds, he disapproves his friend's good deeds, he praises him in his presence, he speaks ill of him in his absence.
Gautama Buddha
#14. We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.
Pema Chodron
#15. I like Muhammad a lot, because he's like us more than anybody else. Jesus is just so exalted, and Buddha is just so exalted, it's almost beyond our reach. Muhammad is more human, more self-doubting, even self-tortured at times.
Deepak Chopra
#16. The color of the mountains is Buddha's body; the sound of running water is his great speech.
Dogen
#17. The only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that. The only theism that is no less profound than the Buddha's atheism is that represented in the Bible by Job and Jeremiah.
Walter Kaufmann
#18. It's your road ... and yours alone ... Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you. No matter what path you choose, really walk it.
Gautama Buddha
#19. Going for refuge to Buddha,Dharma, and Sangha means that we apply effort to receiving Buddha's blessings, to putting Dharma into practice, and to receiving help from Sangha.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
#20. I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, "You shall be my disciple."I looked at him and said, "Who was Buddha's teacher?" He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.
Alan Watts
#21. He who can curb his wrath as soon as it arises, as a timely antidote will check snake's venom that so quickly spreads, - such a monk gives up the here and the beyond, just as a serpent sheds its worn-out skin.
Gautama Buddha
#22. Oneself, indeed, is one's own protector.
One does, indeed [make] one's own destiny.
Therefore, control yourself
As a merchant does a fine horse.
Gautama Buddha
#23. I couldn't have asked for a better kid. She's our own little Buddha baby so far. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop to tell you the truth. It's like the calm before the storm.
Ana Ortiz
#24. Every memory is precious. It is more precious when it is a memory of a baby's smile.
Debasish Mridha
#25. Attachment," Buddha had said, "is the cause of grief.
Pearl S. Buck
#26. Know from the rivers in clefts and in crevices: those in small channels flow noisily, the great flow silent. Whatever's not full makes noise. Whatever is full is quiet.
Gautama Buddha
#27. There's a treasury full of jade and jewels; It is in you. Don't go searching far from home for it-it's here.
Gautama Buddha
#28. I mean Godzilla is eternally pissed off at everything but of course he's gonna be because every time he pops out of the water for a look around somebody is firing a missile at him. Buddha would probably have to act as a mediator between the people and Godzilla.
Brad Warner
#29. You will find a blissfulness which contains in it sadness also, because that sadness gives it depth. Watch Buddha's statue - blissful, but still sad. The very word sad gives you wrong connotations - that something is wrong. This is your interpretation. To me, life in its totality is good.
Rajneesh
#30. To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.
Buddha
#31. Nonfear is the cream of the Buddha's teaching. Practicing
Thich Nhat Hanh
#32. One should follow a man of wisdom who rebukes one for one's faults, as one would follow a guide to some buried treasure. To one who follows such a wise man, it will be an advantage and not a disadvantage.
Gautama Buddha
#33. The foundation of the Buddha's teachings lies in compassion, and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out the persistence of ego, the number-one enemy of compassion.
Dalai Lama
#34. I will not look at another's bowl intent on finding fault: a training to be observed.
Gautama Buddha
#35. .'All is suffering' is a bad modernist translation. What the Buddha really said is: It's all a mixed bag. Shit is complicated. Everything's fucked up. Everything's gorgeous.
Robin Coste Lewis
#36. Though all one's life a fool associates with a wise person,one no more comprehends the Truth than a spoon tastes the flavor of the soup.
Gautama Buddha
#37. One act of pure love in saving life is greater than spending the whole of one's time in religious offerings to the gods ...
Gautama Buddha
#38. When we sit in meditation, we are closer than usual to the world as it is. By simply bringing body, breath, and mind together in the present moment, we touch Buddha; we touch reality, and we are in the world as it is. Most people's experience in this state is peaceful and rejuvenating.
Andrew Furst
#39. AS one instructs others,
So should one do oneself:
Only the self-controlled should restrain others.
Truly, it's hard to restrain oneself.
Gautama Buddha
#40. It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time but that it is too late for us. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. There is no whit less enlightnment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree.
Annie Dillard
#41. The heavens and the earth may be captured by the mind's eye.
Gautama Buddha
#42. One day, soon after the Buddha's enlightenment, a man saw the Buddha walking toward him. The man had not heard of the Buddha, but he could see that there was something different about the man who was approaching, so he was moved to ask, Are you a god?
Steve Hagen
#43. Whoever doesn't flare up at someone who's angry wins a battle hard to win.
Gautama Buddha
#44. It is wrong to think that misfortunes come from the east or from the west; they originate within one's own mind.
Gautama Buddha
#45. Being generous, just helping one's relatives and being blameless in one's actions; this is the best good luck.
Gautama Buddha
#46. Total relaxation is the ultimate. That's the moment when one becomes a buddha. That is the moment of realization, enlightenment, christ-consciousness. You cannot be totally relaxed right now. At the innermost core a tension will persist.
Rajneesh
#47. And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
-from The Buddha's Last Instruction
Mary Oliver
#48. Let me be reborn. I would like to be born again twenty-five times to spread Lord Buddha's Dhamma.
Anagarika Dharmapala
#49. When faced with the vicissitudes of life, one's mind remains unshaken, sorrow-less, stainless, secure; this is the greatest welfare
Gautama Buddha
#50. Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he's against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist and three or four years ago he took up Einstein and vitamins.
Joyce Cary
#51. In our own present world age, one thousand Buddhas will appear. Each one will be accompanied by an emanation of Guru Rinpoche to carry out the Buddha's activities.
Padmasambhava Guru Rinpoche
#52. There are no chains like hate ... dwelling on your brother's faults multiplies your own. You are far from the end of your journey.
Gautama Buddha
#53. In the Buddha's life story we see the three stages of practice: Morality comes first, then concentrated meditation, and then wisdom. And we see that the path takes time.
Dalai Lama
#54. The Buddha's dharma didn't teach peace and relaxation; it taught awakening - often rude awakening.
Jay Michaelson
#56. When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that's the nature of being human and wanting stuff we don't always get.
Mary Karr
#57. The non-doing of any evil,
the performance of what's skillful,
the cleansing of one's own mind:
this is the teaching of the Awakened.
Gautama Buddha
#58. Without the mind there is no Buddha. Without the Buddha there's no mind.
Bodhidharma
#59. How easy it is to see your brother's faults, How hard it is to face your own.
Gautama Buddha
#60. Sri Krishna's message is the message of anyone who comes from far away. His message is the same as Buddha, Lao Tsu, Bodhidharma, Milarepa, Padmasambhava.
Frederick Lenz
#61. The Buddha never taught a sectarian religion; he taught Dhamma - the way to liberation - which is universal.
S. N. Goenka
#62. Man's troubles are rooted in extreme attention to senses, thoughts, and imagination. Attention should be focused internally to experience a quiet body and a calm mind.
Gautama Buddha
#63. Mindfulness is Buddha's word for meditation. By mindfulness he means: you should always remain alert, watchful. You should always remain present. Not a single thing should be done in a sort of sleepy state of mind. You should not move like a somnambulist, you should move with a sharp consciousness.
Rajneesh
#64. It's much better to become a Buddha than a Buddhist.
Jack Kornfield
#65. Without ignoring the objective side of the truth, it has to be subjective as well, Buddha's whole teaching just for you, something you can taste. Not something to believe in but to discover, to experience.
Shunryu Suzuki
#66. I took note of the Buddha's teaching that in one sense a supposed enemy is more valuable than a friend, for an enemy teaches you things, such as forbearance, that a friend generally does not.
Dalai Lama XIV
#67. How wonderful it would be, I thought, if only we could practice the teachings of the Buddha as he really taught them from his own experience - free from the clouds of religiosity that often surround them Yet it's difficult to distinguish the tools themselves from their cultural packaging.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
#68. Some consider me as a living Buddha. That's nonsense. That's silly. That's wrong. If they consider me a simple Buddhist monk, however, that's probably okay.
Dalai Lama
#69. According to the Buddha's teachings, the most basic condition for happiness is freedom. Here we do not mean political freedom, but freedom from the mental formations of anger, despair, jealousy, and delusion.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#70. Whether it's a fully enlightened Christ or Buddha, or just a more aware Martin Luther King, Kennedy or Gandhi, what did they do with them here? They shoot them, crucify them, and get them out of the way because people are afraid of truth.
Frederick Lenz
#71. It is impossible to underestimate the significance of your today's choices
Gautama Buddha
#72. Buddha said: 'Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,' and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person's viewpoint.
Dale Carnegie
#73. The Buddha's last words instructed us to be heedful - to see our actions as important and to keep that importance in mind at all times.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
#75. If you want to read a letter from the Buddha's world, it is necessary to understand Buddha's world.
Shunryu Suzuki
#76. It is not so much that we have a self, it's that we do self-ing.
Rick Hansen
#77. The past is already gone, the future is not yet here. There's only one moment for you to live, and that is the present moment
Gautama Buddha
#78. Though one should live a hundred years without wisdom and control, yet better, indeed, is a single day's life of one who is wise and meditative.
Gautama Buddha
#79. Today we can see many different forms of Buddhism, such as Zen and Theravada Buddhism. All these different aspects are practices of Buddha's teachings, and all are equally precious; they are just different presentations.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
#80. It's time we put the bud back in Buddha and the sap back in Homo sapiens, and end this age of folly - this folly-age!
S.J. Cameron
#81. There exist three poisons in life: desire, anger, and ignorance. One poison is the root of the other two. To attain enlightenment, you must swallow the root of your poisons, so that you die. You die many times to attain the enlightenment of Buddha.
H.S. Kim
#82. Let those who desire Buddhahood not train in many Dharmas but only one.
Which one? Great compassion.
Those with great compassion possess all the Buddha's teaching as if it were in the palm of their hand.
Gautama Buddha
#83. Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent ... this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering.
Alan Watts
#84. When one is overcome by this wretched, clinging desire in the world, one's sorrows increase like grass growing up after a lot of rain.
Gautama Buddha
#85. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. I invite you to go sit under that tree by your street.
Annie Dillard
#86. I don't know why I feel so crazy ... I feel like I'm going through a stargate. Maybe it's the diet pills. Maybe it's Buddha.
Dawn French
#87. No words - Buddha's, mine, or anyone else's - can see for you.
Steve Hagen
#88. By oneself the evil is done, and it is oneself who suffers: by oneself the evil is not done, and by one's Self one becomes pure.
Gautama Buddha
#89. It doesn't matter whether you believe in Christ, Moses, Allah, Brahma, Buddha, or any other being or master. Each one of us has our own beliefs, our own point of view. There are billions of different points of view, but it's the same force of life behind each one of us.
Miguel Angel Ruiz
#90. I can go shopping and pick up some Bounty Towels, the three pack, I can go home and open those up and look at them and see more infinity than in the Buddha's best meditation. If I can't do that, that means I'm wrapped by the Buddha's best meditation.
Frederick Lenz
#91. Buddhism regards all living creatures as being endowed with the Buddha nature and the potential to become Buddhas. That's why Buddhism teaches us to refrain from killing and to liberate creatures instead.
Hsuan Hua
#92. We are all mother's of the Buddha because we are all pregnant with the potential for awakening.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#93. Rituals, ceremonies, prayers, and special outfits are inevitable, but they do not - they cannot - express the heart of what the Buddha taught. In fact, all too often, such things get in the way. They veil the simple wisdom of the Buddha's words, and distract us from it.
Steve Hagen
#94. Is a lifelong student of the world's wisdom literature, it is my duty to inform students that ridding the world of evil is a goal very different from any recommended by Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad, though not so different from some recommended by Joseph Stalin, Joseph McCarthy and Mao Tse Tung.
David James Duncan
#95. To feel that you are the Buddha of all times and places and that in some way the salvation of anyone, including yourself, depends upon you, I think there's a lot of ego involved in such a view, not much self-transcendence.
Frederick Lenz
#96. If we develop a good heart we will progress to true compassion, and awaken Bodhicitta. This is the way of the Buddha's method.
Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
#97. You see pictures of Buddha and he's sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross.
Dave Eggers
#98. Lord Rama renounced his kingdom and became the most powerful king in the land. Buddha renounced the world and the world fell at his feet. Cornelia, my innocent girl, please do not believe that renunciation is to forsake power. Rather, it's the very means to power!' Chandragupta
Ashwin Sanghi
#99. Buddha's Wife tells a fascinating story, little known in the west, about the woman whom Buddha left behind. Gabriel Constans focuses the reader's attention on the strong and complicated women who surrounded Buddha and makes us re-think the nature of spiritual life.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
#100. When a monk complained about the world's evil, the Buddha stretched his hand toward the Earth: on this Earth I attained Liberation.
Frederick Franck
