Rebirth Buddhism Quotes

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

People go through life blindly, ignoring death like revellers at a party feasting on fine foods. They ignore that later they will have to go to the toilet, so they do not bother to find out where there is one. When nature finally calls, they have no idea where to go and are in a mess. ~ Ajahn Chah

One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world. ~ Dogen

In the ashes of bitter tragedy, lie the seeds of astonishing rebirth. ~ Stewart Stafford

Truth will always reassert itself, given a symbolic three days. Three days represents the time it takes between the crucifixion and the resurrection, between an open-hearted response to hurt and the experience of rebirth that will always follow. ~ Marianne Williamson

Move beyond the limited parameters that most human beings have and realize that there are thousands and millions of worlds beyond this world. ~ Frederick Lenz

When you think an angry thought about someone, it's like hitting them. ~ Frederick Lenz

The buddha-dharma ... is about directly seeing Truth, prior to forming any ideas about it. It is about responding to each particular situation as it comes ... , not according to some ... program of dos and don'ts. ~ Steve Hagen

I think a lot of people trying to follow Buddhism these days are getting confused about sex and they don't understand what's going on. They've been exposed to a contemporary Christian idea that sex itself is evil and bad, which I'm not so sure was Jesus' idea. For me, the Buddhist approach isn't that sex itself is evil or bad but that sex is neutral. It's the way you do it that can problematic. ~ Brad Warner

The universe is made up of vibrating, pulsing light. When our attention level drops, we don't see that. Instead we see what appears to be a solid material world. ~ Frederick Lenz

We don't wait for the future to come to us. We give birth to the future. ~ Alain Yaovi M. Dagba

The first principle of Buddhism is 'Suffering exists. How do I escape it?' Buddhism ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people. ~ Aldous Huxley

The twenty-seventh was Blackstar, or simply (the symbol of blackstar) - a suggestion that the A-Z was over, but there was more to come, beyond the known alphabet, beyond ordinary language; a second set of letters, communications, a rebirth. Inside the A to Z, and all the possible combinations of songs, styles, secrets, themes, discoveries, redirections, emotional climaxes, sheer drama, tension, relief, beauty, there was all you needed to know in order to construct and understand the language of Bowie
(re morley's alphabet of bowie albums) ~ Paul Morley

Perhaps the best example for the continuing power and importance of traditional religions in the modern world comes from Japan. In 1853 an American fleet forced Japan to open itself to the modern world. In response, the Japanese state embarked on a rapid and extremely successful process of modernisation. Within a few decades, it became a powerful bureaucratic state relying on science, capitalism and the latest military technology to defeat China and Russia, occupy Taiwan and Korea, and ultimately sink the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and destroy the European empires in the Far East. Yet Japan did not copy blindly the Western blueprint. It was fiercely determined to protect its unique identity, and to ensure that modern Japanese will be loyal to Japan rather than to science, to modernity, or to some nebulous global community.
To that end, Japan upheld the native religion of Shinto as the cornerstone of Japanese identity. In truth, the Japanese state reinvented Shinto. Traditional Shinto was a hodge-podge of animist beliefs in various deities, spirits and ghosts, and every village and temple had its own favourite spirits and local customs. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the Japanese state created an official version of Shinto, while discouraging many local traditions. This 'State Shinto' was fused with very modern ideas of nationality and race, which the Japanese elite picked from the European imperialists. Any element in Buddhism, Confuciani ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The place that you gain the most power is within your own mind. Stopping thought generates power. That is why people meditate. The longer you can stop thought, the more power you gain. ~ Frederick Lenz

Nihilism, a normal condition.

It may be a sign of strength; spiritual vigour may have increased to such an extent that the goals toward which man has marched hitherto (the "convictions," articles of faith) are no longer suited to it (for a faith generally expresses the exigencies of the conditions of existence, a submission to the authority of an order of things which conduces to the prosperity, the growth and power of a living creature ...); on the other hand, a sign of insufficient strength, to fix a goal, a "wherefore," and a faith for itself.

It reaches its maximum of relative strength, as a powerful destructive force, in the form of active Nihilism.

Its opposite would be weary Nihilism, which no longer attacks: its most renowned form being Buddhism: as passive Nihilism, a sign of weakness: spiritual strength may be fatigued, exhausted, so that the goals and values which have prevailed hitherto are no longer suited to it and are no longer believed in - so that the synthesis of values and goals (upon which every strong culture stands) [Pg 22]decomposes, and the different values contend with one another: Disintegration, then everything which is relieving, which heals, becalms, or stupefies, steps into the foreground under the cover of various disguises, either religious, moral, political or aesthetic, etc. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes there are people who only meditate with a teacher. They ride the teacher's energy. They don't really learn how to meditate. They learn how to ride the energy. ~ Frederick Lenz

I often wonder when I make a film - I'm thinking of making a film of the Buddha - and I often wonder: If Buddha had all the elements that are given to a director - if he had music, if he had visuals, if he had a video camera - would we get Buddhism better? ~ Shekhar Kapur

But at times I was seized with compassion. A Buddhist compassion, as cold as the conclusion of a metaphysical syllogism. A compassion not only for men but for all life which struggles, cries, weeps, hopes and does not perceive that everything is a phantasmagoria of nothingness. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Maybe it's something which can't be defined," Enso Roshi says. "Maybe it's a question, to be lived. ~ T. Scott McLeod

Combine meditation with career as a yoga. You will find that your practice will not be any less powerful than a person who lives in a monastery. You might even excel because practice in a monastery can get very one-sided. ~ Frederick Lenz

When we cross the gates of death, our karma is all we take with us. Everything else that we enjoyed in this life we leave behind ... Our karma is the only thing that will count in determining our rebirth, for our next life is nothing but the effects of our karmic tendencies that materialize in our perception. ~ Tulku Thondup

the golden eternity is { } ~ Jack Kerouac

Over a bowl of noodles [the younger Cantonese man] waxed eloquent on the subject of mantras. 'Ordinary people, Ah Jon, use mantras as spells to win good fortune or ward off disease and other evils. Perhaps they are right to do so, for the mantras are often successful, but I do not ask you to believe that. What I beg you to believe is that they are of the greatest help in altering states of consciousness. They do this by making your mind stay still instead of chasing after thoughts.'

He went on to explain that, being devoid of meaning, they do not promote conceptual thought as prayers, invocations and so forth are apt to do; and that, as each mantra has a mysterious correspondence (he could not explain what kind of correspondence) with the various potentialities embedded deeply in our consciousness […] it could cause one to snap into a state otherwise hard to reach. I do not remember his actual words, but I do remember that he was the first to voice an idea which was later to be abundantly confirmed by my own experience. […] he went on to say that to use meaningful words in any kind of religious practice is useless, since words encourage dualistic thought which hinders the mind from entering upon a truly spiritual state. His last words […] were: 'People who pray with words are just beginners. Don't do it!' Several passengers who understood English glanced at him as though they thought him a bit mad and I myself was quite taken aback by his un-Chinese vehemence, but ~ John Blofeld

Words are inaccurate pointers to reality and should by no means be trusted. ~ Frederick Lenz

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it's fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there's an arrow in your heart ... ~ Pema Chodron

Gain control of the mind and make it still, initially just during periods of meditation, but then throughout the day and throughout the night. ~ Frederick Lenz

When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

There are different pathways that lead to enlightenment. We could say that everyone's life is one of the pathways. Your life is a pathway that leads to enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz

Stop trying to be different. Just do what you are good at, and work really hard. You have to work hard to be chaos. ~ Frederick Lenz

As a friend of mine told me about Real Happiness: you wrote this one in American. ~ Sharon Salzberg

What matters is that they are curious about life, energy, truth, and themselves and that they haven't sold out to the establishment powers that tell us what to think, what to wear, how to behave, what to believe in and what goes beyond the line of rational and irrational thought. ~ Frederick Lenz

Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her. ~ Anais Nin

To go within doesn't mean to become enraptured with who you are, or to become enraptured with ideas of who you are. ~ Frederick Lenz

You are an endless conglomeration of awareness. You're not one singular self. You're a corporation. ~ Frederick Lenz

The experience of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral is the consequences of perception. ~ Allan Lokos

When I enter into nirvikalpa samadhi, most can see this light, or feel it. This light creates very powerful, steady spiritual transformation. The reason you are here is to sit in this light. ~ Frederick Lenz