Dharma Quotes

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
― Dogen

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.”
― Gary Snyder, Earth House Hold

“The Buddha's original teaching is essentially a matter of four points -- the Four Noble Truths:

1. Anguish is everywhere.
2. We desire permanent existence of ourselves and for our loved ones, and we desire to prove ourselves independent of others and superior to them. These desires conflict with the way things are: nothing abides, and everything and everyone depends upon everything and everyone else. This conflict causes our anguish, and we project this anguish on those we meet.

3. Release from anguish comes with the personal acknowledgment and resolve: we are here together very briefly, so let us accept reality fully and take care of one another while we can.

4. This acknowledgement and resolve are realized by following the Eightfold Path: Right Views, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Recollection, and Right Meditation. Here "Right" means "correct" or "accurate" -- in keeping with the reality of impermanence and interdependence.”
― Robert Aitken, The Dragon Who Never Sleeps: Verses for Zen Buddhist Practice

“Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.”
― Huang Po, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind

“The five points of yama, together with the five points of niyama, remind us of the Ten Commandments of the Christtian and Jewish faiths, as well as of the ten virtues of Buddhism. In fact, there is no religion without these moral or ethical codes. All spiritual life should be based on these things. They are the foundation stones without which we can never build anything lasting. (127)”
― Sri S. Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali

“The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: In Full Color

“Of course, even when you see the world as a trap and posit a fundamental separation between liberation of self and transformation of society, you can still feel a compassionate impulse to help its suffering beings. In that case you tend to view the personal and the political in a sequential fashion. "I'll get enlightened first, and then I'll engage in social action." Those who are not engaged in spiritual pursuits put it differently: "I'll get my head straight first, I'll get psychoanalyzed, I'll overcome my inhibitions or neuroses or my hang-ups (whatever description you give to samsara) and then I'll wade into the fray." Presupposing that world and self are essentially separate, they imagine they can heal one before healing the other. This stance conveys the impression that human consciousness inhabits some haven, or locker-room, independent of the collective situation -- and then trots onto the playing field when it is geared up and ready.

It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up -- release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“In the first movement, our infancy as a species, we felt no separation from the natural world around us. Trees, rocks, and plants surrounded us with a living presence as intimate and pulsing as our own bodies. In that primal intimacy, which anthropologists call "participation mystique," we were as one with our world as a child in the mother's womb.

Then self-consciousness arose and gave us distance on our world. We needed that distance in order to make decisions and strategies, in order to measure, judge and to monitor our judgments. With the emergence of free-will, the fall out of the Garden of Eden, the second movement began -- the lonely and heroic journey of the ego. Nowadays, yearning to reclaim a sense of wholeness, some of us tend to disparage that movement of separation from nature, but it brought us great gains for which we can be grateful. The distanced and observing eye brought us tools of science, and a priceless view of the vast, orderly intricacy of our world. The recognition of our individuality brought us trial by jury and the Bill of Rights.

Now, harvesting these gains, we are ready to return. The third movement begins. Having gained distance and sophistication of perception, we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. Now it can dawn on us: we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“Now I know what success is: living your truth, sharing it.”
― Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth

“This is what the path of Dharma is like. It's not that you have to do all the practices. It is sufficient to take just one of them, whichever one you really have an affinity with, and through practicing that one alone, for the rest of your life, you will achieve enlightenment. Whichever practice you choose doesn't matter; they are all valid methods for achieving enlightenment—if you practice. The key is to practice with diligence for the rest of your life.”
― Dhomang Yangthang, The Union of Dzogchen and Mahamudra

“This stuff of a past not worthily lived is also medicine.”
― Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom

“Each man has to follow truth as he sees it.”
― K.M.Munshi

“Although I too am within Amida's grasp,
Passions obstruct my eyes and I cannot see him;
Nevertheless, great compassion is untiring and illumines me always.”
― Shinran Shonin

“Naturally occurring timeless awareness—utterly lucid awakened mind—
is something marvelous and superb, primordially and spontaneously present.
It is the treasury from which comes the universe of appearances and possibilities, whether of samsara or nirvana.
Homage to the unwavering state, free of elaborations.”
― Longchen Rabjam

“Don’t worry, eventually everything falls into its rightful place.”
― Fakeer Ishavardas

“All phenomena are embraced within a single self-knowing awareness.
Even though they arise as the totality of samsara and nirvana,
the phenomena of the world of appearances and possibilities—
limitless, boundless—arise from basic space.
Therefore, they are subsumed within basic space from which the first arise.”
― Longchen Rabjam

“The Buddhist teachings move along a graduated path: first the stages of calm abiding and then the stages of deep insight. Through such gradual practices, lamas of the past gave birth to realization in their mental continuum and discovered primordial wisdom. All the qualities that the great masters found, we can attain as well. It all depends on our own efforts, our diligence, our deeper knowing, and our correct motivation. – 17th Karmapa”
― Ogyen Trinley Dorje, Music In The Sky: The Life, Art, And Teachings Of The 17Th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje

“Buddhism is a religion of the heart. Only this. One who practices to develop the heart is one who practices Buddhism [...] Use your heart to listen to the Teachings, not your ears.”
― Ajahn Chah, No Ajahn Chah: Reflections

“Indian poverty is more dehumanizing than any machine; and, more than in any machine civilization, men in India are units, locked up in the straitest obedience by their idea of their dharma. The scientist returning to India sheds the individuality he acquired during his time abroad; he regains the security of his caste identity, and the world is once more simplified. There are minute rules, as comforting as bandages; individual perception and judgement, which once called forth his creativity, are relinquished as burdens, and the man is once more a unit in his herd, his science reduced to a skill. The blight of caste is not only untouchability and the consequent deification in India of filth; the blight, in India that tries to grow, is also the over-all obedience it imposes, its ready-made satisfactions, the diminishing of adventurousness, the pushing away of men of individuality and the possibility of excellence.”
― V.S. Naipaul, India: A Wounded Civilization

“Jealousy is but a manifestation of artha’s corruptive influence on man which in due course became the insurmountable hurdle for him on the path of moksha. It is in man’s power to curtail it to manage his passage to moksha. One needs only to understand the physics of jealousy to appreciate the chemistry of its affects on human nature.”
― B.S. Murthy, Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life

“If you have no contentment, you are poor even though you may be wealthy.
for the mind of a miser is never satisfied.
Those who are content are truly the richest.
Even if they have little, their minds are filled with happiness.

—Stainless Light, the testament of Drimé Özer”
― Longchen Rabjam, The Life of Longchenpa: The Omniscient Dharma King of the Vast Expanse

“If you want answers, you don't want life.
If you want method, you don't want life.
If you want security, you don't want life.
If you want goals, you don't want life.
If you don't want life, what is it that you want?”
― Padma Gendum

“The difference between theism and non-theism is not whether one does or does not believe in god. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including Buddhists and Non-Buddhists. Theism is a deep seated conviction that there is some hand to hold. If we we just do the right things someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there will always be a babysitter available when we need one. We are all inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Non-Theism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves. We sometimes think that Dharma is something outside ourselves, something to believe in, something to measure up to, however, Dharma isn't a belief. It isn't dogma. It is total appreciate of impermanence and change. The teachings disintegrate when we try to grasp them. We have to experience them without hope. Many brave and compassionate people have experienced them and taught them. The message is fearless. Dharma was never meant to be a belief that we blindly follow. Dharma gives us nothing to hold on to at all. Non-Theism is finally realizing that there is no babysitter that you can count on, you just get a good one and then he or she is gone. Non-Theism is realizing that it's not just babysitters that come and go, the whole of life is like that. This is the truth. And the truth is inconvenient. For those who want something to hold onto, life is even more inconvenient.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, The Places That Scare You, Start Where You Are, 10% Happier 4 Books Collection Set

“Indians have made some contribution to science in this century; but - with a few notable exceptions - their work has been done abroad. And this is more than a matter of equipment and facilities. It is a cause of concern to the Indian scientific community - which feels itself vulnerable in India - that many of those men who are so daring and original abroad should, when they are lured back to India, collapse into ordinariness and yet remain content, become people who seem unaware of their former worth, and seem to have been brilliant by accident. They have been claimed by the lesser civilization, the lesser idea of dharma and self-fulfillment. In a civilization reduced to its forms, they no longer have to strive intellectually to gain spiritual merit in their own eyes; that same merit is now to be had by religious right behaviour, correctness.

India grieved for the scientist Har Gobind Khorana, who, as an American citizen, won a Nobel Prize in medicine for the United States a few years ago. India invited him back and fêted him; but what was most important about him was ignored. 'We could do everything for Khorana,' one of India's best journalists said, 'except do him the honour of discussing his work.' The work, the labour, the assessment of labour: it was expected that somehow that would occur elsewhere, outside India.”
― V.S. Naipaul, India: A Wounded Civilization

“पूरे वर्ष, सभी क्षेत्रों में, सभी मौसमों में; हम हिंदुओं को लगभग किसी भी चीज और हर चीज की, किसी को भी और सभी की पूजा करने के लिए कारण मिलते हैं; लोगों से देवताओं तक; जानवरों से पौधों तक; ग्रहों से सितारों तक। इसलिए जीवन के छोटे-छोटे आश्चर्यों के साथ हमारा उत्साह हमेशा ऊंचा रहता है, हम लोगों से मिलना और उनका अभिवादन करना पसंद करते हैं, क्योंकि सनातन धर्म में हम मानव होने के हर पहलू का जश्न मनाते हैं। हम मानते हैं कि (भगवान) हर कण में हैं और ऊँ (ओ3म्) ब्रह्मांड के हर एक परमाणु (atOM) में है।

Poore varsh, sabhee kshetron mein, sabhee mausamon mein; ham hinduon ko lagabhag kisee bhee cheej aur har cheej kee, kisee ko bhee aur sabhee kee pooja karane ke lie kaaran milate hain; logon se devataon tak; jaanavaron se paudhon tak; grahon se sitaaron tak. isalie jeevan ke chhote-chhote aashcharyon ke saath hamaara utsaah hamesha ooncha rahata hai, ham logon se milana aur unaka abhivaadan karana pasand karate hain, kyonki sanaatan dharm mein ham maanav hone ke har pahaloo ka jashn manaate hain. ham maanate hain ki bhagavaan (bhagavaan) har kan mein hain aur om brahmaand ke har ek paramaanu mein hai.”
― Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma, You By You

“Taming the mind is the process of refining away mental afflictions until we aren't ruled by our circumstances and the negative thoughts and emotions they elicit.”
― Khentrul Lodrö T'hayé Rinpoche

“अधिकार खो कर बैठ रहना, यह महा दुष्कर्म है;
न्यायार्थ अपने बन्धु को भी दण्ड देना धर्म है।”
― Maithili Sharan Gupt, जयद्रथ वध

“And he is not at an age right for renunciation; he has not even entered the stage of the householder, as befits a well educated man; he has not therefore paid back his dues to the gods and to his ancestral spirits and to his fellowmen. Bound by these dues where can he go now? He has no experience at all of women and consequently of samsara. He has not therefore attained any of the purusharthas of life, namely dharma, artha and kama. He has not even rendered personal service to his parents to ensure their comfort. He has not helped his loving relations, nor endowed his dear friends with wealth, nor honoured the wise. He has not shared his wealth with his dependants nor fulfilled the desires of those begging for favours.

"He has not founded his lineage by begetting sons and grandsons. Nor has he performed any great sacrificial rituals. He has not given generous gifts nor fulfilled his obligations of hospitality. He has not done his duty by this world. He has not adorned the earth with dams, wells and water distributing centres, with palaces, ponds and groves. Above all he has not still spread his fame far and wide which alone would live on till the end of the world.”
― Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Kadambari