Top 100 Quotes About Enlightenment
#1. Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength;
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of will power.
Lao-Tzu
#2. When I was a young college teacher in my mid-twenties, an older colleague delighted in characterizing post-Enlightenment theology as "flat-tire theology" - "All the pneuma has gone out of it.
Marcus J. Borg
#3. Philosophy cannot be extinguished, though men will try ... The spirit seeks the light, that is its nature. It wishes to return to its origin, and must forever try to reach enlightenment.
Iain Pears
#4. But when it's read another way, the explanation makes perfectly good sense: Man can never have the wisdom the gods use to rule the world, and if he tries to preempt that wisdom, the result won't be enlightenment, it will be death.
Daniel Quinn
#5. Nonphysical beings are drawn to enlightened beings. Some come to aid them in there work; some come to interfere. Some just come to watch. Enlightenment is rare in this world.
Frederick Lenz
#6. A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things.
Reginald Horace Blyth
#7. Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.
Dogen
#8. Enlightenment, it is a moment of complete clarity, of pure bliss. At that instant everything will be revealed to you.
Tan Twan Eng
#9. He who asserts belief with absolute certainty knows nothing of faith and makes himself into a fool. He who is wise, upon realizing they have done this, recants and searches themselves for further enlightenment.
Cristina Marrero
#10. When I was a kid growing up in the '60s, music was an outlet for enlightenment, frustration, rebellion. It was more about individualism. Today it's just like a big business.
Joey Ramone
#11. If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land
gets tossed in jail on a vagrancy rap, may I
not attain highest perfect enlightenment.
Gary Snyder
#12. One evening you may learn about enlightenment, koans, meditation and personal power.
Frederick Lenz
#13. Zen was an attempt to get back to the purest teachings of the Buddha -enlightenment without strings.
Frederick Lenz
#14. My definition is that geo-enlightenment is understanding the interconnectedness of things.
Jack Dangermond
#15. Elegance is a small price to pay for enlightenment, and I was glad to pay it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#16. Joe certainly didn't seem concerned with his own enlightenment, but he did seem more intelligent than the average muscle neck. Then he raised his arm, bent his head, and sniffed his pit.
Gabrielle looked at the plates in her hands. She should have used paper.
Rachel Gibson
#17. War is unthinkable in a society of autonomous people who have discovered the connectedness of all humanity, who are unafraid of alien ideas and alien cultures, who know that all revolutions begin within and that you cannot impose your brand of enlightenment on anyone else.
Marilyn Ferguson
#18. The Network of Enlightenment watches over a world and guides it, tenderly. Not interfering in its natural course of evolution is our way.
Frederick Lenz
#19. The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.
Anne Lamott
#20. I can understand pathways to enlightenment where people shun certain aspects of the sensual world because they feel that these aspects are very powerful; they're not in a position to control their appetites.
Frederick Lenz
#21. By nature, it's impossible to describe enlightenment! How do you plan on sharing your enlightenment? Hahaha, that's impossible. Wake up! That'll be the end of the world if you ever succeed!
Osamu Tezuka
#22. Enlightenment comes through the feminine side of the being.
Frederick Lenz
#23. Pain is the fuel that lights the flame of our enlightenment
Eckhart Tolle
#24. The path of Tao is not that of sudden enlightenment. It is not like Zen. Zen is sudden enlightenment, Tao is gradual growth.
Osho
#25. 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
#26. Friedrich Nietzsche: "If Luther had been burned like Hus, the dawn of the Enlightenment might perhaps have come a little earlier and more brilliantly than we can now imagine.
Timothy George
#27. Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
Matsuo Basho
#28. Zen is a very quick path to enlightenment and development of the mind and all its facilities.
Frederick Lenz
#30. Sometimes in the quest for enlightenment the only thing that gets lighter is your wallet.
Steve Maraboli
#32. In the course of time one does not feel even the existence of God. After attaining enlightenment one sees that gods and deities are all Maya.
Sarada Devi
#33. Remember, the greatest gift to give people your enlightenment, to share it. It has to be the greatest.
Gautama Buddha
#34. Miracles have a purpose. Miracles help people believe in enlightenment. The real miracle is the transformation of consciousness from limitation and pain to enlightenment and ecstasy.
Frederick Lenz
#35. Ever since the Enlightenment, people thought that we were living in a rational universe. They thought that God was a mathematician and that the function of the scientist was to figure out the mathematical rules whereby the universe was created.
Eric Kandel
#36. It's said that the Buddha's enlightenment is great than that of a traveler setting out, in the same proportion as the heavens are bigger than what can be seen of them through the eye of a needle. But in both cases, what you see is the sky.
Matthieu Ricard
#37. I personally, only work with people in my business who show excellence. I have a business, the business of enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#38. Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.
Joko Beck
#39. Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment.
Marisha Pessl
#40. There are two worlds, the world of desire and the world of enlightenment. The world of enlightenment doesn't go anywhere. It is endless, luminous perfection. The world of desire leads to more desire.
Frederick Lenz
#42. 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
#43. Religions are the training wheels of self enlightenment. They can be helpful in the beginning but at some point they must be let go.
Reggie Watts
#44. Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.
Pema Chodron
#45. I am making an Enlightenment Capsule for the audience to meditate inside - virtual reality in which people can experience ancient ideas from the East ... But I'm not interested in using ancient things; rather I want to connect [audiences] with contemporary life through the technology we have now.
Mariko Mori
#46. Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.
Ben Shahn
#47. When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. So I like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business-man's ... on morals.
Thomas Hardy
#48. When you get a new worldview you get a new world. It's like the shift from medieval Christianity to the Renaissance and enlightenment.
Barbara Marx Hubbard
#49. Consistent with the liberal views of the Enlightenment, Leibniz was an optimist with respect to human reasoning and scientific progress. Although he was a great reader and admirer of Spinoza, Leibniz, being a confirmed deist, rejected emphatically Spinoza's pantheism.
Shelby D. Hunt
#50. Meditation doesn't lead to enlightenment because in meditation the ego is trying to destroy the ego.
Donald O'Donovan
#51. Enlightenment is the complete awareness of life without mental modifications.
Frederick Lenz
#52. What the world needs more than anything are Bodhisattvas of peace, lawyers, politicians, teachers working tirelessly for the enlightenment of themselves and others.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#53. Enlightenment is not about building a false sense of spirituality or blindly following religious doctrine, it is about carefully cultivating practices that relieve one of the ego and transcend the illusory perceptions of the world.
Joseph P. Kauffman
#54. Enlightenment is a timeless void. It's an emptiness that's filled with the most excellent light.
Frederick Lenz
#55. The day-to-day life we lead has nothing to do with enlightenment. It is just around the corner, and we don't see it.
Frederick Lenz
#56. The fact is that all the important political philosophers and scientists from the great Aristotle on, with the exception of those of the French Enlightenment and Mill, have sided with the powers that be.
Mario Bunge
#57. Gain is delusion; loss is enlightenment.
Kodo Sawaki
#58. 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
#59. Tantra is not sexual yoga. When the word tantra is used in the West, very often people immediately associate it with some kind of sexual yoga in which you use sex as a vehicle for enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#60. Buddhism asks big questions about birth and death, cause and effect, emptiness and form, delusion and enlightenment. I just hope you're not actually thinking about any of that stuff, because Buddhism is fundamentally about something that requires no thought.
Karen Maezen Miller
#61. There is a great difference between enlightenment and education. The former is a discerned vital knowledge without guidance while the latter is imparting any knowledge.
Uzoma Nnadi
#62. I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#63. The real pleasure,the real peace, the real enlightenment is to give. The more you give the more you get. If you give 10, you get 100.
Bikram Choudhury
#64. And as long as you're subject to birth and death, you'll never attain enlightenment.
Bodhidharma
#65. Enlightenment remains unrealized so long as it is considered as a specific
state to be attained, and for which there are standards of success.
Alan Watts
#66. The 7 factors of enlightenment: mindfullness, investigation of mental objects, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration and equanimity.
Nhat Hanh
#67. There is only one calamity: ignorance. And there is only one solution: enlightenment.
Jaggi Vasudev
#68. The role of the artist is like that of an explorer and a teacher - a teacher of seeing. No one is more capable of conveying this enlightenment than the artist.
Ken Danby
#69. Each of the small enlightenments that a Zen practitioner has, which are known in Zen as "Satori experiences," provides deeper insights into the nature of existence and helps a person prepare for complete enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#70. Matangi's mantra is aim, which is MIA backwards. She fights for freedom of speech and stands for truth, and lives in the ghetto because her dad was the first person in Hindu mythology who came from the 'hood, but had gained enlightenment through not being a Brahmin.
M.I.A.
#71. Enlightenment is illusive and can only be received by those who ask for it and by those who are worthy to receive it. Only then will you be shown the path.
Robert Palasciano
#72. You saw me vacillating between error and truth, loving them equally because unable to distinguish the one from the other; the hour marked out by God for my enlightenment has come: He has shown me the powerlessness of reason, and the necessity of faith.
Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire
#73. If death is perfect enlightenment, life appears to be the perfect opposite.
Anthony Marais
#74. Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.
Eric S. Raymond
#75. The circumstances of confusion will be your path to enlightenment' - Thursday Next
Jasper Fforde
#76. Man's mind is made up of illusionary pictures. Consequently, when he throws away these pictures Truth will enter into his mind, and he will know Truth to the extent of what he has discarded. This is enlightenment.
Woo Myung
#77. No one on this earth attains enlightenment anymore without an enlightened master as a guide, unless that person was enlightened in many previous incarnations.
Frederick Lenz
#78. There are only two profound ways to reach enlightenment: Laugh by yourself, or get tickled.
Saurabh Sharma
#80. We live in a world where no one believes. Enlightenment and knowledge are laughed at. Those who seek and teach the mysteries are scorned and often persecuted. Welcome to the planet earth: environment hostile.
Frederick Lenz
#81. Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
Bell Hooks
#82. Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn't just by conquest. It's through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants.
Amy Chua
#83. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.
Elon Musk
#84. The network of enlightenment is a very wide network. It's not relegated to a simple type of being. It's not the network of the goody-goods.
Frederick Lenz
#85. Sam Keen points out that Zen masters spend years to reach an enlightenment that every natural child already knows - the total incarnation of sleeping when you're tired and eating when you're hungry. What irony that this state of Zen-like bliss is programmatically and systematically destroyed.
John Bradshaw
#86. I think enlightenment is something that you decide to do after you have met someone who is enlightened. Something touches your heart, your being at a very deep level.
Frederick Lenz
#87. 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
#88. The idea of progress - the notion that human history is the history of human betterment - dominated the world view of the West between the Enlightenment and the First World War.
Jill Lepore
#89. Even the slightest criticism of others is an impediment (hindrance) to Absolute Knowledge (Kevalgnan, Absolute Enlightenment). It also hinders Atmagnan (Knowledge of the Self), also hinders Samkit (Self-realization).
Dada Bhagwan
#90. Don't care what anybody says about enlightenment, except the enlightened and those who seek it.
Frederick Lenz
#91. We go to the mountain for enlightenment, for self-realization, for adventure, for discovery. It's pregnant with meaning. When people see a mountain, they invest it with meaning. Not plot. Not character.
Joe Rohde
#92. Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.
Theodor Adorno
#93. To those who are trained in science, creationism seems a bad dream, a sudden coming back to life of a nightmare, a renewed march of an Army of the Night risen to challenge free thought and enlightenment.
Isaac Asimov
#94. The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.
Steven Pinker
#95. Enlightenment is being able to go to your own home and feel comfortable.
Jennifer James
#96. Today's China is an artifact of an extended and contentious history while the relatively young American Republic is a daring project informed by the enlightenment philosophy espoused by the Founding Fathers.
Patrick Mendis
#97. The Bible has been used as a way of making us accept our situation, and not to bring enlightenment to the poor.
Rigoberta Menchu
#98. By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
E. O. Wilson
#99. Enlightenment, don't know what it is. It's up to you, the way you think.
Van Morrison
#100. Those who feel the impulse to pursue the path of enlightenment should immediately take the step, and not defer it while they attend to all the other things on their mind.
Yoshida Kenko
