Buddhist Spiritual Quotes

#1. One of the things that kills Buddhist spiritual life is excessive seriousness.

Gil Fronsdal

#2. Well neither of us were "Buddhists" then because it was new to us. We were 60's people. Psychedelic relics, you know ... whatever, right on, radicals and world changers, social peaceniks perhaps, with a Buddhist spiritual veneer.

Surya Das

#3. In the beginning we define what is spiritual. But as you go on, you see that everybody and everything is an instrument of infinity.

Frederick Lenz

#4. There is no such thing as spiritual achievement; it is simply an awareness intrinsic to all of life.

Frederick Lenz

#5. Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon.

Chogyam Trungpa

#6. One person's cult is another person's spiritual organization.

Frederick Lenz

#7. Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.

Tara Brach

#8. If you become obsessive in spiritual practice, if you just try and try, you are not going to be happy. You are going to be obsessive.

Frederick Lenz

#9. I don't care if you're Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or whatever your religion is, when you listen to a spiritual song and you really open your heart, you can feel it. You can feel the message of it. Just a simple story.

Valerie June

#10. Even offering three hundred bowls of food three times a day does not match the spiritual merit gained in one moment of love.

Akkineni Nagarjuna

#11. We're all talking about the same thing, whether it's religious people or New Age spiritual people or Buddhists or scientists. We're all talking about having a sense of awe and wonder at something grander than ourselves.

Michael Shermer

#12. The idea of fixing of healing is an important part of any genuine spiritual approach. Kabbalah is very much about this idea of fixing of things that have been damaged. From a Buddhist point of view, things have been damaged because ignorance has intoxicated the mind.

Richard Gere

#13. Encountering sufferings will definitely contribute to the elevation of your spiritual practice, provided you are able to transform calamity and misfortune into the path.

Dalai Lama

#14. When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, Not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however.

Uma Thurman

#15. There is a common misunderstanding that if you are going to be a "good" Buddhist, you will have to leave your career and run off to the woods to meditate 24/7 until you reach enlightenment. I don't think you have to do that in order to follow a spiritual path. I have seen my

Lodro Rinzler

#16. From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hinduism religion.

Swami Vivekananda

#17. The Buddha taught some people the teachings of duality that help them avoid sin and acquire spiritual merit. To others he taught non-duality, that some find profoundly frightening.

Akkineni Nagarjuna

#18. One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the Messiah?" "No," answered Buddha. "Then are you a healer?" "No," Buddha replied. "Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted. "No, I am not a teacher." "Then what are you?" asked the student exasperated. "I am awake," Buddha replied.

Gautama Buddha

#19. If you find no one to support you on the spiritual path, walk alone. There is no companionship with the immature.

Gautama Buddha

#20. Without humility, all spiritual progress stops.

Frederick Lenz

#21. I have a great deal of spiritual dignity. It's on loan from eternity, and you do too, and we have to use it in our relationship with each other.

Frederick Lenz

#22. The point of the spiritual revolution is not to become a good Buddhist, but to become a wise and compassionate human being, to awaken from our life of complacency and ignorance and to be a buddha.

Noah Levine

#23. I was exposed to a mix of cultures, lots of different religions and beliefs. I was a spiritual kid and went to Indian powwows and Buddhist temples. But over a period of time, with reading and thinking, I started to feel it was all so absurd: The whole idea of life after death is ridiculous.

Harvey Fierstein

#24. In order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.

Dalai Lama

#25. Spiritual dignity says that I don't have to compete with anyone; I don't have to do what my friends do. All I have to do is be myself and be dignified in my meditation and my lifestyle.

Frederick Lenz

#26. All things are spiritual. It doesn't matter what you do or who you are or what kind of blue jeans you wear, or whether you wear an ochre robe or whether you're sober or asleep or dreaming. It's all the same.

Frederick Lenz

#27. Flaky devotionalism, bowing and scraping and sucking up to the teacher is very phony. It is counterproductive to enlightenment and spiritual development. What is necessary is mutual respect.

Frederick Lenz

#28. Cross-country running was so beautiful with all the trails and the lake regions ... very physical and also a bit spiritual, where you could come over the mountain and all of a sudden you'd see a Buddhist landscape fog.

Robin Williams

#29. On a spiritual level, on a place where you want to be a better human being and listen more, I try. I joke, but it has. I mean, I don't consider myself a card-carrying Buddhist, you know. But I do believe deeply in the ideas, and I think anytime you have interest in anything, it somehow humbles you.

Jake Gyllenhaal

#30. To know that these are people who for a moment, in glory, in light, were true warriors, and you had the chance to associate with them, to live with them, to share with them, words and moments of power - this is the nature of spiritual study.

Frederick Lenz

#31. Half the spiritual life consists of remembering what we are up against and where we are going.

Ayya Khema