Tibetan Buddhist Quotes

Dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience yet they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality. In the dream state our bodies are at rest, yet we see and hear, move about and are even able to learn. When we make good use of the dream state it is almost as if our lives were doubled: instead of a hundred years we live to be two hundred
Tibetan Buddhist Tarthang Tulku from ~ Stephen LaBerge

When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Tibetan anymore; he belongs to the world. ~ Richard Gere

One of the happier ironies of recent history is that even as Tibet is being wiped off the map in Tibet itself, here it is in California, in Switzerland, in Japan. All over the world, Tibetan Buddhism is now part of the neighborhood. In 1968, there were two Tibetan Buddhist centers in the West. By 2000, there were 40 in New York alone. ~ Pico Iyer

Because my main concern is the Tibetan Buddhist culture, not just political independence, I cannot seek self-rule for central Tibet and exclude the 4 million Tibetans in our two eastern provinces of Amdo and Kham. ~ Dalai Lama

Death and dying provide a meeting-point between the Tibetan Buddhist and modern scientific traditions. I believe both have a great deal to contribute to each other on the level of understanding and of practical benefit. ~ Dalai Lama

Self-actualization is not a sudden happening or even the permanent result of long effort. The eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint Milarupa suggested: "Do not expect full realization; simply practice every day of your life." A healthy person is not perfect but perfectible, not a done deal but a work in progress. Staying healthy takes discipline, work, and patience, which is why our life is a journey and perforce a heroic one. ~ David Richo

The key to searching for the truth is to hold passionately to your beliefs while simultaneously not feeling entrenched in your position, to be able to let go of the need to defend it in order to save face. It's almost a Buddhist thing, where you're not necessarily free of ego and concerns about status, but you're able to sit with them and maintain some objective separation. It's about letting ideas win, not people. It's about finding what's right, not being right. There ~ Adam Steltzner

The unflagging optimism and constant good nature of the Tibetan people challenges us to identify the source of our misery and discontent. Most of the time when we examine it, we realise we have little to be upset about at all. It is simply our lack of control over our own lives that causes us the majority of our own suffering. Attack the real root of the situation, and we can solve the problem. But any other action simply causes more problems. ~ James Oroc

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

Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.
It isn't more complicated that that.
It is opening to or recieving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is,
without either clinging to it or rejecting it. ~ Sylvia Boorstein

You must be accommodating with your teacher. You must have a sense of humor about your teacher and the impossible things they ask you to do. ~ Frederick Lenz

In the process of burning out these confusions, we discover enlightenment. If the process were otherwise, the awakened state of mind would be a product dependent upon cause and effect and therefore liable to dissolution. Anything which is created must, sooner or later, die. If enlightenment were created in such a way, there would always be a possibility of ego reasserting itself, causing a return to the confused state. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. AS we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others-what and whom we can work with, and how-becomes wider. ~ Pema Chodron

As a displaced community, Tibetans often speak of learning to look to the future without forsaking tradition. And as Tibetans continue their flight from Tibet to India or Nepal and then scatter farther and farther away from the physical land of Tibet, the conversations on identity and culture become more crucial and complex. As the distance increases so does the desperation in keeping Tibet as the eventual home, our aspired home. Yet it is the loss of Tibet and its very distance that also awakens us to view patriotism and identity in new ways that are not guided solely by Buddhist philosophy. Self-assertion- an approach avoided in the past because of the Buddhist aspiration to prevent focus on the self- enters our identity as Tibetans. ~ Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

If your unicorn shifts disconcertingly between a goat, a horse, a rhinoceros, a marine mammal from the North Atlantic, assorted Tibetan ungulates and a six-eyed ass whose ears will terrify, the work of this book is almost done. ~ Chris Lavers

We have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own ~ Barack Obama

Our Buddhist sutra tells us that when conditions are sufficient, we see forms, and when conditions are not sufficient, we don't. When all conditions are prsesent, phenomena can be perceived by us, and so they are revealed to us as existing, ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Journey over, sorrowless, freed in every way, and with all bonds broken - for such a man there is no more distress. ~ Gautama Buddha

We entered the Taj Mahal, the most romantic place on the planet, and possibly the most beautiful building on earth. We ate curry with our driver in a Delhi street café late at night and had the best chicken tikka I've ever tasted in an Agra restaurant. After the madness of Delhi, we were astonished that Agra could be even more mental. And we loved it. We marvelled at the architecture of the Red Fort, where Shah Jahan spent the last three years of his life, imprisoned and staring across at the Taj Mahal, the tomb of his favourite wife. We spent two days in a village constructed specifically for tiger safaris, although I didn't see a tiger, my wife and son were more fortunate. We noticed in Mussoorie, 230 miles from the Tibetan border, evidence of Tibetan features in the faces of the Indians, and we paid just 770 rupees for the three of us to eat heartily in a Tibetan restaurant. Walking along the road accompanied by a cow became as common place as seeing a whole family of four without crash helmets on a motorcycle, a car going around a roundabout the wrong way, and cars approaching towards us on the wrong side of a duel carriageway. India has no traffic rules it seems. ~ Karl Wiggins

MRA is the good road of an ideology inspired by God upon which all can unite. Catholic, Jew and Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Confucianist - all find they can change, where needed, and travel along this good road together. ~ Frank Buchman

If you decide to go on a Buddhist path, you have to be careful if you start mixing a lot of different traditions you are not totally familiar with - mixing this kind of meditation with that kind of practice or this kind of visualization with that kind of mantra. Then you really are concocting your own thing, and you have no idea what is going to happen. ~ Sakyong Mipham

Actually international norms also allow certain decisions to be judged according to the probabilities10. Buddhist approach of taking correct decisions are based on consciousness11. ~ Arya Keerthi Kumarasena

Let the wise one control his thoughts, for they are difficult to perceive, often elusive, and they rush about frantically: a mind well controlled achieves peace and happiness. ~ Gautama Buddha

Christians have oppressed Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Pagans, and each other throughout their centuries of power, preaching religious intolerance as the word of Jehovah whenever they had the military, political, or economic power to make it stick - and then piously preaching brotherhood, peace, and toleration when they didn't. ~ Isaac Bonewits

May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians give strength to you to carry out your noble idea. ~ Swami Vivekananda

As a single drop of water fills a bucket, so do small deeds of evil; as a single drop of water fills a bucket, so do small deeds of good. ~ Gautama Buddha

Hundreds of political prisoners still suffer in Tibetan prisons. Freedom of speech is not allowed in any sense. It is illegal to possess a photo of the Dalai Lama. ~ Joanna Lumley

To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas. ~ Gautama Buddha

Buddhist monks have known for centuries that meditation can change the mind. Now we are inspired by His Holiness to examine with our technology the precise brain changes that occur with practice ... The unique collaboration on meditation is just beginning. ~ Richard Davidson

As you become more aware of your own imperfections, you simultaneously become more aware of the overall perfection of the universe. ~ Frederick Lenz

When we lack etiquette, we trash things. We trash each other. We trash the environment. We lose sight of the value of things. We suffer alienation when our spirit is disconnected from our physical awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz

I am a reformed Taoist, part-time Buddhist, Hindu, animist, pagan, Jewish mystic, and Christian. I always got along great with priests and rabbis and mullahs and gurus, even though I spend most of my life constructively criticizing them. ~ Steven Van Zandt

There's a mess inside you:
You clean the outside. ~ Anonymous

It is the Buddhist belief that at every moment the universe is not only dying but being reborn. ~ Frederick Lenz

Dispassion is the best of mental states ... ~ Gautama Buddha

I asked the Dalai Lama what it was like to wake up with joy, and he shared his experience each morning. 'I think if you are an intensely religious believer, as soon as you wake up, you thank God for another day. And you try to do God's will. For a nontheist like myself, but who is a Buddhist, as soon as I wake up, I remember Buddha's teaching: the importance of kindness and compassion, wishing something good for others, or at least to reduce their suffering. Then I remember that everything is interrelated, the teaching of interdependence. So then I set my intention for the day: that this day should be meaningful. Meaningful means, if possible, serve and help others. If not possible, then at least not to harm others. That's a meaningful day. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

What is important in self-discovery is the person who keeps going, who has a smile, who is kind to others, who works hard at everything, and who keeps their mind on their own business and not everybody else's. ~ Frederick Lenz

Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law. ~ Gautama Buddha

Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical. ~ William Empson

In every country in the world, killing human beings is condemned. The Buddhist precept of non-killing extends even further, to include all living beings. ~ Nhat Hanh

Then there were the people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konarak; warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Parsee, Jain, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every different face and form of that extravagant variety, that incomparable beauty, India. ~ Gregory David Roberts

Be grateful to everyone is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected ... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face ... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out. ~ Pema Chodron

If you are a student of an enlightened master, you can literally tap into his aura, anywhere and at anytime. All you have to do is meditate on your Buddhist master and the light will come into your mind. ~ Frederick Lenz

There is a Possibility of freedom from suffering. By removing the causes of suffering, it is possible to attain a state of Liberation, a state free from suffering. According to Buddhist thought, the root causes of suffering are ignorance, craving, and hatred. These are called the 'three poisons of the mind.'These ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Though you might conquer in battle
A thousand times a thousand men,
You're the greatest battle-winner
If you conquer just one - yourself. ~ Anonymous