Quotes About Enlightenment

Sex can never bring about enlightenment. Only enlightenment brings about enlightenment.

In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual freedom, a battle against the Inquisition, a battle against religious censorship. And the victory of the Enlightenment in Europe was seen as pushing religion away from the center of power. In America, at the same time, the Enlightenment meant coming to a country where people were not going to persecute you by reason of your religion. So it meant a liberation into religion. In Europe, it was liberation out of religion.

Whoever accepts the higher mission of art and comes nearer and nearer to it through his creative activity, will then go on from art to the Spirit deep within his own self... The philosophic search for enlightenment and the artist's search for perfection of work can meet and unite. Art can be a path to spiritual enlightenment but not to complete and lasting enlightenment. It can be born out of, and can give birth itself to, only Glimpses. For art is a search for beauty, which by itself is not enough. Beauty must be supported by virtue and both require wisdom to guide them.

Enlightenment is finding that there is nothing to find. Enlightenment is to come to know that there is nowhere to go.

From a mind filled with infinite love comes the power to create infinite possibilities. We have the power to think in ways that reflect and attract all the love in the world. Such thinking is called enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a process we work toward, but a choice available to us in any instant.

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.

Ashrams often become places where there is a hierarchy and a pecking order and not much enlightenment. That is what some people are drawn to. But that has nothing to do with enlightenment.

There was a famous Zen master whom people would seek out to become enlightened. He was strict and would occupy people with things having nothing to do with seeking enlightenment. You see, that is the only way to achieve enlightenment; by not focusing on achieving it. Then, one day it will just come to you.

The pursuit of enlightenment is for the purpose of the world, not merely for the purpose of the individual. Practices for enlightenment must lead to action in the world.

I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.

The study of infinity is much more than a dry academic game. The intellectual pursuit of the absolute infinity is, as Georg Cantor realized, a form of the soul's quest for God. Whether or not the goal is ever reached, an awareness of the process brings enlightenment.

You have to come to the world of enlightenment with open hands, not clinched fists, without an agenda.

I do not in the least underestimate bisexuality... I expect it to provide all further enlightenment.

Enlightenment is not a complete remedy.

You are asking yourself, as all of us must: 'Who am I?' . . . 'Where am I?' . . . 'Whence do I go?' The process of enlightenment is usually slow. But, in the end, our seeking always brings a finding. These great mysteries are, after all, enshrined in complete simplicity.

Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.

There are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take the one with a heart.

The limitations that we can see of the sexual description of reality are very apparent. Very few men attain enlightenment, even fewer women.

Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.

You saw me vacillating between error and truth, loving them equally because unable to distinguish the one from the other; the hour marked out by God for my enlightenment has come: He has shown me the powerlessness of reason, and the necessity of faith.

Simply by performing good actions and thinking good thoughts you will not attain enlightenment. It takes something more.

Reality is not the world as you perceive it. Reality is the world perceived through enlightenment. It's the same world; but it's not the same world.

And as long as you're subject to birth and death, you'll never attain enlightenment.

Painting is a means of self-enlightenment.

Enlightenment is the key to everything, and it is the key to intimacy, because it is the goal of true authenticity.

The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters. He would much rather invite contradiction, preferably in the form of rational and disciplined criticism. He seeks not to convince but to arouse - to challenge others to form free opinions.

When we recognize that the seemingly object nature of reality is nothing different than the subject nature of mind, which is rigpa, it is called enlightenment.

Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation.

We are approaching a time when Christians, especially, may have to declare the social contract between Enlightenment rationalists and Biblical believers - which formed the basis of the constitution written at our nation's founding - null and void.

Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult and therefore, unpopular.

Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.

Enlightenment after all is to overcome delusion, by way of sensitizing practitioners to complexities and problems of the human situation.

Books simply help you to see what is already within your self. That's what enlightenment is all about.

As soon as the mouth is opened, evils spring forth. People either neglect the root and speak of the branches, or neglect the reality of the 'illusory' world and speak only of Enlightenment. Or else they chatter of cosmic activities leading to transformations, while neglecting the Substance from which they spring--indeed, there is NEVER any profit in discussion.

The pathway to enlightenment is beautiful. There are a lot of wonderful things that happen along the way. Win or lose, you just keep going, and it happens eventually.

Since the so-called Age of Enlightenment, our shaky anthropocentric, rationalist egos have been brainwashed to forget what 'primitive' cultures once understood: Animals can be manifestations of celestial beings in disguise; they possess supernatural abilities, and they can be our spiritual guides and healers.

Enlightenment will be now the beginning, not the end. Beginning of a non-ending process in all dimensions of richness.

By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified. Today the greatest divide within humanity is not between races, or religions, or even, as is widely believed, between the literate and illiterate. It is the chasm that separates scientific from prescientific cultures.

Some people just chase the glittery stuff and they have no substance to their life whatsoever. Actually all they really want is power. But they pretend they're interested in enlightenment.

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.

Even great travelers of the inner world have got stuck in beautiful experiences, and have become identified with those experiences, thinking, "I have found myself." They have stopped before reaching the final stage where all experiences disappear. Enlightenment is not an experience.

All that the posture of skepticism accomplishes is to freeze the ego in an ignorantist poverty that never stretches or diversifies its resources of imagination or understanding. Any uncultured cretin can close his eyes and try to reduce the issues down to linear simplisms and say, "I am doubting, I am proving my magisterial or sovereign control over my own mind." Doubt is a useful and significant test of one's critical powers, but by itself it bears little if any significant cultural charge of enlightenment or satori; indeed it is the very opposite kind of thing.

Gain is delusion; loss is enlightenment.

Sahaja samadhi means that you have just gone back and forth so many times that there is no back and forth. All you see is enlightenment in this world and the other side. There is no other side anymore. It means that you are wakeful.

I would encourage you to follow the pathway to enlightenment, to learn to meditate, to practice mindfulness, and not to really care what anybody thinks about you, including yourself.

Expect forces to interfere with you and expect to conquer them all, if you are serious about the study. Just as there are powers that interfere with those who seek enlightenment, there are forces that will help.

Teachers must be celebrated for moving civilization from ignorance to enlightenment, from apathy to responsibility.

Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, Nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, The ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.