Bhikkhu Bodhi Quotes
For the Buddha, the key to liberation is mental purity and correct understanding, and for this reason he rejects the notion that we can gain salvation by leaning on any external authority.
Quotes to Explore
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Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is of greater weight, and their judgment more to be relied on, because they are believed to have paid attention, not to matters of fiction, but to the investigation of the truth.
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Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
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What a liberation to realize that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am. 'Who am I, then?' The one who sees that.
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The authority to declare war rests in Congress, not in an out-of-control president.
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Of course the UN brings in a lot of moral authority.
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I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
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The Buddha is your real body, your original mind.
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I am not the first Buddha who came upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha will arise in the world - a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals.
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Buddha's teaching are very simple, you don't have to break your head to understand the message. The part that I like the most from Buddha's teachings and from His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, is that the most powerful weapon is to not attack, to be able to have self-control.
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The inner world is very potent for me - I don't ascribe to any God or Jesus or Buddha - I just have a sense of it and revere it along with the natural world and human consciousness.
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There ought to be an absolute dictatorship... a dictatorship of painters... a dictatorship of one painter... to suppress all those who have betrayed us.
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Mary obtains salvation for all who have recourse to her. Oh! If all sinners had recourse to Mary, who would ever be lost? ... He who is protected by her will be saved; he who is not will be lost.
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The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.
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Christianity is not a cafeteria line where you say, “I’ll have a little salvation, but no Lordship right now.
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Different people describe me in a different ways. Some describe me as the living Buddha. Nonsense. Some describe me as 'God-king.' Nonsense. Some consider me as a demon or a wolf in Buddhist robes. That also, I think nonsense.
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I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.
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It is said that “there is a self,” but “non-self” too is taught. The buddhas also teach there is nothing which is “neither self nor non-self.” Everything is real, not real; both real and not real; neither not real nor real: this is the teaching of the Buddha.
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Even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion. We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual.
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I didn't have anybody, really, no foundation in life, so I had to make my own way. Always, from the start. I had to go out in the world and become strong, to discover my mission in life.
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Not being boring is quite a challenge.
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God’s sovereign will is not at the whim and mercy of our person and individual responses to it.
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For the Buddha, the key to liberation is mental purity and correct understanding, and for this reason he rejects the notion that we can gain salvation by leaning on any external authority.
