The Jewel Tree of Tibet Quotes

“The Bodhisattva is in no rush. For once we have tasted a single drop of the bliss of bringing others into that freedom, with the Spirit of Enlightenment of love and compassion, once we have loosened the grip of the solid, separated, alienated self that is the core of self-centeredness, then we are already happy in a certain way. The Bodhisattva is always joyful, even when suffering. Bodhisattvas are always happy and cheerful under pressure, because they have felt the essence of reality as freedom (p. 223)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“We have the assurance of the enlightened beings that reality is goodness, that reality is freedom from suffering, that reality is bliss. So we should never fear to open ourselves to reality, to cast aside our preconceptions and biases, and to open more and more to whatever turns out to be real. You can have faith in enlightenment, faith in evolutionary potential, faith in infinity, faith in your infinite self. (p. 222)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“Any change in your mind, positive or negative, affects all others. The wish-granting gem tree is a morphic resonance field. The energy of one contains within it the energy of all. Every action affects all other actions. Whenever you turn your mind towards the wish-granting gems, everyone else‘s mind is turned in that way, too. The planet‘s mind turns with your mind. If you let your mind go in some negative, paranoid, self-indulgent, distracted way, the planet‘s mind turns in that way. You‘re totally interconnected with everything.”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“The Three Jewels are the foundation of all forms of Buddhism, and the first jewel is the Buddha. The word buddha means „the Awakened One“. And it doesn‘t mean only Shakyamuni Buddha, formerly the prince Siddhartha, who became a perfect Buddha in the sixth century before the Common Era in India, whom we sometimes call the „historical Buddha“. Buddha means all those who have awakened from the sleep of ignorance and blossomed into their full potential. Awakened and blossomed, they are teachers of others. (pp. 30-31).”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“Some people decided they couldn‘t wait for society to achieve freedom over a long period of time, felt they couldn‘t wait for enlightenment through many, many lifetimes of their own. These people decided they would achieve this perfect freedom and perfect ability to help others achieve freedom in a single lifetime. This was the beginning of the Tantric tradition, which was very esoteric at first. In the Tibetan view, Tantra emerged at the same time as the Mahayana, around one hundred years before the Common Era, but it remained completely esoteric for seven hundred years, without a single book on it being published. In its esoteric tradition, people lived on the fringes, on the margins; they were the magical people, the magicians, the siddas, the adepts. (p. 20)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“You yourself can be god. You really are that, in fact. You, yourself, are reality. You, yourself, are buddha. (p. 18)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“Silence is the Buddha‘s greatest expression. It‘s the Buddha‘s great teaching, what the Hindus call „You are That“ in the Upanishads. „You are the ultimate reality. You are God!“ the Hindus boldly declare. But the Buddha‘s way of affirming that fact is by being silent, because if you are that, after all, if you are what the theists think is God, you already know it yourself. (p. 15)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“Being in love with someone is wanting his or her happiness. It is not wanting to possess him or her for our happiness. That’s possessiveness and desire for control. But when we’re really in love with others, we want only their happiness. We forget about our happiness, and then, therefore, ironically, we get very happy, because we temporarily stop worrying about how happy we are. When we forget about how happy we are, we become happy. That’s why people like to be in love, because when they’re in love, they focus only on the beauty and the happiness of the beloved other. (p. 127)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“In a lovely statement in Maitreyanatha‘s Universal Vehicle Discourse Literature, the future buddha says, „There is not one buddha and there are not many buddhas. Buddhas are neither one nor many.“ You can‘t say there are many buddhas because all buddhas are one in the body of reality. They share the same body of reality, which is infinite and absolute. But you can‘t say there is only one buddha, because each individual being evolves to buddhahood and enjoys her or his own communion with all other buddhas in oneness. Each enjoys it individually, so in their form bodies, in their beatific bodies, all buddhas are distinct, so that your buddhahood does not somehow subsume my buddhahood. Shakyamuni‘s buddhahood doesn‘t prevent us from the joy of our own buddhahood, even though when we achieve our own buddhahood we realize we are one with Shakyamuni. We are the same being as Shakyamuni, yet we individually enjoy being the same being, each of us. Isn‘t that lovely? (p. 118)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“Now, we come to the heart of the Buddhadharma, to compassion. If you wanted to say in one word what is the essence of Buddha‘s teaching, of the enlightenment teaching, it would be compassion. The statement of Nagarjuna, the great master of two thousand years ago in India, crystallized this. He said, „Voidness is the womb of compassion.“ In Sanskrit this reads, shunyata karuna garbham; in Tibetan, tong nyid nying jey nying po jen, which may be the most beautiful phrase ever in Tibetan […] when we discover our freedom, this discovery flows immediately into universal compassion for all beings. (p. 111)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“We are being developed by what we have done, and what we do, not only physically and verbally, but mentally also. What we now do in mind and speech and body will determine how we will become. The different forms and idiosyncrasies of all beings and things – all worlds in fact – depend on this inexorable causality of evolutionary action, or karma. Karma is not mysterious. Karma doesn‘t mean „fate“, although in a way it occupies the place of fate. Karma means „evolution, evolutionary causality.“ (Pages 79-80)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“The first two steps of the path: the recognition of the preciousness of human life, which is endowed with liberty and opportunity, and the awareness of the immediacy of death. (p. 79)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“We recognize that this moment is everything. The seed of our being, all our future states, the product of all our past states, infinity stretching in both directions, infinite expanses in both directions, is now here in this moment, and this moment begins to become more and more infinite. We find more and more fruition in this moment, especially when we know already how deeply wonderful the human life is. We see what a great opportunity for freedom this life is, especially since each moment of it could be the last. What is essential in each moment is the quintessential experience of that moment. When we know this in the deepest part of the soul, then we begin to have a soul life. We begin to have soul intensity in life.”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“The Buddha‘s life is not just something in a historical past, with us left behind and lost here. The Buddha is not meant to be envisioned as a presence whom we will encounter in some world in the future. We should, rather, make the Buddha immediate for ourselves. We should connect ourselves to the Buddha‘s immediate presence in our minds, intentions, and actions. We do not just aim to emulate or admire the Buddha, the ancient saints, and bodhisattvas. We aim to become buddhas today, saints today, bodhisattvas today, at our level of ability. (p. 39)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“Remember that awakening, freedom from suffering, salvation, if you will, liberation, omniscience, buddhahood, all come from your own understanding, your insight into your own reality [...] The highest meaning of Dharma is the reality that is our own reality – the reality that holds us in freedom from suffering, holds us in a state of bliss. Dharma is our own reality that we seek to understand fully, to open to fully. Dharma, therefore, also consists of those methods and the teaching of those methods that are the art and sciences that enable us to open ourselves [...] Ultimately, we take refuge in reality itself, because that is the only secure refuge. If we took refuge in any unrealistic thing, it could be blown down by this-and-that howling wind - but when we take refuge in reality, that is what endures. It is uncreated. It is not made by anyone. It lasts. It is there, and therefore it can give refuge.”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“The great bliss state is the state of reality – where we actually are, right here and now. It is not some elaborate place far away from where we are. The wonderful thing about the Buddha‘s revelation, the Buddha‘s insight, is that this reality itself is the great bliss state, that which he first called „Nirvana“, the extinction of all suffering, which he came to describe as „bliss void indivisible.“ The extinction of suffering and the achievement of perfect happiness and the reality of perfect happiness is the reality of our world. This was the Buddha‘s good news. This is what he realized under the bodhi tree, where he first became enlightened. The bodhi tree was the original wish-granting gem tree. To find happiness or peace or enlightenment, we do not have to create some artificial world, a world apart from this world. We have to understand the nature of this world. And the nature of this world, when we do understand it, is revealed to us through our understanding, not from some other person just showing us something. Our own understanding reveals the nature of the world to us as the great bliss state of emptiness and openness. The nature of this world is superbliss, intertwined and indivisible.”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“Through the great bliss state,
I myself become the mentor deity.
From my luminous body,
Light rays shine all around,
Massively blessing beings and things,
Making the universe pure and fabulous,
Perfection in its every quality.
(p. 10)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism

“The external teacher figure in Tibetan Buddhism is considered more of a friend than a mentor. Your esoteric teacher, by contrast, is one you imagine and visualize to be indivisible from the Buddha himself, someone who is a living exemplar of enlightenment. You use your mental power of imagination to propel you toward the enlightened state, to mobilize you to become like your teacher. This altered focus makes the teaching more accessible and immediate. It gives you a personal guide from the outset, a companion on the path but one who is always ahead of you, motivating you. The mentor figure empowers you, not just to play at self-transformation but actually to realize the teaching, to experience the higher goal state. Thus, „mentor devotion“ is a practice of acknowledging or worshiping the Buddha in a model figure of your choice. (p. 9)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism