Gautama Buddha Quotes
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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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More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm.
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A person writing at night may put out the lamp, but the words he has written will remain. It is the same with the destiny we create for ourselves in this world.
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Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little.
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One who does not rouse themself when it is time to rise, who, though capable, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle person will never find their way to true knowledge.
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Let your mind become clear like a still forest pool.
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Like a mother who protects her child, her only child, with her own life, one should cultivate a heart of unlimited love and compassion towards all living beings.
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Joyously participate in the sorrows of others.
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So too, monks, I saw the ancient path, the ancient road traveled by the Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past. And what is that ancient path, that ancient road? It is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
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From a withered tree, a flower blooms.
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Your actions are your only true belongings.
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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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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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Having abandoned the taking of life, refraining from killing, we dwell without violence, with the knife laid down, scrupulous, full of mercy, trembling with compassion for all sentient beings.
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If you want to understand the causes that existed in the past, look at the results as they are manifested in the present. And if you want to understand what results will be manifested in the future, look at the causes that exist in the present.
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One who previously made bad karma, but who reforms and creates good karma, brightens the world like the moon appearing from behind a cloud.
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One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the Messiah?" "No," answered Buddha. "Then are you a healer?" "No," Buddha replied. "Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted. "No, I am not a teacher." "Then what are you?" asked the student exasperated. "I am awake," Buddha replied.
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We do not learn by experience, but by our capacity for experience.
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Irrigators channel waters; fletchers straighten arrows; carpenters bend wood; the wise master themselves.
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Realizing the doctrine of dependent-arising, the wise do not at all partake of extreme views.
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And he who lives a hundred years, idle and weak, a life of one day is better if a man has attained firm strength.
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Samsara-the Wheel of Existence, literally, the "Perpetual Wandering"-is the name by which is designated the sea of life ever restlessly heaving up and down, the symbol of this continuous process of ever again and again being born, growing old, suffering, and dying. (It) is constantly changing from moment to moment, (as lives) follow continuously one upon the other through inconceivable periods of time. Of this Samsara, a single lifetime constitutes only a vanishingly tiny fraction.
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If a man who enjoys a lesser happiness beholds a greater one, let him leave aside the lesser to gain the greater.
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Those... who find delight in freedom from attachment in the renunciation of clinging, free from the inflow of thoughts, they are like shining lights, having reached final liberation in the world.