Bodhisattva Vows Quotes

As long as we practice with a vow to help others, we are the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, and we become the leading figure in the Heart Sutra, whether we are a layperson or are ordained, whether whether celibate or married, living in the monastery or living in secular society. ~ Dosung Yoo

Beneath the hush a whisper from long ago, promising peace of mind and a burden shared.
No peace which is not peace for all, no rest until all has been fulfilled. ~ Dag Hammarskjold

Even fear itself is frightened by the bodhisattva's fearlessness. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

Love does not involve emotions, then?" he asked her with a smile.
"It is not ruled by them," she told him. "Love is liking and companionship and respect and trust. Love does not dominate or try to possess. Love thrives only in a commitment to pure, mutual freedom. That is why marriage is so tricky. There are the marriage ceremony and the marriage vows and the necessity for fidelity -all of them suggestive of restraints, even imprisonment. Men talk of life sentences and leg shackles in connection with marriage, do they not? But marriage out to be just the opposite -two people agreeing to set each other free, ~ Mary Balogh

I realize that there's a thing called the bodhisattva ideal, and it's a very nice pinnacle of attention. It's a very egotistical thought, ultimately. ~ Frederick Lenz

A godly woman is beyond average because she keeps her word. She honors her vows. She exhibits great faith. She overcomes great obstacles. And she affects her family, her community, even the world. ~ Elizabeth George

When their kiss sealed their vows, April's heart swell, and she thought it couldn't hold all the love she felt at this moment. ~ Maggie Brendan

Love's night and a lamp
Judged our vows:
That she would love me ever
And I should never leave her.
Love's night and you, lamp,
Witnessed the pact.
Today the vow runs:
"Oaths such as these, waterwords."
Tonight, lamp,
Witness her lying
- In other arms. ~ Meleager

The man consummatig his life dies his death triumphantly,surrounded by men filled with hope and making solmn vows, thus one should learn to die.

Friedrich Nietzsche - thus spoke zarathustra. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

So you're telling me it's okay to make these promises, place rings on each other's fingers, make vows before God, your family and friends, only to walk away when something better comes along?"

"Not something better, Charlotte. Something right. And yes, I would walk away, if that's what you're asking. ~ Kat T. Masen

His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise. ~ Richard Bach

No one anticipates divorce when they're exchanging vows, and it can be devastating emotionally and financially. To ease the financial side of the blow, you need to maintain your financial identity in your relationship. That means having your own credit history - you need your own credit card - and your own savings and retirement accounts. ~ Jean Chatzky

Love is scary! Taking a vow to love someone through sickness and health, for richer for poorer, forsaking all others, until death do us part, is the most terrifying experience a person can have. Why pretend any differently? ~ Elin Hilderbrand

Committing myself to the task of becoming fully human is saving my life now...to become fully human is something extra, a conscious choice that not everyone makes. Based on my limited wisdom and experience, there is more than one way to do this. If I were a Buddhist, I might do it by taking the bodhisattva vow, and if I were a Jew, I might do it by following Torah. Because I am a Christian, I do it by imitating Christ, although i will be the first to admit that I want to stop about a day short of following him all the way.

In Luke's gospel, there comes a point when he turns around and says to the large crowd of those trailing after him, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (14:26). Make of that what you will, but I think it was his way of telling them to go home. He did not need people to go to Jerusalem to die with him. He needed people to go back where they came from and live the kinds of lives that he had risked his own life to show them: lives of resisting the powers of death, of standing up for the little and the least, of turning cheeks and washing feet, of praying for enemies and loving the unlovable. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

Come and infect me, With the happiness you suffer from. Come and bring me, To the point of tears. Come and haunt me, I wait here lonely. Oh come just to break your vows again… ~ Piyush Rohankar

By marriage I am asking you
to help me become a better version
of myself, while still loving me
every moment along the way.
Continuing what you've been doing
already and I am vowing
to do the same. ~ Eric Overby

It was the month of May, the month when the foliage of herbs and trees is most freshly green, when buds ripened and blossoms appear in their fragrance and loveliness. And the month when lovers, subject to the same force which reawakens the plants, feel their hearts open again, recall past trysts and past vows, and moments of tenderness, and yearn for a renewal of the magical awareness which is love. ~ Thomas Malory

Our time was most delightfully spent, in mutual Protestations of Freindship, and in vows of unalterable Love, in which we were secure from being interrupted, by intruding and disagreeable Visistors, as Augustus and Sophia had on their first Entrance in the Neighbourhood, taken due care to inform the surrounding Families, that as their happiness centered wholly in themselves, they wished for no other society. ~ Jane Austen

When they got married, she could include them in her wedding vows: You were always there for me, always. You were always there for me, always. You were always there for me, always.

They were the most beautiful words he'd ever heard. ~ Kristen Roupenian

Is this how you will die? Is this what you were meant for? To simply be bled out like a pig?
A spark of rage flickers, an antidote to despair.
Will you not even try to survive? Did the scientists make you too stupid even to consider fighting for your own life?
Emiko closes her eyes and prays to Mizuko Jizo Bodhisattva, and then the bakeneko cheshire spirit for good measure. She takes a breath, and then with all her strength she slams her hand against the knife. The blade slices past her neck, a searing line.
"Arai wa?!" the man shouts.
Emiko shoves hard against him and ducks under his flailing knife. Behind her, she hears a grunt and thud as she bolts for the street. She doesn't look back. She plunges into the street, not caring that she shows herself as a windup, not caring that in running she will burn up and die. She runs, determined only to escape the demon behind her. She will burn, but she will not die passive like some pig led to slaughter. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

So many of my friends judged potential mates from the outside in, focusing first on their looks and financial prospects. If it turned out the person they'd chosen wasn't a good communicator or was uncomfortable with being vulnerable, they seemed to think time or marriage vows would fix the problem. But Barack arrived in my life a wholly formed person. From our very first conversation, he'd shown me that he wasn't self-conscious about expressing fear or weakness and that he valued being truthful. ~ Michelle Obama

Learning to pass, it turns out, is less a matter of acting than not acting. You can become part of a given scene, situation, or people ('our people,' as it were), simply by letting yourself serve as a mirror for those around you. When I was still in college, when I still thought I might make a good priest, I spent some time in a Trappist monastery. I found that by exerting as little of my own personality as possible, I was able to fit right in. The monks in no time came to call me brother, believing I was destined to make vows as one of their own. Passing begins with the assumptions of those around you. The best thing you can do to maintain the illusion is to come as close as possible to doing nothing at all. ~ Peter Manseau

There have always been men who found it easier to speak vows than to keep them. ~ George R R Martin

… to rule at my side with grace and justice, to honor the laws of the Earthen Union as laid out by our forefathers, to be an advocate for peace and fairness among all peoples."

Did anyone believe a word of this rubbish?

"From this day forward, she will be my sun at dawn and my moon at night, and I vow to love and cherish her for all our days."

Who wrote these vows anyway? He'd never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. ~ Marissa Meyer

I promise to be your lover, your companion in life, your ally in conflict, and your partner in adventure. I will strive every day to be worthy of your love. I will be honest with you, kind, patient, and forgiving. I will love you, hold you, honor and respect you, in sickness and in health, through loss and victory, for all the days of my life. I promise to help shoulder our challenges, for there is nothing we cannot face - and nothing we cannot do - if we stand together. These are my sacred vows to you as I join my life to yours. Justinius ~ Lisa Shearin

A man in his early prime contemplates on life, shattered by the distortions of society he gazes ahead in time. There were vows of happiness and fairy tale beginnings. Now there is nothing of that sort; now there is nothing that started the tales so bright. It's after all this while that he understands why fairy tales begin with 'once upon a time'... ~ Adhish Mazumder

That's a fucking, blood covenant promise that you can take that to the bank every day of the week and twice on Sunday ~ Latrivia S. Nelson

She still lives in a world in which people are faithful and vows of love are forever. ~ Paulo Coelho

In the operative opinion of this world, he who is already fully provided what what is necessary for him, that man shall have more; while he who is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain, downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world. It is governed only by the simplest principles, and scorns all ambiguities, all transcendentals, and all manner of juggling. Now some imaginatively heterodoxical men are often surprisingly twitted upon their willful inverting of all common-sense notions, their absurd and all-displacing transcendentals, which say three is four, and two and two make ten. But if the eminent Juggularius himself ever advocated in mere words a doctrine one thousandth part so ridiculous and subversive of all practical sense, as that doctrine which the world actually and eternally practices, of giving unto him who already hath more than enough, still more of that superfluous article, and taking away from him who hath nothing at all, even that which he hath, - then is the truest book in the world a lie. ~ Herman Melville

Till the stars grow old and our sun grows cold? Will you fight for us, lie for us, love us - and let us love you? ~ Robert A. Heinlein

This Marriage - Ode 2667

May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade
like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcome
as the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe
how spirit mingles in this marriage ~ Kabir Helminski

You should have been a jester instead of a knight. (Sin)
True, but jesters don't get to carry a sword. Personally, I like my sword. You know, the whole knight images really makes the ladies lust for me. Not that any have lusted for me recently, since I have only been in the company of married women, but one is ever hopeful ... Oh, wait, I'm in Scotland, where they hate us English. Damn, my chances with the women have just fallen to nil. Wasn't there a monastery a few leagues back? Mayhap I should go take my vows and just save myself the embarrassment of being sneered at. (Simon) ~ Kinley MacGregor

The vows one makes privately are more binding than any ceremony or even a Shubert contract. ~ Beatrice Lillie

As I grew up and began identifying myself as a feminist, there were plenty of issues that continued to make me question marriage: the father 'giving' the bride away, women taking their husband's last name, the white dress, the vows promising to 'obey' the groom. And that only covers the wedding. ~ Jessica Valenti

The taking of vows that are not feasible or that are beyond one's capacity would betray thoughtlessness and want of balance. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

May these vows and this marriage be blessed. ~ Rumi

I almost thought that marriage was a cure to loneliness, alas! so many are lonely inside marriage. Then I realized it is not marriage that takes the loneliness away, but when both within marriage honour God and the vows made before Him. ~ Gift Gugu Mona

What most couples fail to realize is that marriage vows denote change. ~ Elona Washington

I gazed at Nina and Theodore standing now before the window about to say their vows, or as Nina had phrased it, whatever words their hearts gave them at the moment, and I thought it just as well Mother was not here. She would've expected Nina to be in ivory lace, perhaps blue linen, carrying roses or lilies, but Nina had dismissed all of that as unoriginal and embarked on a wedding designed to shock the masses. She was wearing a brown dress made from free-labor cotton with a broad white sash and white gloves, and she'd matched up Theodore in a brown coat, a white vest, and beige pantaloons. She clutched a handful of white rhododendrons cut fresh from the backyard, and I noticed she'd tucked a sprig in the button hole of Theodore's coat. Mother wouldn't have made it past the brown dress, much less the opening prayer, which had been delivered by a Negro minister. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

I, Gavin MacKenzie, sexy
cowboy man of Baker City, Oregon …
being of sound mind and hot body … do
hereby declare that I love you, Andie
Marks, lawyer extraordinaire, and want
to be married to you until I'm so old, I
either die or my pecker falls off.I will have sex
with you whenever you want, and I will
always give you the option to be on top
if that's what will make you happy.
Blowjobs will always be optional but
appreciated.I will change diapers when called
for, both for our children and for you
when you're old and decrepit. I will
never spit in public or burp too loudly or
say mean things about your friends.I promise never to raise my hand
against you in anger or tell you that
you're useless or threaten to hurt people
who you love. Ten-four, over and out,
happily ever after. Those are my vows. ~ Elle Casey

I know this is kind of corny, but we thought about renewing our vows again because I think my mom would really love it if we did that in Arkansas, where I came from. ~ Mary Steenburgen