Explore
Gaia Soulmates

Welcome to Gaia Community!

We're a little different than most social networks. Like you, we're here for a reason! Our goal? To inspire and empower you to realize your purpose, so that you can do the same for others, and so that, together, we can contribute to a better world.

Come join us... not only can you develop your own library of quotations and receive daily inspiration and wisdom, you'll be able to experience an emerging world of others who share your vision for a positive future.

Spiritual Cinema Circle
 Advertising keeps Gaia free! Interested in sponsoring us?
Send a Quotation Card

Did you know you can turn any of the short quotes on our site into an e-card?

Simply locate the quote you'd like to send, and if it fits on our card, you'll see an option for Send as greeting on the left side of the quote.

Or, if you'd like a more classic Greeting card, you can visit our Gaia Greeting Gallery.

Quote Size: All | Short | Tall | Grande | Venti

Quotes about Buddha

In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Then Buddha bows to Buddha, and you bow to yourself. This is the true bow.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi : Gaia Child
Shunryu Suzuki
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Contributed by: Louëlla. More quotes added by Louëlla from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: zen, buddha, bow, acceptance
Quote

Wordless is not the same of expressionless. All phenomenon of the universe, audible and inaudible, tangible and intangible, sentient and insentient, are the clear and ceaseless expression of the buddha nature.

John Daido Loori
Contributed by: Siona van Dijk. More quotes added by Siona from this | all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

After his great awakening, the Buddha continued to meditate and to devote himself to others; otherwise his vision would have receded into a pleasant memory.

Huston Smith : Gaia Explorer
Huston Smith
Contributed by: Matthew Moes. More quotes added by mattmoes from this | all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: buddha, great awakening, memory
Quote

The Buddha's insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment. The middle way is an invitation to leap beyond nirvana and samsara and to realize the unborn Buddha mind right in the middle of everywhere.

Adyashanti : Gaia Child
Adyashanti
 
Contributed by: Siona van Dijk. More quotes added by Siona from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

unknown : Gaia Explorer
unknown
Source: Brainyquote.com
Contributed by: BigB. More quotes added by BigB from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: buddha, peace
Quote
Btn_send-quote-as-greeting

Birth and death are doors through which you pass from one dream to another. Someone is born on Earth in France as a powerful king, rules for a time, then dies. He maybe reborn in India, and travel in a bullock cart into the forest to meditate. He may next find rebirth in America as a successful businessman; and when he dreams death again, reincarnates perhaps in Tibet as a devotee of Buddha and spend his entire life in a lamasery. Therefore hate none and be attached to no nationality, for sometimes you are a Hindu, sometimes a Frenchman, sometimes an Englishman, or an American or a Tibetan. What is the difference? Each existence is a dream within a dream, is it not?

paramhansa yogananda
Source: The Divine Romance
Contributed by: Asavari Honavar. More quotes added by bajarbattu from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

I, ever knowing the living beings
Who tread the Path and those who do not
In response to those who may be saved
Preach to them a variety of dharmas,
Each time having this thought:
'How may I cause the beings
To contrive to enter the Unexcelled Path
and quickly to perfect the Buddha-body?'

Siddhartha Gautama Buddha : Indian mystic, founder of Buddhism
Buddha (563 - 483 BC)
Source: Scripture of the lotus blossom of the fine dharma‎ - Page 244 by Leon Hurvitz, Kumārajīva
Contributed by: Meenakshi. More quotes added by Meenakshi from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

What is most important is to go deep into ourselves and discover the loving kindness and compassion of the buddha within - the awakened nature we all possess.

Shinjo Ito
Source: Shinjo: Reflections, Page: 9
Contributed by: Meenakshi. More quotes added by Meenakshi from this | all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

The Buddha shared his teachings so that everyone, without exception, could reach the same supreme state of liberation that he had attained through practice and effort.

Shinjo Ito
Source: Shinjo: Reflections, Page: 135
Contributed by: Meenakshi. More quotes added by Meenakshi from this | all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

You may have seen people praying to an image as if it had special power. Perhaps they're wishing for the well-being of their family, for material prosperity, or to recover from illness. But this way of practicing faith only leads to a dead end. Buddha images should serve as inspirations to cultivate the infinite loving kindness latent in the buddha within us.

Shinjo Ito
Source: Shinjo: Reflections, Page: 125
Contributed by: Meenakshi. More quotes added by Meenakshi from this | all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

The Buddha's teachings on love are clear. It is possible to live twenty-four hours a day in a state of love. Every movement, every glance, every thought, and every word can be infused with love.

Thich Nhat Hanh : Gaia Explorer
Thich Nhat Hanh
Source: Teachings on Love By Thich Nhat Hanh, P. 63
Contributed by: neda YOGINI. More quotes added by neda from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: buddha, love, teaching, movement, glance, thought, word, day, always
Quote

 

Jesus taught us many things. But so did Muhammad and Buddha and countless others. You don't need priests or prophets to teach you. People and events in your life can teach you.

Mr. Prophet
Source: Mr. Prophet
Contributed by: Mr. Prophet. More quotes added by Mr. from all sources
1 Comment Print Permalink
Quote

 The records of every great religion show the presence of such Supermen, so full of the Divine Life that again and again they have been taken as the very representatives of God Himself.

C. W. Leadbeater
Source: The Masters And The Path
Contributed by: Meenakshi. More quotes added by Meenakshi from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

the mind is pure and luminous by nature. It is defiled only by adventitious thoughts and emotions

Buddha
Source: lessons of the lotus
Contributed by: Taikunping. More quotes added by Taikunping from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: buddha, mind
Quote
Btn_send-quote-as-greeting

We are not innocent children victimized by a big bad world; if our world is big and bad, we made it that way. This is what the Buddha taught. The “other” is the child's boogeyman, the projection of our own fears onto a terrifying object of our imagination, which in turn terrorizes us. Our ignorance is not seeing that we are the other. We cannot afford to confuse innocence with this ignorance. Violence is not a permanent, immutable, fixed object. It is a state of mind, an expression of ignorance, with no more solid substance than a cloud. We cannot make a frontal attack on violence. Even protecting ourselves from it fuels its boogeyman existence. But the Buddha taught that we can change. This was his good news: that there is a way to alleviate suffering by freeing our minds from greed, anger, and ignorance. Yet until we apprehend the ways in which we are Oklahoma City, the bombs and the baby bears, the victims and the violators, we will continue to blame “them,” all the while proclaiming our innocence and evading our responsibilities.

Helen Tworkov
 
Contributed by: David Pearson. More quotes added by David from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: blame, violence, boogeyman, buddha, change, victim, ignorance
Quote

The essence of human spirit would seem to be something static to Buddha: if it has an internal imperative to become something else (something higher or more spiritual), what self-disequilibrium could it suffer from that could nonetheless still be considered spiritual in Buddha's eyes? Nietzsche sought to explain this imperative for self-acculturation, for achieving rational self-mastery, for spiritualization, for self-radicalization and self-sublimation, by means of a "Will to Power" far more comprehensive than moderns (with only the cheapest and most facile grasp of "power") can understand. As a philhellene Nietzsche perceives and respects what the Greeks took for granted, that "power" above all else must be self-reflexive, an expression of aristic self-moderation (their anti-hybristic ethos and its correlative contempt for idiotia): "power" to the Greeks is moral and philosophical and cultural and political authority because it expresses itself in the hardest thing of all for humans to achieve, self-mastery.

Kenneth Smith
 
Contributed by: David Roel. More quotes added by Dave from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

"But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind." - Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma : Indian Zen Buddhist monk who brought Zen from India to China (c. 520 AD)
Bodhidharma (c. 440 AD - 528 AD)
Source: The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
Contributed by: Jarett. More quotes added by jsab0 from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

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.

Albert Low
Source: Tradition and Transitions
Contributed by: gary gach. More quotes added by gary from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

After 48 years, I have said nothing.

Siddhartha Gautama Buddha : Indian mystic, founder of Buddhism
Buddha (563 - 483 BC)
Source: The life story of Shakyamuni Buddha
Contributed by: Adam. More quotes added by Adam from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote
Btn_send-quote-as-greeting

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

Aldous Leonard Huxley : English writer & critic
Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)
Source: Island (Perennial Classics), Page: 40..41
Contributed by: Brian Schrokosch. More quotes added by Nara-Narayana from this | all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
Quote

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

Shunryu Suzuki-roshi : Japanese Buddhist scholar & Zen master, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center
Shunryu Suzuki-roshi (1905 - 1971)
Source: Letters from Emptiness
Contributed by: Louëlla. More quotes added by Louëlla from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: buddha
Quote

What I know 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.

Siddhartha Gautama Buddha : Indian mystic, founder of Buddhism
Buddha (563 - 483 BC)
Source: Buddha in 'The Dhammapada,' trans. E. Easwaran
Contributed by: Meenakshi. More quotes added by Meenakshi from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: gautama, buddha, leaves, tree, teach, divide, sorrow, shore, harmony
Quote

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

Buddha
 
Contributed by: Mark Gehrke. More quotes added by Mark from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: truth, dwell, worlds, buddha
Quote
Btn_send-quote-as-greeting

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.

Wang Wei
Source: dailyzen.com
Contributed by: Benyamin. More quotes added by Lion from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: serene, solitude, buddha, meditation, desire, zen
Quote

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?

Siddhartha Gautama Buddha : Indian mystic, founder of Buddhism
Buddha (563 - 483 BC)
Source: Dhammapada
Contributed by: Benyamin. More quotes added by Lion from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: rest, awakening, enlightenment, cycle, buddhism, buddha
Quote

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.

Joan Oliver
Contributed by: Todd. More quotes added by Phaedrus from this | all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: karma, buddha, buddhism, buddist
Quote

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

Dave Oshana
Source: http://blog.oshana.org/does-buddha-wear-harmony-hairspray/
Contributed by: awakening enlightenment. More quotes added by awakening_now from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: non-dualist, koan, buddha, harmony, hairspray
Quote

 

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.

Elysha
Source: http://www.elysha.org
Contributed by: elysha. More quotes added by elysha from all sources
1 Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: elysha, spiritual teacher, self realized teacher, awakening, enlightenment teacher, spirituality, enlightened teacher, nirvana, authentic enlightenment teachers, self realization, meditation, consciousness, reality, freedom, being, satsang, amness, self, oneness, love, happiness, lovebliss, heaven, truth, reincarnation, liberation, karma, zen, unconditional love, light, non-thinking, present moment, awareness, life, heart, mystic, advaita, non duality, lightmind, rebirth, existentialism, taoism, darshan, now, contentment, buddha, buddhism, ramana maharshi, tolle, nisargadata maharaj, adyashanti, dharma, beauty, harmony, immensity, everything, wonder, it, isness, clarity, bliss, nowhere, exquisiteness, infinity, forever, religiousness, ecstasy, siddhi, trueness, absoluteness, yoga, fulfilment, richness, wholeness, emptiness, nothing, sage, self help, motivation, who you are, who am i, illusion, spiritual meditation, self healing, new age, spiritual guidance, journey of self discovery, surrender, energetic, concepts, flow of energy, motion of seeing, central point, spiritual consciousness, spiritual information, new age spirituality, communicating with god, change, earth changes, desire, fear, mindbody, pleasure, mind informancy, the elysium ashram, new zealand, the divine one, welcome, consideration, parallel worlds, emergence, existence, struggle, spirit to matter, guru, essence, cessation, letting go, a course in miracles, catholic, prayer, god, jesus, christ, christian, spiritual, bible, pray, faith, apostle, saint, thoughts, self-awareness, accountability, human understanding, apocalypse, behaviour, nothingness, biology, higher awareness, intuition, psychic skills, insights, personal growth, creativity, creation, quotes, myself, oneself, video, visit, self improvement, inspirational, sitting, self knowledge symposium, spiritual system, spirituality websites, definition of spirituality, definition of enlightenment, definition of freedom, meaning of spirituality, elements of spirituality, spirituality in the marketplace, self realization fellowship, enlightenment period, meditation techniques, daily meditation, age of enlightenment, learn meditation, simple meditation, essays on freedom, definition of being, time and being, art of seeing, being philosophy, real eye zation, all seeing eye, manifestation, well being, free essays on freedom, online spirituality, know more about spirituality, spiritual poems, creation spirituality, assessing spirituality, sspirituality, pirituality, religious definition of spirituality
Quote

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

Siddhartha Gautama Buddha : Indian mystic, founder of Buddhism
Buddha (563 - 483 BC)
 
Contributed by: namaste. More quotes added by namaste from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: buddha, lotus, water
Quote

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.

sam harris : Gaia Child
sam harris
Source: Shambhala Sun: Killing the Buddha: http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2903&Itemid=244
Contributed by: ~C4Chaos. More quotes added by ~C4Chaos from all sources
Add Comment Print Permalink
More quotes about: buddha, buddhism, religion
Quote
Page 1 of 3123
Showing 1 - 30 of 67 Quotes