Buddhism Quotes - Page 101

What you focus on you become. So always focus on that which is highest, brightest, happiest and most noble of all things, enlightenment.

There are so many traps. There are so many opportunities. Life is a river and we take our boat and we go down it.

It does happen, of course, that the priesthood has been on bad terms with womankind for some three thousand years. You see, Buddhism teaches that women are evil. Fiends. Messengers of hell. I've spent years immersed in the scriptures, so it's no accident that you and I fight all the time.

Just study Buddhism. Don't follow the sentiments of the world.

The great achievement of Zen Buddhism, and all of its cultural expressions in painting or the tea ceremony or rock gardens, is a rejection of earlier Buddhist ideas which were dependent upon narrative - all the mythological creatures that populate the Buddhist galaxy. Zen insisted on the real located in nature.

According to Buddhism, each person is a Buddha who has forgotten their original nature. If we in the pampered West, having grown up with so many advantages, could not claim our own health and our agency, preferring to see ourselves as helpless victims, then who would do it? Who would take responsibility for the world?

I think when religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism - as well as Christianity and Judaism - were founded, at that time societies were generally male-dominated. So, therefore this social notion also influenced religion.

Don't try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-al ready-are.

If there's good, strong evidence from science that such and such is the case and this is contrary to Buddhism, then we will change.

I don't want to convert people to Buddhism - all major religions, when understood properly, have the same potential for good.

Some people get the impression that Buddhism talks too much about suffering. In order to become prosperous, a person must initially work very hard, so he or she has to sacrifice a lot of leisure time. Similarly, the Buddhist is willing to sacrifice immediate comfort so that he or she can achieve lasting happiness.

Americans are interested because they are open-minded. They have an education system that teaches them to find out for themselves why things are the way they are. Open-minded people tend to be interested in Buddhism because Buddha urged people to investigate things - he didn't just command them to believe.

Buddhism strongly discourages blind faith and fanaticism.

I could justify violence only in this extreme case, to save the last living knowledge of Buddhism itself.

I have found a much greater appreciation of Buddhism because I couldn't take it for granted here in exile.

As far as ignorance is concerned, not just Buddhism, every religion recognizes it as the source of suffering.

India is developing a lot of soft power, and it's not just about us providing outsourcing and call centers to the world. We are providing a lot of thought and a way of life. I think we're also respected for fundamentally a non-violent belief thanks to our religious roots whether it's Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, we contributed more religions to the world than any part of the world and that's something which does find its way into how the world looks at it.

It's very difficult to stay angry when a room full of bald guys in orange robes start giggling. Buddhism.

The followers of Derrida are pathetic, snuffling in French pockets for bits of pieces of a deconstructive method already massively and coherently presented and with a mature sense of the sacred in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Now however, we have contraception and it's mostly reliable so you can have sex without that happening. So then you start vilifying the act of sex itself. I don't think Buddhism has ever done that necessarily, or at least I'm not aware of Buddhism taking the stance that Christianity often has which says that sex itself is a kind of evil act, which is a really weird idea.

It's interesting to see what's going on with physics these days because they're starting to come out with stuff that sounds remarkably like Buddhism and even more specifically like the ancient Hindu Vedas. Physics isn't necessarily saying the exact same thing but I think eventually it will merge.

Much of the hatred and fear of sexuality found in religions stems from the idea that sex is a thing of the body and that the body must be denied so that the spirit may be elevated. In Buddhism there is no notion that the body is made of inferior matter while the spirit flies free within.

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

If ideas and beliefs are to be denied validity outside the geographical and cultural bounds of their origin, Buddhism would be confined to north India, Christianity to a narrow tract in the Middle East and Islam to Arabia.

When you think of Buddhism, you're likely to think of peace and tranquility.