The Way Of Buddhism Quotes

#1. The spirit of Buddhism is, more than anything, about valuing harmony and unity, in which others are respected and embraced rather than denounced. This has been the way of Buddhism since the beginning, and this is true Buddhism.

Shinjo Ito

#2. When you dig a well, there's no sign of water until you reach it, only rocks and dirt to move out of the way. You have removed enough; soon the pure water will flow, said Buddha.

Deepak Chopra

#3. Separating the God question from Buddhism does not make Buddhists atheists - within silence lies mystery. That doesn't mean, however, we should infer from this acknowledgement of the mystery a nod one way or another on the matter of the divine.

Andrew Furst

#4. This culture seems to be so obsessed with sexuality, the good and the bad of it. Every advertisement, every preacher, everybody's concerned, one way or the other about sexuality.

Frederick Lenz

#5. When the mind is full of memories and preoccupied by the future, it misses the freshness of the present moment. In this way, we fail to recognize the luminous simplicity of mind that is always present behind the veils of thought.

Matthieu Ricard

#6. When we talk, answer questions, I'm addressing your tonal. I'm teaching you a way or a series of ways of dealing with the world.

Frederick Lenz

#7. Your existence is passing before you. Grains of sand in the hourglass. The Wicked Witch of the West has you in her castle and she's turned the hourglass over and the sand is running through. Will you be liberated or will you die? The only way you can beat death is liberation.

Frederick Lenz

#8. We must accept the reality that the causes of impatience travel a two-way street.

Allan Lokos

#9. Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what's happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.

Sharon Salzberg

#10. While a man desires a woman,
His mind is bound
As closely as a calf to its mother.

As you would pluck an autumn lily,
Pluck the arrow of desire.

Dhammapada

#11. In Buddhism, they say attachment to anything only leads to suffering. So when we laugh, it's our way of saying, 'I'm unattached to that.' You're tickled by it, it makes your lobes do something on their own. So humor is very important to me. I always take that to the stage first.

Jason Mraz

#12. The energy strands and bands of our being are linked in a certain way and makes us what we are. It causes us to perceive a certain level of the dream of life. But you can reorder those. That's magic, you see.

Frederick Lenz

#13. The way you learn is by sitting with the Master, as he moves into those states of attention, you feel that and follow him. He generates tremendous energy when he's doing anything. You are taught inwardly.

Frederick Lenz

#14. I don't feel any great need to subscribe to a certain notion of Buddhism that says "You have to do this" or "You have to do that." Buddhism does not prescribe rituals or prohibitions in the way many religions do.

Pankaj Mishra

#15. Buddhism is simply a methodology, a way of becoming one with the part of ourselves that is happy.

Frederick Lenz

#16. Outside of nirvana, the planes begin, the subtlest planes of light that vibrate fastest, all the way on down through the astral realms through the physical and so on.

Frederick Lenz

#17. The island of the tonal, the way we see life, is there so we can get through our life. It was never intended to become a dictator that would usurp all other views of the world and banish them.

Frederick Lenz

#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. This is the age of electrical energy. The age of atomic energy hasn't really dawned yet, not in the way that atomic energy has evolved in other worlds.

Frederick Lenz

#20. In martial arts one of the first things that you learn is to be balanced. Balance is the central principle in architecture and design. Balance is a way of trying to talk about being at the center of things.

Frederick Lenz

#21. The universe is ecstasy. We have many other ways of perceiving infinity. And when you perceive life through these other modes, that's when you see that the universe is ecstasy, That's when you experience its ecstasy.

Frederick Lenz

#22. Some people meditate because they are sick and tired of their life, of the world, of the way people abuse each other and abrogate each other's freedoms.

Frederick Lenz

#23. Most of the teaching I do is not verbal. It's in every movement of my body. It's in my dance. It's in the way I lift a glass of water. It's in my voice tone. It's in every aspect of my life - because it isn't my life anymore.

Frederick Lenz

#24. Live in joy, in love,
even among those who hate.
Live in joy, in health,
even among the afflicted.
Live in joy, in peace,
even among the troubled.
Look within, be still.
Free from fear and attachment,
know the sweet joy of the way.

Gautama Buddha

#25. The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh

#26. The way we gain wisdom in meditation is not by explanation. If you go into the planes of light, you will come out of the meditation knowing things ... things that are inexpressible.

Frederick Lenz

#27. If you're a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.

Thich Nhat Hanh

#28. The best martial artist doesn't win fights, but avoids fights. Martial arts is a way of gaining basic self-mastery of your mind, body and emotions. It can also be very useful in combat situations.

Frederick Lenz

#29. Experience is a great teacher. You will have to go through the trials and tribulations and the ecstasies and abandoned moments of wonderfulness that all of us did on the way to enlightenment.

Frederick Lenz

#30. You perceive yourself as being solid and physical, limited to a body. You are made up of light, endless mind. The way you see life is a limited state of mind.

Frederick Lenz

#31. Religion is either something we scorn because we are too rational or it's the realm of the fanatic who insists that their God and their religion is the only way and everyone else is dammed.

Frederick Lenz

#32. 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

#33. Life is invisible. The illusion is that what we perceive is in some way not a reflection of self. Life reflects the field of attention that we're in.

Frederick Lenz

#34. When we direct our attention toward our suffering, we see our potential for happiness. We see the nature of suffering and the way out. That is why the Buddha called suffering a holy truth. When we use the word "suffering" in Buddhism, we mean the kind of suffering that can show us the way out.

Thich Nhat Hanh

#35. [A] view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our mind. ... [T]his can never match Reality, ... because the world isn't frozen.

Steve Hagen

#36. Buddhism is the study of the way the mind works. One has to be able to hold a large number of relational concepts simultaneously in the mind. It is necessary to grid, to literally unlock realities and dimensions with the power of your mind.

Frederick Lenz

#37. The vast majority of the people who populate our planet live lives of quiet desperation that are all too often quite harsh and painful, lives in which events and circumstances usually don't turn out the way they had hoped or planned.

Frederick Lenz

#38. Students of the Way must not study Buddhism for the sake of themselves. They must study Buddhism only for the sake of Buddhism. The key to this is to renounce both body and mind without holding anything back and to offer them to the great sea of Buddhism.

Dogen

#39. One way to think of this dignity is to equate when you are on the path with unraveling a ball of yarn. You have wound your sense of self so tightly that it's hard to be anything other than you, a big ball of yarn. That's just who you are, not string, or threads, but a ball of yarn.

Lodro Rinzler

#40. Changing the way you dress can make it easier to make deeper changes in the structure of your personality.

Frederick Lenz

#41. With the practice of meditation you can move into other states of mind, sort of ungluing the glue that binds you to a particular perceptual mode, a way of seeing life which is an illusory one.

Frederick Lenz

#42. The entire teaching of Buddhism can be summed up in this way: Nothing is worth holding on to.

Jack Kornfield

#43. Meditation can be a refuge, but it is not a practice in which real life is ever excluded. The strength of mindfulness is that it enables us to hold difficult thoughts and feelings in a different way - with awareness, balance, and love

Sharon Salzberg

#44. In no way can words convey the nagual. But they open up the possibility. They allow an admission on the island of the tonal.

Frederick Lenz

#45. We are animals descended from five billion years of wanting, striving, and seeking. And life just doesn't cooperate. So we suffer. And so the solution to that problem is to upgrade our minds, in a distinctly 'unnatural' way, so that the mind clings less and lets go more.

Jay Michaelson

#46. How long the path may be depends for any man on where he stands today and his speed of travel. These are his past and present choosing, but the beginning of the way is here and now, and karma and rebirth are the means of treading it.

Christmas Humphreys

#47. It is inevitable that, in the process of teaching an Asian religion in a Western country, many of the teachings will seem strange or unusual - in the same way that Christianity and Judaism may seem strange and unusual to people from the Far East.

Frederick Lenz

#48. The present moment is the substance with which the future is made. Therefore, the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. What else can you do?

Thich Nhat Hanh

#49. I personally have fun with enlightenment, the study and the teaching of it. I get a kick out of doing it different ways because I don't think there is a "way".

Frederick Lenz

#50. I am very interested in the enlightenment of women. Very few teachers of advanced self discovery work with women, and if they do it's usually in a very second handed way. They treat women as second class citizens.

Frederick Lenz

#51. Everyone feels some jealousy, some anger, and some hostility. Don't feel guilty. But to allow them to become dominant expressions of your way of life is off the wall.

Frederick Lenz

#52. Meditation is the art of life. Meditation is not simply a practice. It is an experience, awareness, and a way of perceiving life.

Frederick Lenz

#53. To go to the very center of the mind of God, to be that, to become aware of our infiniteness, is the goal of Buddhism and along the way, to be as kind to others as possible without thinking that we are particularly wonderful.

Frederick Lenz

#54. Unfortunately we've seen meditation insulted in a sense with the image of ritual. You have to dress a certain way, follow a certain type of lifestyle, all that sort of thing, very culty - and that, of course, has nothing to do with the practice whatsoever.

Frederick Lenz

#55. In the West people spend most of their time and energy working. The problem is you are so tired from work that you don't have much energy to meditate - unless you use work in a tantric way.

Frederick Lenz

#56. People who are involved in self-discovery lead different types of lives. The lives they lead are not necessarily the lives of renunciation. Rather, it is a structuring of the elements in your life in a particular way.

Frederick Lenz

#57. It's necessary for you to work out a way of living that's very strong and very tight and very powerful, otherwise you will not be able to deal with the unknown.

Frederick Lenz

#58. Sometimes, sitting there on the cushion failing to watch your breath, it can feel like you're the only weirdo weird enough to be wasting your time in this way. But you're not! There are generations of weirdos, monasteries full of them, and we have the benefit of their accumulated wisdom.

Jay Michaelson

#59. One, who studies the ways of power, seeks to end the imprinting process because in imprinting we loser power, we lose attention; we are formatted to do certain things.

Frederick Lenz

#60. Well Buddhism, 'shmoodism', I didn't go to India looking for Buddhism. I was looking for truth, or God, or a better way of life or happiness, fulfillment, meaning, purpose. And a way to become peace in the world and not just fight for peace, as we had in the 60's.

Surya Das

#61. Enlightenment is already there inside us and all things. All we have to do is get something out of the way that is causing us not to see that.

Frederick Lenz

#62. The Buddha would never speak about enlightenment. The way he taught people about enlightenment was they meditated with him. He exposed them to countless views of the nagual.

Frederick Lenz

#63. If you are afraid of other people take a martial arts class. The best way to overcome fear is learn to be proficient in martial arts.

Frederick Lenz

#64. In fact, no form of death places a greater burden on society than suicide, for the act of suicide is the way a person seeks to resolve his alienation from a cooperative society.

Shinmon Aoki

#65. When you draw from the endless awareness of nirvana, you are no longer a slave to fortune. When pleasant experiences come your way, you can enjoy them. But if pain and misfortune befall you, you can rise above them and remain unaffected.

Frederick Lenz

#66. I think the most miraculous thing is learning. I get out of the way and let the students learn. Then you get to watch this amazing thing happen.

Frederick Lenz

#67. In Buddhism, what is known as beginner's mind is a way to look at the world as if for the first time: with interest, enthusiasm, and engagement. This may be the optimal state of mind for a healthy brain.

Louis Cozolino

#68. We applaud the people who are film stars, who get elected to an office, who are very athletic, the small group who play with power in a very limited way. But we're completely oblivious to what can be done to the infinite realities that exist in front of us. We deny them.

Frederick Lenz

#69. Love is self-realization. Love is liberation. The only way beyond time, to unravel the knot of existence, is to love.

Frederick Lenz

#70. Change is one of the only constants in Buddhism; as meditation became the way I breathed in the days, this became apparent.

Nick Flynn

#71. Two of Epicurus's early influences, Democritus and Pyrrho, had actually journeyed all the way to what is now India, where they had encountered Buddhism in the schools of the gymnosophists

Epicurus

#72. A boddhisattva is someone who is on the way to becoming a buddha. All of us become boddhisattvas as soon as we start to take our Zen work seriously and the work we do contributes to creating a world in which all good actions become more efficacious.

David Brazier

#73. Buddhism is the study of power initially. It takes a certain amount of power to even know your potential - to have the sense that you can change the way you perceive.

Frederick Lenz

#74. We must control the tendencies within our being that are destructive, when we want to slam somebody else, hurt them, injure them, or push them out of the way. A reverence for life needs to be developed, in which all things are sacred.

Frederick Lenz

#75. The reason you see yourself as a creep is because you have an appreciation of what perfection is, whereas no one else conceives of themselves in that way, since they don't even strive.

Frederick Lenz

#76. Buddhism is all about finding your own way, not imitating the ways of others or even the ways of Buddha himself.

Brad Warner

#77. You don't understand. I only prostitute the part of the body that isn't important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don't do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat of Buddha. What you do is very very bad. You should not use your mind in that way

John Burdett

#78. Consider the way you speak and your use of language; it's a reflection of your warrior spirit.

Frederick Lenz

#79. In the Zen of sports and athletics, we seek to bring discipline and control into our physical movements, but at the same time to eliminate the self that gets in the way of perfect play.

Frederick Lenz

#80. 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

#81. That huge majority of black folks who identify as Christian or as believers in other religious faiths (Islam, Buddhism, Yoruba, and so on) need to return to sacred writings about love and embrace these as guides showing us the way to lead our lives.

Bell Hooks