Eastern Religion Quotes

I am a spiritual person in an eastern religion kind of way. I learned that happiness for all of us is a switch that you flick in your brain. It doesn't have anything to do with getting a new house, a new car, a new girlfriend, or a new pair of shoes. Our culture is very much about that; we are never happy with what we have today. ~ Tom Ford

We're rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life. ~ Rob Bell

For the record, Parmenides' metaphysics-which is even wilder than the D.B.P's, and in retrospect seems more like Eastern religion than Western philosophy-is describable as a kind of static monism, and Zeno's paradoxes (of which there are really more than four) are accordingly directed against the reality of (1) plurality and (2) continuity. For present purposes we are concerned with (2), which for Zeno takes the form, as Russell mentions, of regular physical motion. ~ David Foster Wallace

Many questing young people and stressed older people nowadays seek relaxation through meditation. They look for it in Hindu, Buddhist and other Eastern religions. They are often surprised to learn that there is such a way within the Christian tradition, a way that is known as contemplation. ~ Ray Simpson

All your thoughts, imagination, feelings, emotions and sensation are part of the mechanical process that can be understood, at the state of self-realization. ~ Roshan Sharma

Christianity ... is an Eastern religion. ~ Tom Robbins

At Columbia there's no performing arts department, so I was searching for it everywhere I could, and I took some photography classes and I ended up becoming fascinated with Eastern Religion, and ultimately it seemed to encompass the more abstract mind that I have. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life. ~ Christopher Hitchens

According to some Eastern religion, there is a belt that goes across the world, and I've heard that Minnesota is right in the heart of this spiritual-creative belt of energy. ~ Melody Beattie

Some of the events described in this book may well offend the reader's sensitivities. Part of this was Vimalananda's intention. He wanted Western holier-than-thou renunciates to know that "filth and orgies in the graveyard" (as one American once described Aghori) can be as conducive to spiritual advancement as can asanas, pranayama, and other "purer" disciplines. ~ Robert E. Svoboda

I was trying to figure out where my intellect, if I really have one, where it fit. And so I was searching. I really didn't know who I was or what I really wanted to be, and in that search, like I think you do as an actor, you end up trying to define whatever that is, and I sort of said, "Oh well, searching spiritually in a way is interesting, and Eastern religion seems to be about a search." ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

We in the West regard the universe as a creation of God; like an invention or a product. After he created the universe, God set himself to oversee it and manage it. We see God as our boss. He created the universe, he is present in it, he manages every part of it, but he is still separate from it. It's like he installed video cameras all over the universe, so he can see everything that happens, and he can cause this or that to happen, but he is not a part of what happens. The Eastern view is very different. To the Hindu, for example, God didn't create the universe, but God became the universe. Then he forgot that he became the universe. Why would God do this? Basically, for entertainment. You create a universe, and that in itself is very exciting. But then what? Should you sit back and watch this universe of yours having all the fun? No, you should have all the fun yourself. To accomplish this, God transformed into the whole universe. God is the Universe, and everything in it. But the universe doesn't know that because that would ruin the suspense. The universe is God's great drama, and God is the stage, the actors, and the audience all at once. The title of this epic drama is "The Great Unknown Outcome." Throw in potent elements like passion, love, hate, good, evil, free will; and who knows what will happen? No one knows, and that is what keeps the universe interesting. But everyone will have a good time. And there is never really any danger, because everyone is really God, a ~ Warren Sharpe

Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously, there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions. In reality, the two ideas stand worlds apart. Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different. ~ Richard J. Foster

I'm a pretty solid Christian. But even as an altar boy, I was always asking the bigger questions
you know: if God is, in fact, good, what is all this death I see? And if God is gentle, what is all this suffering I see? I've found some of the answers in Eastern religion. It explained my Christianity to me. Good and evil are the same thing. You can't have one without the other. It's the balance, it's the temperance of things. ~ Tim Allen

He came to put a harlot above a Pharisee, a penitent robber above a High Priest, and a prodigal son above his exemplary brother. To all the phonies and fakers who would say that they could not join the Church because His Church was not holy enough, He would ask, 'How holy must the Church be before you will enter into it?' If the Church were as holy as they wanted it to be, they would never be allowed into it! In every other religion under the sun, in every Eastern religion from Buddhism to Confucianism, there must always be some purification before one can commune with God. But Our Blessed Lord brought a religion where the admission of sin is the condition of coming to Him. 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are ill. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

When someone tells me that 'the Almighty told me to do this', I want to see the transcript. ~ Fred Reed

The vision of Christ that thou dost see is my vision's greatest enemy . Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read'st black where I read white. His seventy disciples sent against religion and government . ~ William Blake

The only motive strong enough to induce men to exercise the self control required by the religion of Jesus is love. ~ Marion G. Romney

We live on a spinning rock suspended in darkness, which evolves around a dying star. Our spinning rock was once ruled and owned by gigantic reptiles, all over! In sea, land, and air, gigantic reptiles roamed! Then a smaller rock fell from the sky and made a hole in the ground, so big that all the giant reptiles died! We live on a spinning rock we got from dragons flying through the air, and on this rock we kill each other over things like religion and money! And on this rock we make friends, we fall in love, we work hard to earn papers so we can buy things. On this rock we have dreams at night that remind us of beautiful places we have never been to, beautiful wonders we have never imagined before... we write stories and we make books, we try to travel to other rocks around us, we wonder if anyone else is out there. Our planet, and our existence as a human species, is bizarre! Our reality is bizarre! What we think is normal, when spelled out, is not normal at all. It's only normal because we are familiar with it. We are residents of a universe that is expanding at a rate of more than 5 billion meters per every few seconds, forming new realities and new substances with each expansion! We will never become familiar with even the very tip of what actually is! So why are any of us afraid of the possibilities of what could be? Why does this frighten us, why does this scare us? When we actually never know anything at all! ~ C. JoyBell C.

The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, which means the "Way of the Eternal," is the ancient scripture of Eckankar, the science of Soul Travel and total consciousness.

Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad Book One ~ Paul Twitchell

Dear Religion, This week I safely dropped a man from space while you shot a child in the head for wanting to go to school. Yours, Science. ~ Ricky Gervais

Ronny's religion was of the sterilized Public School brand, which never goes bad, even in the tropics. Wherever he entered, mosque, cave or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the fifth form, and condemned as 'weakening' any attempt to understand them. ~ E. M. Forster

Whatsoever is good for God's children they shall have it, for all is theirs to further them to heaven; therefore, if poverty be good, they shall have it; if disgrace be good, they shall have it; if crosses be good, they shall have them; if misery be good, they shall have it; for all is ours, to serve for our greatest good. ~ Richard Sibbes

The church may update its techniques and methods, but it is always in service of the institutional organism. This is one of the reasons why the pedophile priest issue is and will remain an endemic disease in the Catholic Church. ~ Darrel Ray

The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive of a good life. ~ Joseph Butler

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world. ~ Gordon Brown

Give me a Japanese division armed with bamboo spears and I'll wipe out the entire Russian Far Eastern Army. ~ Sadao Araki

When the highest value in a community is loyalty to the greater cause, meaning the continuity of the status quo, all means to this end are imbued with religious significance, and are thereby justified. ~ Pearl Abraham

Kim Il-sung understood the power of religion. His maternal uncle was a Protestant minister back in the pre-Communist days when Pyongyang had such a vibrant Christian community that it was called the "Jerusalem of the East." Once in power, Kim Il-sung closed the churches, banned the Bible, deported believers to the hinterlands, and appropriated Christian imagery and dogma for the purpose of self-promotion.

Broadcasters would speak of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il breathlessly, in the manner of Pentecostal preachers. North Korean newspapers carried tales of supernatural phenomena. Stormy seas were said to be calmed when sailors clinging to a sinking ship sang songs in praise of Kim Il-sung. When Kim Jong-il went to the DMZ, a mysterious fog descended to protect him from lurking South Korean snipers. He caused trees to bloom and snow to melt. If Kim Il-sung was God, then Kim Jong-il was the son of God. Like Jesus Christ, Kim Jong-il's birth was said to have been heralded by a radiant star in the sky and the appearance of a beautiful double rainbow. A swallow descended from heaven to sing of the birth of a "general who will rule the world. ~ Barbara Demick

I thank you, Wilhelm, for your heartfelt sympathy, for your well-intentioned advice, but beg you to be quiet. Let me stick it out. Blessedly exhausted as I am, I have strength enough to carry through. I honor religion, you know that, I feel it is a staff for many weary souls, refreshment for many a one who is pining away. But--can it be, must it be, the same thing for everyone? If you look at the great world, you see thousands for whom it wasn't, thousands for whom it will not be the same, preached or unpreached, and must it then be the same for me? Does not the son of God Himself say that those would be around Him whom the Father had given Him? But if I am not given? If the Father wants to keep me for Himself, as my heart tells me?--I beg you, do not misinterpret this, do not see mockery in these innocent words. What I am laying before you is my whole soul; otherwise I would rather have kept silent, as I do not like to lose words over things that everyone knows as little about as I do. What else is it but human destiny to suffer out one's measure, drink up one's cup?--And if the chalice was too bitter for the God from heaven on His human lips, why should I boast and pretend that it tastes sweet to me? And why should I be ashamed in the terrible moment when my entire being trembles between being and nothingness, since the past flashes like lightning above the dark abyss of the future and everything around me is swallowed up, and the world perishes with me?--Is that not the vo ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps? ~ William Golding

In religion, as in art and science, there are - in addition to times of great excitement - times of sober work and practice. Interaction with God must be practiced; otherwise we will not find the right tone, the right word, the right language, when he surprises us. We must learn God's language, laboriously learn it. And we must work at it, so that we will be able to talk with him. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If I had a religion, its deity would be Audysseus, the sound God, and He would be a vengeful god, dishing out eternal damnation to people with cheap stage monitors. ~ Tim Minchin

Calvinism and Islam had this much in common: neither was just a religion; both were social systems. ~ David H. Finnie

To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man. ~ Blaise Pascal

Atheism, true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God. ... Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ. ~ Seraphim Rose

Many quote scripture, less study it, and even fewer live it. ~T.F. Hodge ~ T.F. Hodge

Religion is, in reality, living. Our religion is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think - all these things - twenty-four hours a day. One's religion, then, is ones life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lived.
Religion is not prayer, it is not a church, it is not theistic, it is not atheistic, it has little to do with what white people call "religion." It is our every act. If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion; if we experiment on living animals, that is our religion; if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion. ~ Jack D. Forbes

God might not be dead, but he's sure as hell missing in action. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

All along we find that social life - religion, politics, art - reflects the stages reached in the development of the knowledge of self; it shows the social uses made of this knowledge. ~ James Mark Baldwin

I have sometimes thought there could be no stronger testimony in favor of Religion or against temporal Enjoyments even the most rational and manly than for men who occupy the most honorable and gainful departments and are rising in reputation and wealth, publicly to declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent Advocates in the cause of Christ, & I wish you may give in your Evidence in this way. Such instances have seldom occurred, therefore they would be more striking and would be instead of a Cloud of Witnesses. ~ James Madison

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority. ~ Herbert Read

From something as simple as what goes in to a good meatloaf to the not so simple - religion, culture, how you should vote, every damn thing you think or believe, your reactions, your behavior - were partially shaped by who and what your parents were. ~ Sandra Brown

We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. ~ George W. Bush

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. ~ Albert Einstein

It was made clear to me that I wasn't supposed to trouble the moody Creator with any pesky questions about the eccentricities of His cosmic system ... Thus my idea of heaven was that I got to spend eternity sitting at the feet of God, grilling Him. "Let me get this straight," I'd say, by way of introduction. "It's your position that every person born has to suffer because Eve couldn't resist a healthy between-meals snack? ~ Sarah Vowell

Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile. Never mind any of those things. Because history isn't easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi'a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing. ~ Khaled Hosseini

I can imagine that the oceanic feeling could become connected with religion later on. That feeling of oneness with the universe which is its ideational content sounds very like a first attempt at the consolations of religion, like another way taken by the ego of denying the dangers it sees threatening it in the external world. ~ Sigmund Freud

It is absolutely vital that we do all we can to allow Americans to practice their religious ways, while simultaneously ensuring that no one's beliefs infringe upon those of others. We should also serve as champions of freedom of religion throughout the world. ~ Benjamin Carson

Actually, the substitution of the reality-principle for the pleasure-principle denotes no dethronement of the pleasure-principle, but only a safeguarding of it. A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results, is given up, but only in order to gain in the new way an assured pleasure coming later. But the end psychic impression made by this substitution has been so powerful that it is mirrored in a special religious myth. The doctrine of reward in a future life for the - voluntary or enforced - renunciation of earthly lusts is nothing but a mythical projection of this revolution in the mind. In logical pursuit of this prototype, religions have been able to effect the absolute renunciation of pleasure in this life by means of the promise of compensation in a future life; they have not, however, achieved a conquest of the pleasure-principle this way. It is science which comes nearest to succeeding in this conquest; science, however, also offers intellectual pleasure during its work and promises practical gain at the end. ~ Sigmund Freud

People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ
they're like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves. ~ Peter E. Gillquist

A little of this caviar finds its way to the fish restaurants around Istanbul's Taksim Square, but the bulk is sent on to the United Arab Emirates to be enjoyed by wealthy Westerners and Arabs in the preposterous hotels that have set new standards in unnecessary opulence. ~ Misha Glenny

Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being. ~ James Baldwin

[A]s they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion ... Although just as in hostage negotiations, it's probably best to keep both sides talking to each other. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran, no matter how benign their intentions, present a condescending view not just of the religion but also of women living in Muslim majority countries, as if the desire for choice and happiness is the monopoly of women in the west. ~ Azar Nafisi

I think we should be very clear on this ... 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. ~ Wesley Clark

Hinduism has made marvelous discoveries in things of religion, of the spirit, of the soul. We have no eye for these great and fine discoveries. We are dazzled by the material progress that Western science has made. Ancient India has survived because Hinduism was not developed along material but spiritual lines. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The roots of Campanella's "Solar City" (and the District of Columbia) can be found in deeper occult parallels within the literature formulated by hermetical philosophers Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino in Renaissance Florence; both prophetically predicting the restoration of the Egyptian solar religion as the correct political theology of the planet and itself the model for a "New World" civil religion. In another words they believed the Abrahamic solar faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam would ultimately be exposed as substituted forms of Egyptian sun worship with in "New World" - the United States. It would be this "New World" that would midwife civilization from the waning Piscean Age into the "Masonic" Aquarian Age, a new age of the holy spirit. Simon Greenleaf's Druids and Campanella's Solarians are the de-facto "mediating" Joachimite order through which heavenly signs are mediated by a Sun Priest - an executive or President - who frames policy based upon his knowledge of the correspondences between science (i.e. Egyptian natural religion), grades of being, and heavenly correspondences. This polity was replicated from 1797 within the General Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons with reference both to Enoch (cf. Webb's 1797 Monitor) and the priest king Melchizedek of which the Grand Master DeWitt Clinton became the symbolic presiding executive. This configuration is important to make because it establishes the position of the District of Columbia ~ Robert W. Sullivan IV

To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Natural science, economics, and politics depend on literature, philosophy, and religion for educating the imagination... we cannot oppose facts to values, but... all facts are integrated into meaningful wholes through a personal commitment to some kind of vision of how things ought to be. If this universal hermeneutic claim is true, then the shaping of our imagination through historical, philosophical, and literary texts in the humanities is indeed paramount. ~ Jens Zimmermann

Religion seems to have twisted the idea of God into a way to control people. ~ Diane Chamberlain

I had not liked him. I had struggled against him and for him, I had cursed him and thanked him, despised him and admired him. I hated his religion and its cold disapproving gaze, its malevolence that cloaked itself in pretended kindness, and its allegiance to a god who would drain the joy from the world by naming it sin, but Alfred's religion had made him a good man and a good king. And Alfred's joyless soul had proved a rock against which the Danes had broken themselves. Time and again they had attacked, and time and again Alfred had out-thought them, and Wessex grew ever stronger and richer and all that was because of Alfred. We think of kings as privileged men who rule over us and have the freedom to make, break and flaunt the law, but Alfred was never above the law he loved to make. He saw his life as a duty to his god and to the people of Wessex and I have never seen a better king, and I doubt my sons, grandsons and their children's children will ever see a better one. I never liked him, but I have never stopped admiring him. He was my king and all that I now have I owe to him. The food that I eat, the hall where I live and the swords of my men, all started with Alfred, who hated me at times, loved me at times, and was generous with me. He was a gold-giver. ~ Bernard Cornwell

It is a neglected but essential fact that we cannot appreciate the relationship between religion and violence unless we grasp the nature and meaning of the two partners in this relationship. Yet our understandings both of religion and of violence are inadequate. Further, we usually consider too few offspring of their troubled marriage: when we think of "religious violence," we tend to think only of holy war and (especially since September 11) religious terrorism. However, those are not the only types of religious violence. ~ Jack David Eller