Spiritual Buddhist Quotes

If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him. ~ Gautama Buddha

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts. Develop the mind of equilibrium. You will always be getting praise and blame, but do not let either affect the poise of the mind: follow the calmness, the absence of pride. ~ Gautama Buddha

Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

To know that these are people who for a moment, in glory, in light, were true warriors, and you had the chance to associate with them, to live with them, to share with them, words and moments of power - this is the nature of spiritual study. ~ Frederick Lenz

If you become obsessive in spiritual practice, if you just try and try, you are not going to be happy. You are going to be obsessive. ~ Frederick Lenz

I have a great deal of spiritual dignity. It's on loan from eternity, and you do too, and we have to use it in our relationship with each other. ~ Frederick Lenz

From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hinduism religion. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Conquer the angry man by love. ~ Gautama Buddha

Well neither of us were "Buddhists" then because it was new to us. We were 60's people. Psychedelic relics, you know ... whatever, right on, radicals and world changers, social peaceniks perhaps, with a Buddhist spiritual veneer. ~ Surya Das

The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. ~ Gautama Buddha

There is a director who should make 'Silver Surfer' - he is mentally committed to it. He's doing another movie now. What's most important to me about this guy, first, is that he's incredible with visuals. But he's also a spiritual guy, a Zen Buddhist ... Galactus is a force of nature, not a being. That's all I'm saying. ~ Avi Arad

As a Buddhist, I was trained to be tolerant of everything except intolerance. I was brought up not only to develop the spirit of tolerance but also to cherish moral and spiritual qualities such as modesty, humility, compassion, and, most important, to attain a certain degree of emotional equilibrium. ~ U Thant

If you find no one to support you on the spiritual path, walk alone. There is no companionship with the immature. ~ Gautama Buddha

We could become quite satisfied with ourselves because we are sitting in meditation and are endeavoring to practice the spiritual path. Such satisfaction with ourselves is not the same as contentment. Contentment is necessary, self-satisfaction is detrimental. To be content has to include knowing we are in the right place at the right time to facilitate our own growth. But to be self-satisfied means that we no longer realize the need for growth. All these aspects are important parts of our commitment and makes us into one whole being with a one-pointed direction. ~ Ayya Khema

The Buddha taught some people the teachings of duality that help them avoid sin and acquire spiritual merit. To others he taught non-duality, that some find profoundly frightening. ~ Akkineni Nagarjuna

The greatest effort is not concerned with results. ~ Atisa

On a spiritual level, on a place where you want to be a better human being and listen more, I try. I joke, but it has. I mean, I don't consider myself a card-carrying Buddhist, you know. But I do believe deeply in the ideas, and I think anytime you have interest in anything, it somehow humbles you. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

In order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge. ~ Dalai Lama

In the beginning we define what is spiritual. But as you go on, you see that everybody and everything is an instrument of infinity. ~ Frederick Lenz

Dharma is not about credentials. It's not about how many practices you've done, or how peaceful you can make your mind. It's not about being in a community where you feel safe or enjoying the cachet of being a 'Buddhist.' It's not even about accumulating teachings, empowerments, or 'spiritual accomplishments.' It's about how naked you're willing to be with your own life, and how much you're willing to let go of your masks and your armor and live as a completely exposed, undefended, and open human person. ~ Reginald Ray

They should regard me as what I am. I am a spiritual leader and teacher. ~ Louis Farrakhan

Praise the one who speaks ill of you. Before long he will become a friend ~ Radhe Maa

That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision. ~ Herbert Read

Take all those things that would propose to be important, and weigh them upon the scale of your soul. Asking how much each thing actually impacts, not just the moment, but the years ahead. Discard all that is trivial masquerading as significant, and reserve your days for those things that truly matter. ~ L.M. Browning

If we are enveloped in images, we are also enveloped in forms, in spirit, which is nature, and in nature, which is spirit. Daily and continually we associate with this unified world of nature and spirit without knowing it. But only the person to whom this association has become clear understands what is meant when we talk of Sophia as a heightened and spiritualized earth. But this formulation is already distorted as well. The earth has not changed at all, it is neither heightened and spiritualized: it remains what is always was. Only the person who experiences this Earth Spirit has transformed himself, he alone is changed by it and has, perhaps, been heightened and spiritualized. However, he too remains what he always was and has only become, along with the earth, more transparent to himself in his own total reality.
Here also we must differentiate between the reality of our total existence and the differentiating formulations of our consciousness. Certainly, our consciousness makes the attempt to separate a spiritual from a natural world and to set them in opposition, but this mythical division and opposition of heaven and earth proves more and more impracticable. If, in the process of integration, consciousness allies itself with the contents of the unconscious and the mutual interpenetration of both systems leads to a transformation of the personality, a return to the primordial symbolism of the myth ensues. Above and below, heaven and earth, spirit and nature, are ex ~ Erich Neumann

Sin is a spiritual illness; thus sinners are in need of salvation. ~ Thomas Aquinas

The Truth Is That Existence Wants Your Life To Become A Festival Because When You Are Unhappy, You Also Throw Unhappiness All Around. ~ Osho

Outward things are promiscuously dispensed, and no man's spiritual estate is discernible by the view of his temporal. When God draws the sword, it may cut off the righteous as well as the wicked, ~ John Flavel

The self who is undone in the encounter with the abyss, that is, the preabyssal self, lives with a misguided consciousness. Without having faced or embraced the vertiginous depths beneath the precarious ground of its being, this self views itself as coherent and independent. I am here referring to the self who operates in clearly demarcated binaries and boundaries, the self who views God as distinct from the world, the other as separate from the "I," the spiritual as distinct from the physical. Conversely, the new self that emerges - if it does at all - from the abyss understands its nature not as an immutable substance but as multiple, fragmented, and always-in-becoming. In the abyss the old self is dissolved, emptied, abandoned, annihilated, lost, crushed, dismembered, shattered, and drowned. ~ An Yountae

Inside, my spirit is sparkling like foam on the crest of a wave at high tide under a full moon. ~ Laurie Nadel

Listening is a gift of spiritual significance that you can learn to give to others. When you listen, you give one a sense of importance, hope and love that he or she may not receive any other way. Through listening, we nurture and validate the feelings one has, especially when he or she experiences difficulties in life. ~ H. Norman Wright

Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Every Latter-day Saint should love the inspired Constitution of the United States - a nation with a spiritual foundation and a prophetic history - which nation the Lord has declared to be his base of operations in these latter days. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Know that there are people to whom you are connected who are available to help you find the right job, to solve a puzzling issue that seems irreconcilable, to help you back on your feet, and to resolve financial difficulties. Everyone becomes a compatriot rather than a competitor. This is spiritual awareness as I practice it. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

That which is empty, is full of everything in the cosmos. ~ Meeta Ahluwalia

To receive the universe into oneself, after the manner of some "mystics," is simply to become inflated with the conceit that one is God and so set up yet another opposition between the mighty whole and the degraded part. To give oneself utterly and slavishly to the world is to become a spiritual nonentity, a mechanism, a shell, a leaf blown by the winds of circumstance. But if the world is received and the self given at the same time, there prevails that union which brings about the Second Birth. ~ Alan W. Watts

I'm Catholic In My Complications And Buddhist In My Aspirations'

~George O'dowd ~ Boy George

All spiritual leaders who live in luxury cannot enter God's Paradise in Heaven. Repent or Perish. ~ Felix Wantang

The fundamental metaphor of National Socialism as it related to the world around it was the garden, not the wild forest. One of the most important Nazi ideologists, R.W. Darré, made clear the relationship between gardening and genocide: "He who leaves the plants in a garden to themselves will soon find to his surprise that the garden is overgrown by weeds and that even the basic character of the plants has changed. If therefore the garden is to remain the breeding ground for the plants, if, in other words, it is to lift itself above the harsh rule of natural forces, then the forming will of a gardener is necessary, a gardener who, by providing suitable conditions for growing, or by keeping harmful influences away, or by both together, carefully tends what needs tending and ruthlessly eliminates the weeds which would deprive the better plants of nutrition, air, light, and sun. . . . Thus we are facing the realization that questions of breeding are not trivial for political thought, but that they have to be at the center of all considerations, and that their answers must follow from the spiritual, from the ideological attitude of a people. We must even assert that a people can only reach spiritual and moral equilibrium if a well-conceived breeding plan stands at the very center of its culture. ~ Derrick Jensen

When we allow ourselves to be authentically free, it raises our vibration. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

It is only when we let go of knowing what we think we know that new knowing can enter our lives. ~ Maria Parkinson

[On art:] I believe that it not only enriches the spiritual life, but that it makes one more sane and sympathetic, more observant and understanding, regardless of whatever age it springs from, whatever subjects it represents. ~ Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

The beautiful lie is, however, also the essence of kitsch. Kitsch is a form of make-believe, a form of deception. It is an alternative to a daily reality that would otherwise be a spiritual vacuum. . . . Kitsch replaces ethics with aesthetics. . . . Nazism was the ultimate expression of kitsch, of its mind-numbing, death-dealing portent. Nazism, like kitsch, masqueraded as life; the reality of both was death. The Third Reich was the creation of "kitsch men," people who confused the relationship between life and art, reality and myth, and who regarded the goal of existence as mere affirmation, devoid of criticism, difficulty, insight. ~ Modris Eksteins

When I speak in Christian terms or Buddhist terms I'm simply selecting for the moment a dialect. Christian words for me represent the comforting vocabulary of the place I came from hometown voices saying more than the language itself can convey about how welcome and safe I am what the expectations are and where to find food. Buddhist words come from another dialect from the people over the mountain. I've become pretty fluent in Buddhist it helps me to see my home country differently but it will never be speech I can feel completely at home in. ~ Mary Rose O'Reilley

Human beings are capable of the kind of love and loyalty that transcends not only the physical debasement but even the spiritual weariness of the years of sorrow. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds. ~ David Bentley Hart

--here, now, always-- T.S. Eliot ~ Sylvia Shaw Judson

In a spiritual partnership you learn that wanting what you want is not enough, but that you must both want it deeply and create it every day, that you must bring it into being and hold it in being with your intentions. ~ Gary Zukav

The world is dominated by those who ascend into the higher powers in the spiritual realms ~ Bernard Kelvin Clive

Ask me, "Why would you travel on the difficult path?". Because , I trust God to walk me through the unknown journey. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Increase your faith. Proclaim your faith. Let your faith show. ~ Russell M. Nelson

Our physical, emotional, and spiritual health requires rest. We need to take a break. We need to nurture ourselves. To take a time out to refuel, rejuvenate, and revive ourselves. ~ Dana Arcuri

Our eagerness for worldly activity kills in us the sense of spiritual awe ~ Lahiri Mahasaya

A burrito is a delicious food item that breaks down all social barriers and leads to temporary spiritual enlightenment. ~ Lisi Harrison

A little exposure to the philosophy of many Eastern spiritual traditions - including yoga - could easily lead you to conclude that if you aspire to achieve goals in the material world you cannot fulfill yourself spiritually, or vice versa. However, since all of us, at some level, long for fulfillment in all aspects of our life, it is essential to understand that these two aims are not mutually exclusive. ~ Rod Stryker

Let me tell you the meaning of the sacred and alluring garden that blooms in the heart of the desert and produces the food of life. The garden for which you are currently heading is nowhere and everywhere except in the camps. It is another name for the only place where you belong, Michaels, where you do not feel homeless. It is off every map, no road leads to it that is merely a road, and only you know the way. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Les Miserables is first of all the product of a varied experience of the world, containing the perceptions of an entire life. And this image of reality is also a realistic image. The symbol, as Hugo uses it, does not idealize things; rather, it expresses their spiritual meaning without disguising them. ~ Victor Hugo

Your health, your experiences, and your life do not have to be at the mercy of your negative emotions. When you consciously choose to focus on a thought or belief that is positive, comforting, or hopeful, you're clearing out that emotional clutter that's weighing you down. You're energetically shifting yourself to a better place. ~ Susan Barbara Apollon

Clearing clutter - be it physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual - brings about ease and inspires a sense of peace, calm, and tranquility. ~ Laurie Buchanan

No person is ever wrong in how they experience their reality. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

The Holy Spirit illuminates the minds of people, makes us yearn for God, and takes spiritual truth and makes it understandable to us. ~ Billy Graham

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals. ~ Gautama Buddha

When I met Maria at Sachs' apartment in 1979, she hadn't slept with a man in close to three years. It took her that long to recover from the shock of the beating, and abstinence was not a choice so much as a necessity, the only possible cure. As much as the physical humiliation she had suffered, the incident with Jerome had been a spiritual defeat. For the first time in her life, Maria had been chastened. She had stepped over the boundaries of herself, and the brutality of that experience had altered her sense of who she was. Until then, she had imagined herself capable of any thing: any adventure, any transgression, any dare. She had felt stronger than other people, immunized against the ravages and failures that afflict the rest of humanity. After the switch with Lilian, she learned how badly she had deceived herself. She was weak, she discovered, a person hemmed in by her own fears and inner constraints, as mortal and confused as anyone else.
It took her three years to repair the damage (to the extent that it was ever repaired), and when we crossed paths at Sachs's apartment that night, she was more or less ready to emerge from her shell. ~ Paul Auster

The spiritual mind is always metaphorical. Spiritual thinking is poetic thinking. It's always trying to put a very diaphanous experience into words, realizing all the while that words are inadequate. ~ Sam Keen

We have been endowed with spiritual senses so that we can feel and enjoy God's presence. ~ Sadhu Sundar Singh

If you deliberately and passionately grieve over the consolations of darkness and participate with your spirit in their annihilation, you would put yourself above other forms of life and lives of other people. ~ Ivo Žurić

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass. ~ Dogen