Quotes about Buddha

The good news is that we are Buddha.
The bad news is that all beings are Buddha.
The sickness of being human is the sickness of wanting to be unique.

After 48 years, I have said nothing.

Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only know who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am.
What in fact I am, if only Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two.
In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soup. Because his aspiration to perpetuate only the "yes" in every pair of opposites can never, in the nature of things, be realized, the insulated Manichee I think I am condemns himself to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated conflicts with other sspiring and frustrated Manichees.
Conflicts and frustrations--the theme of all history and almost all biography. "I show you sorrow," said the Buddha realistically. But he also showed the ending of sorrow--self-knowledge, total acceptance, the blessed experience of Not-Two

If you want to read a letter from the Buddha's world, it is necessary to understand Buddha's world.

"What I know," the Buddha said, "is like the leaves on that tree;
what I teach is only a small part. But I offer it to all with an
open hand. What do I not teach? Whatever is fascinating to discuss,
divides people against each other, but has no bearing on putting an
end to sorrow. What do I teach? Only what is necessary to take you
to the other shore."

The worlds originate so that truth may come and dwell therein.

I cannot find the Monastery of Heaped Fragrance,
Miles up now into the clouds of the summit.
There is no footpath through the ancient woods.
Where did the bell sound,
Deep in the sound, deep in the mountain?
The voice of the torrent gulps over jagged stones;
Sunlight hardly warms the bluish pines.
As dusk deepens in these unfathomable mazes,
I practice meditation
To subdue the dragon of desire.

Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
Their food is knowledge.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?

All that we are is a result of what we have thought

I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that I will fall heir.

The only way to reply to a non-dualist is to ask an inscrutable koan “Does Buddha Wear Harmony Hairspray?”

Who you are is this "motion of seeing" that is looking through your eyes right now. When you stop at and as this "motion of aliveness" - by consciously refocusing your attention to this seer; by coming to being deeply at rest at and as this one that is the "you" that you can never get away from; by no longer furthering out from this "you" and into the attempt to try and be something that is notyou; you are immediately freed from who you think you are in every given moment of this realization.

True happiness is completely causeless; it is not reliant on a thing; it is its own reward, its own pleasure. It is immutable and immovable even as it is constantly changing and forever increasing in its movement into its own manifestation.

Your true home is in being deeply at rest at and as the heart of existence itself, the "you" that you truly are and have always been.  The heart is totally free of everything even as it contains everything, sustains everything and is flowing through everything - without any paradox or contradiction to any of it.

As you learn to leave alone the activity of unconsciously trying to be the mindbody that you think that you are - the mindbody that this "you" is currently flowing through - and you learn to move as this one that you truly are - this "you" of you; the very heart of existence - steadily, consciously and momentarily, the continuity of the ever deepening of this innermost as it keeps on entering its manifestation, through this mindbody that you find yourself flowing through, allows you to simply bubble in the sheer joy, pleasure, peace, delightfulness and stillness that this "you" of you is.

“As a lotus flower is born in
water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it
unsoiled, so I, born in the world, raised in the world having overcome
the world, live unsoiled by the world”

The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi is supposed to have said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Like much of Zen teaching, this seems too cute by half, but it makes a valuable point: to turn the Buddha into a religious fetish is to miss the essence of what he taught. In considering what Buddhism can offer the world in the twenty-first century, I propose that we take Lin Chi’s admonishment rather seriously. As students of the Buddha, we should dispense with Buddhism.

Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it.  After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile.  He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon.  According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

Q: Why the word "Self"?

A: The experience of the Presence is radically and profoundly subjective.  It is commonly presumed by the mind that God is 'elsewhere', namely, above, beyond, transcendent, in heaven, or somewhere back in history or in the future.  Traditionally, however, God is described as both transcendent and immanent.  The term "Self" emphasizes that God is discovered within as the ultimate reality that underlies one's actual existence in the 'here and now' (e.g., "Heaven is within you.").

The Buddha is said to have avoided using the term "God" because of the prevalence of misconceptions surrounding it.  He wanted to avoid all the limitations that that conceptualization confounds.  The Self as Awareness is often referred to in literature as Light.  As recounted in Genesis, the Unmanifest became Manifest first as Light, which was the radiance of the energy of God that took form as the universe.

The term "Self" also overcomes the dualistic notion that one is separated from God.  Historically, the picture that there is a sinner down here on Earth and there is a God up there somewhere in heaven is the viewpoint of the ego.  Thus, to most people, the term "God" implies "otherness."  However, there is no separation in the Allness of Creation, so it is impossible for the created to be separate from the Creator.  Enlightenment is therefore the revelation of the Self when the illusion of the reality of a separate self is removed.

The constant awareness of one's existence as 'I' is the ever present expression of the innate divinity of the Self.  This is a universal, constant experience that is purely subjective and of which no proof is possible or necessary.  The 'I' of the Self is the expression of Divinity as Awareness which is therefore beyond time and form.  The truth of this identity is obscured by the duality created by perception and disappears when all positionalities are relinquished.

I know what I gave them; I don’t know what they received.

"Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering
follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that
draws it.

Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves."

Truth is One:
I have often said that if Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, and other true
emissaries of God came together, they would not quarrel, but would
drink from the same one cup of God-communion.
(Paramahansa Yogananda, `The Journey to Self-Realization' )

With the wish to free all beings
until we reach full awakening
I will always go for refuge
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha

Today, in the presence of the enlightened ones
Inspired by Wisdom, Compassion and Joyous Effort
I generate the mind aspiring to full buddhahood
For the Well-being of all Sentient beings.

For as long as space endures
and as long as sentient beings remain
until then, may I too, abide
to dispel the misery of the world.

He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace.