Quotes About Buddhism

Buddhism is not just going to temple, being at a ceremony and dressing up. That is the church of Buddhism. Esoteric Buddhism is to move beyond this world.

Buddhism and Christianity are incompatible because there is no God in Buddhism - particularly in Theravada Buddhism. But they are also allies because their values and practices are compatible and they can work together - indeed, they would benefit greatly from doing so.

There are no mundane things outside of Buddhism, and there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things.

If you meditate and continue to have fun with yoga and Buddhism, you will amass knowledge and will move to a higher incarnation. In your next lifetime you will be much wiser, much happier.

A handful of men working within the Zen sect of Buddhism created gardens in fifteenth-century Japan which were, and still are, far more than merely an aesthetic expression. And what is left of the earlier Mogul gardens in India suggests that their makers were acquainted with what lay behind the flowering of the Sufi movement in High Asia and so sought to add further dimensions to their garden scenes.

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

As my personal explorations continued, I experienced this quality of inner reality more and more and could no longer doubt that the meaning of God lay in this direction. At the same time, these undeniable experiences lit up and were in turn illuminated by all the philosophical and historical knowledge I had by then amassed and I began to understand in an entirely new way the teachings of both Judaism and Christianity as well as the teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam.

Buddhism has existed forever, just like we have, and occasionally it's codified; it's put together into a system by someone who likes to codify.

The nature of Buddhism, as I understand it, is to believe that we are all pure and radiant at our core. And yet we see around us so much evidence that people are not acting from a place of purity and radiance.

There are clearly people for whom Stoicism immediately "clicks," it comes natural, and others for whom it doesn't. Then again, Stoicism isn't the only positive philosophy of life. Buddhism is an excellent alternative, if it speaks more clearly to one's personality or cultural background.

Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there…the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.

Music is not the only reason that I practice Buddhism anymore because it has affected my whole life.

I don't think about what I do. I do it. That's Buddhism. I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down.

In Buddhism you study how to release the kundalini to the levels that would certainly afford career success. If we move it further, into the planes of knowledge and wisdom, it enables the practitioner to do just about anything.

We learn by doing, not just by thinking. So I feel like beyond Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Judaism, or Christianity we need today to think about a global spirituality. We need to make it very personal and transformative for one self, and each other, together for those who are interested.

The notion that Western religions are more rigid than those of Asia is overdrawn. Ours is the most permissive society history has ever known - almost the only thing that is forbidden now is to forbid - and Asian teachers and their progeny play up to this propensity by soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's rules.

What is evil? There is no such thing. In Buddhism we don't recognize evil and therefore we don't give it any power over us.

I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice.

If you're studying Buddhism you never really have enough time because you're going to die.

What we seek to do in Tantric Buddhism is to liquefy ourselves. Life will automatically bring us to the next stage. You don't really have to know where you're going - It's like breathing.

For the first time in the history of the world, Buddhism proclaimed a salvation which each individual could gain from him or herself, in this world, during this life, without any least reference to God, or to gods either great or small.

We all need a place that is safe and wholesome enough for us to return for refuge. In Buddhism, that refuge is mindfulness.

The dialectical change of mind that occurs in Buddhism is not simply the assimilation of a new philosophical basis or religious basis for viewing and interpreting experience. Rather it is the complete structural revision of that which is.

We may have created this projection of what God should be, as this judge or test, but the fact is, the only way we know about God is by knowing ourselves in some way. So God must be in ourselves-you can't deny that. If you say that God is somewhere else, which is what a lot of religions say, I just can't deal with it. I guess it's the difference between Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism, or something.

There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live - this very difficulty being necessary.

I feel a lot more secure about the directions I take, than I might have, had I not practiced Buddhism.

Buddhism has become a socially recognized religious philosophy for Americans, whereas it used to be considered an exotic religion.

Tibetan Buddhism had an enormous impact on me.

I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.

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

In my mind, there is no reason why Stoicism shouldn't become as popular as Buddhism, especially in the Western world, where the dominant culture, Christianity, itself absorbed a large number of elements from Greco-Roman Stoicism.

Oysters are more beautiful than any religion... There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.

Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.

I think East Asian countries, I think they're very fortunate to have Buddhism survive as a strong influence because right from the time when Buddha himself, 2,500 years ago, made the point about the importance of education, and the word "Buddha" also means enlighten[ed] or educated. So all the Buddhist countries, not only Japan and Korea and China and Hong Kong and Thailand but also even Burma and Sri Lanka, had a higher level of education.

A lot of people dabbling means Buddhism has come into the mainstream, where people begin to use these terms and ideas, and they become less foreign.

Buddhism has a very beautiful teaching that says the worst thing you can do to your soul is to tell someone their faith is wrong.

The research reading I did for Fascination and Liberation included some Jung, and I noticed that he had a similar impression of Buddhism to myself, that, if it weren't for certain qualifying clauses, the philosophy would be downright suicidal.

There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can compete successfully with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

A text of Tibetan Buddhism describes the time of death as a unique opportunity for spiritual liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth and a period that determines our next incarnation.

And yet when you take Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever, their combined killings in the name of religion -- well, that would be zero.

As Buddhism moved to the West, one of the big characteristics was the strong place of women. That didn't exist in the countries of origin. It's just a sign of our culture.

A secular approach is not a dumbing down, it's not reductively identifying Buddhism with one or two particular techniques of meditation, but it is actually a complete world view and way of life in this world.

I am not promoting Buddhism. I am promoting human values.

Buddhism is yoga. Yoga started, who knows when? A long time ago, when the first person found that they could still their thoughts and experience eternity and access the higher planes of mind.

To observe and watch one's own mind is something really interesting. The untrained mind will run and follow its old habit patterns. Because it has not been trained and taught, it will get lost in all kinds of stories and issues. Therefore we have to train our mind. The meditation practice in Buddhism is all about training one's own mind.