Top 36 Quotes About Buddhist Enlightenment
#1. We're connected to the Buddhist order, to the mind of enlightenment. All day long we draw the power and force from that world, from all the teachers and all the adherents of the practices and the principles.
Frederick Lenz
#2. Self-hate doesn't create enlightenment. It just causes you to not enjoy the current moment.
Frederick Lenz
#3. You have to come to the world of enlightenment with open hands, not clinched fists, without an agenda.
Frederick Lenz
#4. True wisdom is being able to say 'it is what it is' with a smile of celebratory wonder on your face.
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
#5. An enlightened teacher simply expresses enlightenment in their life by living. It is the student's job to gain the teachings. The teacher's job is just to be perfectly enlightened.
Frederick Lenz
#6. The purpose of enlightenment is certainly not the teacher, nor is it you. It doesn't have a purpose. Enlightenment simply exists.
Frederick Lenz
#7. 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
#8. There's a Buddhist story about the guy who wants to be enlightened, and then he gets a cow and a wife and a child, and all these things get in the way of his enlightenment. So, yeah, I have no chance of being enlightened.
Larkin Grimm
#9. The hallmark of a person who is following the pathway to enlightenment is that they bring excellence into everything, no matter how crappy they feel.
Frederick Lenz
#10. Don't judge others. Always be open to them. Avoid the cult mentality, you know, the super-slick, "I'm superior because I meditate, because I'm on the pathway to enlightenment," the subtle ego nonsense, terrible trap.
Frederick Lenz
#12. The essential premise of Buddhism is that there is enlightenment, there is nirvana. Beyond this world, beyond all worlds, there's something radiant, perfect and eternal.
Frederick Lenz
#13. Don't care what anybody says about enlightenment, except the enlightened and those who seek it.
Frederick Lenz
#14. Put the mind in alignment with the ten thousand radiances of enlightenment and experience them in various gradations forever. That's the total purpose of a monk.
Frederick Lenz
#15. Even though it's not perceivable to the mind or senses, it's there and enlightenment is absolute freedom.
Frederick Lenz
#16. Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
Ryokan
#17. By renouncing samsara, we renounce our habitual grasping, unhappy minds. And by renouncing samsara, we embrace our potential for enlightenment.
Thubten Zopa Rinpoche
#18. Buddhists don't feel that enlightenment is particularly unusual. We feel that it's the natural state. Enlightenment simply means perceiving life directly as it is in all of its infinite, ever changing wonder, in all of its varied, myriad states of mind or as pari-nirvana, or whatever.
Frederick Lenz
#19. What matters is that you meditate, you're seeking enlightenment, you're on the pathway to enlightenment, and you're having fun. Don't look for reassurance in the eyes of others. Look for reassurance in your own eyes. Only you know if Buddhist practice is improving the quality of your life.
Frederick Lenz
#20. In America people have this funny idea about enlightenment and money. Money expresses a level of commitment. Studying enlightenment is like going to a university.
Frederick Lenz
#21. Neither my life of luxury in the palace -nor- my life as ascetic in the forest were ways to enlightenment.
Gautama Buddha
#22. As a student of enlightenment your attitude should not be to become enlightened. It should be to learn.
Frederick Lenz
#23. Select companions who are striving for enlightenment. They all have their imperfections, certainly, but at least their attention is moving in the right direction.
Frederick Lenz
#24. 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
#25. The Buddha gave his first talks, and three or four ascetics became his first disciples. They recognized his enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#26. What makes a difference is when we take our mind and put it into the scriptures, when we read the Buddhist Canon, the Pali Canon, when we read the Tibetan books, when we read anything inspiring - somebody else's journey into the world of enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#27. Perhaps I had inadvertently brushed up against the Buddhist axiom, that enlightenment is the ultimate disappointment.
Maggie Nelson
#28. The teacher has nothing to do with people who use their mental powers to block the enlightenment of others. These people lack control. What can you teach someone who lacks control?
Frederick Lenz
#29. Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
Gautama Buddha
#30. If you are going to set out to develop mystical powers to impress your friends and do other things to your enemies, the difficulty with it is that you will not be moving towards enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#31. When we recognize that the seemingly object nature of reality is nothing different than the subject nature of mind, which is rigpa, it is called enlightenment.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
#32. Knowledge of the Enlightenment Cycle, of the ways that inner dimensions and nirvana work, lifts you far above the transient sorrows, pains, pleasures and joys that the unenlightened masses experience.
Frederick Lenz
#33. Do not feel that you are destined to enlightenment in this life. You have no idea. This is an illusion of selfhood. It's gross ignorance and egotism.
Frederick Lenz
#34. The pathway to enlightenment is beautiful. There are a lot of wonderful things that happen along the way. Win or lose, you just keep going, and it happens eventually.
Frederick Lenz
#35. My mother's a Buddhist. In Buddhism, if you want to achieve enlightenment, you have to do it through meditation and self-improvement through the mind. That's something she's passed on to me: to be able to calm myself down and use my mind as my main asset.
Tiger Woods
#36. There's many lanes on the highway of enlightenment, they don't have to be on the razor's edge like the yellow line dotted in the middle. Balance is appropriate, not too tight, not too loose, the Middle Way as we call it in Buddhist dharma teachings.
Surya Das
