Gautama Buddha Quotes
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Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world: As star at dawn, a bubble in a stream A flash of lightning in a summer cloud A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
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These teachings are like a raft, to be abandoned once you have crossed the flood. Since you should abandon even good states of mind generated by these teachings, How much more so should you abandon bad states of mind!
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The ignorant man is an ox. He grows in size, not in wisdom.
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A fool who recognises his own ignorance is thereby in fact a wise man, but a fool who considers himself wise - that is what one really calls a fool.
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However young, the seeker who sets out upon the way Shines bright over the world. But day and night the person who is awake Shines in the radiance of the spirit. Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work, with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine!
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Through zeal, knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal, knowledge is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow.
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I have the True Dharma Eye, the Marvelous Mind of Nirvana, the True Form of the Formless, and the Subtle Dharma Gate, independent of words and transmitted beyond doctrine. This I have entrusted to Mahakashyapa.
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Whatever suffering there is in this world,all arises from desiring only myself to be happy.And whatever joy there is in this world,all arises from desiring to share my happiness with everyone.
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The right time to show your good character is when you are pestered by someone weaker than you.
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Delight in meditation and solitude. Compose yourself, be happy. You are a seeker.
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Let a man neither give himself over to pleasures ... nor yet let him give himself over to self-mortification ... To the exclusion of both these extremes, the Truth-Finder has discovered a middle course.
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Do not pursue the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. The past no longer is. The future has not yet come. Looking deeply at life as it is. In the very here and now, the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom. We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it? The sage calls a person who knows how to dwell in mindfulness night and day, 'one who knows the better way to live alone.'
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But when one masters this wretched desire, which is so hard to overcome, then one's sorrows just drop off, like a drop of water off a lotus.
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If for just the time of a finger-snap a monk produces a thought of loving-kindness, develops it, gives attention to it, such a one is rightly called a monk. Not in vain does he meditate. He acts in accordance with the master's teaching, he follows his advice. How much more so if he cultivates it.
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Learn this from the waters: in mountain clefts and chasms, loud gush the streamlets, but great rivers flow silently.
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Careful amidst the careless, amongst the sleeping wide-awake, the intelligent man leaves them all behind, like a race-horse does a mere hack.
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The recollected go forth to lives of renunciation. They take no pleasure in a fixed abode. Like wild swans abandoning a pool, they leave one resting place after another.
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It is because I perceive the danger in the practice of mystic wonders, that I loath, abhor, and am ashamed thereof.
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Men give up one thing to take up another, but in spite of numerous changes they do not find peace. They are no better than monkeys who let go one bough to take hold of another, only to let it go again.
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As long as one feels that he is the doer, he cannot escape from the wheel of births.
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Better than a meaningless story of a thousand words is a single word of deep meaning which, when heard, produces peace.
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If a person does not harm any living being...and does not kill or cause others to kill - that person is a true spiritual practitioner.
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Attention leads to immortality. Carelessness leads to death. Those who pay attention will not die, while the careless are as good as dead already.
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Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good.