Quotes About Enlightenment

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive - that you can touch the miracle of being alive - then that is a kind of 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.

In the assemblies of the enlightened ones there have been many cases of mastering the Way bringing forth the heart of plants and trees; this is what awakening the mind for enlightenment is like. The fifth patriarch of Zen was once a pine-planting wayfarer; Rinzai worked on planting cedars and pines on Mount Obaku. . . . Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.

The people to become enlightened in Atlantis lit the "flame of enlightenment" on earth for the first time. The members of the various mystery schools have kept the flame alive by passing on the secret techniques for attaining enlightenment from the time of Atlantis to our present day.

You will have to learn ways of relaxing in the present. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve something. It is a state of effortlessness. It is a state of no-action. It is a state of tremendous passivity, receptivity. You are not doing anything, you are not thinking anything, you are not planning for anything, you are not doing yoga exercises, and you are not doing any technique, any method - you are simply existing, just existing. And in that very moment... the sudden realization that all is as it should be. That`s what enlightenment is!

The origins of the modern West are often seen in the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, but the roots of the Enlightenment can be found in habits of mind cultivated in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, and the institutions that grew from them.

Pain is the fuel that lights the flame of our enlightenment

Instant enlightenment. A quintessential modernism, culture and religion accommodated to the age of fast food and bumper stickers. But psyche and spirit are not so exempt from the natural domain that they can simply produce self-change instantaneously, on demand. Wisdom precipitates through a notoriously slow apparatus of retorts and flasks, and it has to find receptive ground only in a properly seasoned mind.

Do not feel that you are destined to enlightenment in this life. You have no idea. This is an illusion of selfhood. It's gross ignorance and egotism.

In the enlightenment cycle, attention is paid to bringing back the awareness field from other lives. This does not simply mean memory, but rather the internal power and intelligence that you have amassed in other lifetimes.

Knowledge of the Enlightenment Cycle, of the ways that inner dimensions and nirvana work, lifts you far above the transient sorrows, pains, pleasures and joys that the unenlightened masses experience.

There's a path in enlightenment called the path of negation where we intentionally throw ourselves into experiences that are extremely transient. In other words, we do all the stuff you're supposed to normally avoid to become enlightened, intentionally.

We need to learn that truth consists not in correct doctrine, but in correct doctrine plus the inward enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.

I think it's so important to have a practice, because the consciousness isn't perfection or enlightenment or any of that bullshit. The consciousness is, "Oh, I'm walking down the street and I'm doing nothing."

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

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.

Not a few patients, however, suffering from certain forms of mental disorder, regain a high degree of insight into their mental condition in what might be termed a flash of divine enlightenment.

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.

Be - don't try to become. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.

The greatest obstacle to enlightenment is getting past your delusion that you are not already enlightened.

Use career to develop yourself. Have fun with it. Dedicate your activities and your career, to eternity, and to enlightenment.

Paradoxically, the more deeply one grows in enlightenment, the more clearly one discerns one's own frailties and limitations.

Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.

Consumer goods become enlightenment, relationships, anything! It doesn't really matter because infinity exists in everything. "Greater than the greatest, smaller than the smallest, the self dwells in the hearts of all," that is the Upanishads.

Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason.

If there's any possibility for enlightenment, it's right now, not at some future time. Now is the time.

I don't personally believe in an arrived state of enlightenment. I feel that being human is a constant practice of return. We have moments of clarity, and then we're confused. We have incredibly sensitive periods of being awake, and then we're numb. Being human is a very universal and a very personal practice of learning how to return when we can't get access to what we know.

My own experience has taught me not to underestimate the power of those who protest against cruelty. I'd also say that there may be a tendency to view the animal-rights opposition in somewhat distorted fashion as a new development, as the product of a very recent enlightenment about the rights due to animals.

There's a Buddhist story about the guy who wants to be enlightened, and then he gets a cow and a wife and a child, and all these things get in the way of his enlightenment. So, yeah, I have no chance of being enlightened.

We need a new imprinting. We need the imprinting of enlightenment, of freedom. That comes through our association with a higher being. So classically what occurs is that one meets a teacher.

It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.

This is a time of great confusion, of great darkness; other networks are slipping in through other dimensional planes. Soon the network of enlightenment will leave this earth.

To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.

Meditation is the pathway to enlightenment, and I would encourage you to follow that pathway as far as you can, into ecstasy.

Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place.

The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.

Collective guilt is borne by what is conventionally called the scapegoat. Now the scapegoat for white society - which is based on myths of progress, civilization, liberalism, education, enlightenment, refinement - will be precisely the force that opposes the expansion and the triumph of these myths. This brutal opposing force is supplied by the Negro.

We can step out of our small sense of self and awaken to this reality. One of the reasons people get confused about freedom, enlightenment, and liberation is because this awakened consciousness has different facets or different dimensions, a bit like a crystal. If you hold this luminous crystal up to the light and turn it, it will take a beam of white light and refract it into the many colors of the spectrum.

God is your very being. So the first thing is, don't think about enlightenment as a goal.

You find this watered-down enlightenment sold in mass quantity at yoga studios, high-priced shamanism retreats, DJ-fueled Ecstatic Dance parties, ayahuasca ceremonies, and self-empowerment seminars. There's a hope for a quick fix - if only we have the money and right drugs for it.

Enlightenment, or true happiness, is not a transcendental state. It is a condition of broad wisdom, boundless energy, and good fortune wherein we each shape our own destiny, find fulfillment in daily activities, and come to understand our ultimate purpose in life.

So he [Shoko Asahara] was insane but managed to convince a couple thousand people that he was enlightened. Western culture, which Japan is now definitely a part of, doesn't have an understanding of what Enlightenment is.

I think we should be very clear on this. You know, this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment... It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can't lose that in this country. We've got to get it back.

The essential premise of Buddhism is that there is enlightenment, there is nirvana. Beyond this world, beyond all worlds, there's something radiant, perfect and eternal.

Enlightenment should be a human right.

In the spiritual search doubt is beneficial, a closed mind is not. Doubt used wisely assists enlightenment; a closed mind assists ignorance.

You are going around on the wheel again and again. You go around and around from lifetime to lifetime. You never quite wake up. Enlightenment is waking up.

When Zen masters say `effortlessness` they are referring to the state when your enlightenment is well rooted. Now there is no need of any effort; now you can be relaxed and at ease, it will grow on its own accord. It will bring much foliage, and many flowers, and many blessings.