Enlightenment Quotes - Page 16

• Morality can muddle mystical understanding and virtue is only necessary in so far as it favours success. All wisdom must be encompassed in order to achieve enlightenment.

  Aleister Crowley

  Order, Understanding, Favour

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• You are a Buddha, and so is everyone else. I didn't make that up. It was the Buddha himself who said so. He said that all beings had the potential to become awakened. To practice walking meditation is to practice living in mindfulness. Mindfulness and enlightenment are one. Enlightenment leads to mindfulness and mindfulness leads to enlightenment.

  Nhat Hanh

  Walking Meditation, Practice, Mindfulness

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• Start to see yourself for who you really are: a traveller, an explorer or on the path of life, confidently advancing along the path of enlightenment towards your destiny. Don't lose sight of the things that are truly vital in your life.

  Robin Sharma

  Destiny, Sight, Path

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• [In] the post-Enlightenment world, science [has] taken the place of magic, miracles, and superstition.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Taken, Miracle, Magic

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• Madness is not enlightenment, but the search for enlightenment is often mistaken for madness.

  Richard Davenport-Hines

  Madness, Mistaken

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• It is not after we understand the truth that we attain enlightenment. To realize the truth is to live - to exist here and now.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Realizing, Truth Is, Here And Now

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.104, Shambhala Publications

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• No one's life is totally morbid. Even on a subtle scale there's little flashes of enlightenment and of happiness and joy.

  Sylvester Stallone

  Joy, Littles, Life Is

  "New again: Sylvester Stallone". Interview with Pat Hackett, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 2, 2015.

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• Enlightenment is any experience of expanding our consciousness beyond its present limits. We could also say that perfect enlightenment is realizing that we have no limits at all, and that the entire universe is alive.

  Thaddeus Golas

  Perfect, Alive, Limits

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• The great achievement of Western culture since the Enlightenment is to make many of us peer over the wall and grant some respect to people outside it; the great failure of Western Culture is to deny that walls are inevitable or important.

  James Q. Wilson

  Wall, People, Achievement

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• Trees are good for contemplation. Plato and Aristotle did their best thinking in the groves of olives and figs around Athens, and Buddha found enlightenment beneath a bo or peepul tree.

  Colin Tudge

  Plato, Thinking, Tree

  "Why woodlands are wonderful" by Colin Tudge, www.theguardian.com. October 8, 2010.

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• Enlightenment is freedom, the thought of enlightenment is prison.
  The truth exists in the moment. If we´re anywhere else, seeking something
  outside of the moment, we´re in prison.

  Stephen Levine

  Prison, Moments, Seeking

  Stephen Levine (2010). “A Gradual Awakening”, p.77, Anchor

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• There's many lanes on the highway of enlightenment, they don't have to be on the razor's edge like the yellow line dotted in the middle. Balance is appropriate, not too tight, not too loose, the Middle Way as we call it in Buddhist dharma teachings.

  Surya Das

  Buddhist, Teaching, Yellow

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• I'd like to say is that we shouldn't have an idea that the goal of spiritual practice is to annihilate ones ego, that would be a mistake. In the early years of enlightenment, psychologists were afraid of Hindus and Buddhists meditating because they thought they were going to shatter their egos and then they'd have to wear diapers or something, like they'd lose their toilet training or what have you. They were really afraid of it.

  Robert Thurman

  Spiritual, Buddhist, Mistake

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• You are not seeking to attain some future state. That is the fallacy of many spiritual seekers. They have an image of some state - enlightenment, or whatever they call it - they want to achieve.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Want, Achieve

  Source: rayhemachandra.com

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• America became a special source of attraction to people who were fleeing the aftereffects of the 30 Years War and the religious persecution that began to sweep through Europe in the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. And when people got here, very often they succeeded.

  Mitch Horowitz

  Religious, War, Years

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 4, 2010.

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• ...photographers who carry 60 pounds of equipment up a hill to photograph a view are not suffering enough, although their whining causes enough suffering among their listeners. No, if they really expect us to respect their search for enlightenment and artistic expression, in [the] future they will drag the equipment up the hill by their genitals and take the view with a tripod leg stuck through their foot.

  Bill Jay

  Photography, Feet, Views

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• Once again, we are reminded that awakening, or enlightenment is not the property of Buddhism, any more than Truth is the property of Christianity. Neither the Buddha nor the Christ belongs exclusively to the communities that were founded in their names. They belong to all people of goodwill, all who are attentive to the secret which lives in the depths of their breath and their consciousness.

  Jean Leloup

  Buddhism, Names, People

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• The Protestant reformation was an attempt to recast the Christian faith in terms of the new learning of the 16th century, the enlightenment learning. It was the first time that the Christian church did not have the capacity to keep itself unified as it recast itself, so it split into Protestant and Catholic traditions.

  John Shelby Spong

  Christian, Catholic, Church

  Source: mormon-chronicles.blogspot.com

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• It's good to bear in mind that like it or not, enlightenment has always been, even in a golden age, pretty much limited to an elite.

  Tom Robbins

  Mind, Age, Golden

  "The Syntax of Sorcery". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.

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• Try your best not to get distracted from your goal. Let everything you do be your way of getting closer to your enlightenment; never take a vacation from spiritual practice.

  Sharon Gannon

  Spiritual, Vacation, Practice

  "Chanting Compassion with David Life & Sharon Gannon". Chanting Compassion with David Life & Sharon Gannon, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• I think it's so important to have a practice, because the consciousness isn't perfection or enlightenment or any of that bullshit. The consciousness is, "Oh, I'm walking down the street and I'm doing nothing."

  Amanda Palmer

  Thinking, Practice, Perfection

  "Amanda Palmer: Artist. Music Icon. Crowdfunding Legend. Disrupter. Feminist". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• To be politically activated is to dare to care about the happiness of others and that is just about the most important activity anyone can be involved in at this time, because it changes a person - it lifts them from normal self-centeredness to a state of other centeredness. That is a good thing because it expands our perception of self. This expansion of consciousness leads to enlightenment, which is the meaning of yoga.

  Sharon Gannon

  Yoga, Self, Perception

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• Enlightenment is the realization of the oneness of being, where otherness disappears.

  Sharon Gannon

  Oneness, Realization, Disappear

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• The last thing we should do is allow ourselves to be infantilized by a counterfeit version of enlightenment.

  Marianne Williamson

  Lasts, Should, Counterfeit

  "SISTER GIANT: Consciousness and Politics" by Marianne Williamson, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 6, 2012.

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• No true search for enlightenment ignores the suffering of other sentient beings. Ever. We simply need to create a way to address that suffering while remaining in a blissful center.

  Marianne Williamson

  Suffering Of Others, Needs, Addresses

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