Quotes About Enlightenment

Enlightenment is when all hope disappears. Enlightenment is disappearance of hope.

There are many paths that lead to enlightenment. There are lesser enlightenments along the way to a larger enlightenment, referred to sometimes as liberation.

Since the Enlightenment, popular religion has rejected the Enlightenment path and transformed itself into a bastion of resistance against reason.

Enlightenment is any experience of expanding our consciousness beyond its present limits. We could also say that perfect enlightenment is realizing that we have no limits at all, and that the entire universe is alive.

Authenticity is fundamental, more fundamental than spiritual enlightenment. Without authenticity, no genuine spiritual enlightenment is possible. Authenticity is the state of being committed to truth. Truth is simple. And no matter how simply a truth is stated, only those who have walked the path of understanding and evolution on their own can know and understand it authentically. The path of truth is the path least traveled. Authenticity is the clarity of being in which there is no self-deceit.

What matters is that you meditate, you're seeking enlightenment, you're on the pathway to enlightenment, and you're having fun. Don't look for reassurance in the eyes of others. Look for reassurance in your own eyes. Only you know if Buddhist practice is improving the quality of your life.

There was this famous clash of civilization thesis from Samuel Huntington, a political theorist. And the idea was that Western civilization is at war with Islam and maybe some of the other civilizations around the world. And I don't agree with that. But I do think there is such a thing as Western civilization. I think it starts with the Greeks and the Romans. Then it goes through the Enlightenment - or the Reformation, the Enlightenment. It goes through the scientific age. And it somewhat defines some of the cultures and mores of Europe and North America and some other countries.

Enlightenment is the understanding that this is all, that this is perfect, that this is it. Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go.

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.

When? At this time, while you have all the opportunities, if you do not do your best to achieve the pure, stainless path to enlightenment when will you do it? If you don't meditate, don't practise the graduated path to enlightenment, especially bodhicitta, in this life, then when? When will you practise? When will you have this realization? If, in this life, you don't achieve renunciation, bodhicitta and sunyata, as well as the two stages of tantra, when will you? When will you have these attainments? When will you become enlightened? When will you perform perfect work for sentient beings?

What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word--the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, making a man rub his eyes in his waking dream, and put two and two together. Enlightenment is cold water.

Don't judge others. Always be open to them. Avoid the cult mentality, you know, the super-slick, "I'm superior because I meditate, because I'm on the pathway to enlightenment," the subtle ego nonsense, terrible trap.

Every day is a new opportunity to work with what you have inside toward enlightenment.

Be humble in order to attain enlightenment. Thus, after attaining it, be more humble still.

Nirvana and enlightenment exist just on the other side of your sensory perceptions and your thoughts.

Don't move. Just die over and over. Don't anticipate. Nothing can save you now because you have only this moment. Not even enlightenment will help you now because there are no other moments. With no future, be true to yourself and express yourself fully. Don't move.

One evening you may learn about enlightenment, koans, meditation and personal power.

People get very deep experiences and they think they're enlightened. That's not enlightenment, that's just some realization.

I meet people who neglect career. Their lives aren't centered at all. They don't have much money. They have this spaced-out look in their eyes. Their chances for enlightenment are very small, unless they change the way they live.

It's suggested that enlightenment has some tremendous compassion, some driving necessity to help humanity. I don't think that's the case at all. I think humanity wishes it were the case since it's humanity that writes the various scriptures.

The Enlightenment dream is a good one. The idea that people should rationally appreciate their place in nature, assess threats and possibilities, and regulate their behavior in response is inspiring.

Other networks seek to interfere with the natural process of chaos. Enlightenment is chaos, complete beyond conception

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

Those who really seek the path to Enlightenment dictate terms to their mind. Then they proceed with strong determination.

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

When we want a cup of tea our main wish is to drink tea, but to fulfill this wish we naturally develop the secondary wish to find a cup. In a similar way, the main wish of those who have great compassion is to protect all living beings from their suffering, but to fulfill this wish they know they must first attain Buddhahood themselves and so they naturally develop the secondary wish to attain enlightenment.

This is what our yoga practice is trying to accomplish. Not white light descending from heaven and engulfing you, not energy released from the base of your spine going up through your crown chakra so you become a human lightening bolt, not a halo floating on top of your head. Simply heightened states of awareness, enlightenment, becoming more and more aware which gives more and more insight, which brings wisdom and gives choice. With that wisdom and choice, we become the masters of our destiny and at peace in our life.

The road to enlightenment is paved with authenticity, not imitation.

These are the mysterious ways of knowledge, power and enlightenment. I can only allude to them in words. I cannot possibly explain what this process is like.

In the West people are basically oblivious to power, solstices, enlightenment and everything that matters.

I began researching and writing what I intended as a book-length essay entitled Fascination and Liberation, exploring the question of whether there is a conflict between creativity and the Eastern form of enlightenment. I don't know if I'll ever finish that essay, because I had an experience, after I'd written two or three chapters, in which it seemed to me that my psychic antibodies decisively rejected Buddhism. Interestingly, the rejection felt as if it happened in Zen terms.

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.

Free speech is essential to education, especially to a liberal education, which encourages the search for truths in art and science. If expression is restricted, the range of inquiry is also curtailed... The beneficiaries of a free society have a duty to pursue the truth and to protect the freedom of expression that makes possible the search for a new enlightenment.

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

Enlightenment is the Goal - Love is the Game - Taking steps are the rules!

Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.

When the human condition is finally demystified, human insecurity and nervousness will be at a maximum...for this ultimate enlightenment to be allowed, society is going to have to adhere scrupulously to the democratic principle of freedom of expression.

Eating meat is a leftover of the greatest brutality [killing]; the transition to vegetarianism is the first and most natural consequence of enlightenment.

There are billions of people on earth. They are all transmitting thoughts and impressions, most of which are not directed towards enlightenment. If you are not focused, you will pick up these energies.

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

Enlightenment is: absolute cooperation with the inevitable.

We should reflect on the idea that since the beginning of time sentient beings have been mentally unstable because they have been slaves of delusion, they lack the eye of wisdom to see the path leading to nirvana and enlightenment, and they lack the necessary guidance of a spiritual teacher. Moment by moment they are indulging in negative actions, which will eventually bring about their downfall.

There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our Puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

If you seek enlightenment, then career is a very important idea on your agenda.

I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.

[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

We who don't want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.

Relationships are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit's blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Holy Spirit's laboratories in which he brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth.