1,972 Quotes About Buddhism

Sometimes, visualize that your heart is a brilliant ball of light. As you breathe out, it radiates rays of white light in all directions, carrying your happiness to all beings. As you breathe in, their suffering, negativity and afflictions come towards you in the form of dense, black light, which is absorbed in your heart and disappears in its brilliant white light without a trace, relieving all beings of their pain and sorrow.

With all its many risks, this life enduresNo more than windblown bubbles in a stream.How marvelous to breathe in and out again,To fall asleep and then awake refreshed.

You are not a Dharma practitioner if you don't mingle your mind with the Dharma. (p. 115)

According to Lama Je Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), the essence of the entire path to awakening can be distilled into three main realizations: renunciation, the mind that relinquishes distortions, afflictive emotions, and compulsions, as well as their unfavorable results; Bodhicitta, the mind set on awakening for the benefit of others; and wisdom, the mind that directly perceives the ultimate reality of emptiness and interdependence.

Much (if not all) of my spiritual growth was cultivated and punctuated by my encounters with a succession of incredible teachers. A qualified mentor is essential as we find our way from suffering to freedom, from spiritual darkness to the transcendent light of Divinity.

We are missing an enormous opportunity if we deny ourselves a wholesome, mature reliance on those who have evolved to what we aspire to become. As Sir Isaac Newton urged, we can evolve best by standing on the shoulders of giants, getting closer to truth by building on the discoveries of those luminaries who came before us.

In every one of us is a child who hopes myths, mysteries, and dreams can come true. They can, and they have. (p. 7)

True refuge demands a complete and utter trust fall into the arms of reality. (p. 56)

The fundamental nature of the mind is pure and stable. The innate, subtle mind of clear light, which is the basis of the cultivation of positive states of mind, is stable in that it continues eternally without interruption.