No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners Quotes

“From the Buddhist perspective, it’s not that we’re accepting the bad things that happen; we’re just accepting that bad things happen.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes. THE BUDDHA, THE BHADDEKARATTA SUTTA”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Buddhist teachings are not something you’re meant to believe; they’re something you do—you put them into practice.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“From the Buddhist perspective, letting go of hatred is not a moral issue. The problem with hatred isn’t whether it’s morally right or wrong. Clinging to hatred is simply an unwise action because it creates unnecessary suffering for ourselves and others. As a mental state, hatred affects the emotional well-being of the person doing the hating more than the person being hated.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“the unnecessary suffering we experience has more to do with how we see things than with what we see.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Right mindfulness is about paying attention, whether we’re meditating or just going about our daily tasks. Being mindful helps us stay anchored in the present moment, which keeps us in touch with reality as it is. Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh describes mindfulness like this: “When you have a toothache, the feeling is very unpleasant, and when you do not have a toothache, you usually have a neutral feeling. However, if you can be mindful of the non-toothache, the non-toothache will become a feeling of peace and joy. Mindfulness gives rise to and nourishes happiness.” In this sense, mindfulness helps us become aware that at any given moment, we are capable of experiencing contentment. It’s just a matter of increasing our sphere of awareness to notice all the “non-toothaches” we’re currently experiencing.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“This is emptiness. It’s the understanding that as life unfolds, it doesn’t mean anything. It is neither positive nor negative. All things simply are as they are.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“To be enlightened is to be liberated from our habitual reactivity, freed from our perceptions and ideas in order to see reality as it is without wanting it to be different.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“liberation from our own habitual reactivity and the poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance in our own minds.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Buddhism can be practiced somewhat like yoga: as something you do, not something you are.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“After all, the law of conservation of energy in physics states that energy can’t be created or destroyed; it can just be transformed from one form into another”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“everything you need to know is already present within you.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“attachment is what we experience when we’re living inside the illusion of a permanent, separate self. Nonattachment occurs when we have realized the truth of nonself.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“The Buddhist teaching of nonself says that there is no permanent or fixed you—there’s only a complex web of inseparable, impermanent causes and effects.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Right action is not, in other words, a set of rules to be followed to the letter in every situation.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“I like to use the following technique to keep death as an ever-present topic in my mind: Ask yourself, “What if I knew today was going to be my last day to live? How would that change my interactions with everyone I talk to today?” Then flip the question: “What if I knew that the person I’m talking to had only one more day to live? Would that change how I’m interacting with that person?”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Yet when we observe nature, we see constant rebirth. After all, the law of conservation of energy in physics states that energy can’t be created or destroyed; it can just be transformed from one form into another. A cloud changes form and becomes rain. The rain becomes part of a river, flows into the ocean, and then gets heated up and evaporates into the air, where it may become a cloud and start the process all over again. What was, for a time, a cloud is transformed into something new. We don’t say the cloud dies when it changes form into raindrops. Are we really any different from the cloud?”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“An understanding of impermanence and interdependence can ease the fear of death by reminding us that birth wasn’t the start and death won’t be the end. Every beginning has an end, and every end gives birth to a new beginning. There really is no beginning or end; there is only change.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Buddhism teaches that there are three different types of suffering. The first is called “the suffering of suffering.” This is a natural form of suffering that we experience on a regular basis. Pain might be a good word to summarize it. It’s what we experience when we stub our toe, stay up all night with the stomach flu, or start to feel achy as we age. The second type of suffering is called “the suffering of loss.” This is what we experience when, for example, we lose a job, a loved one, or our youth and vitality. This form of suffering is also natural, and like the suffering of suffering, it’s often connected to specific circumstances. The third type of suffering is called “the all-pervasive suffering,” and it’s the type Buddhism is most concerned with. Unlike the first two types, all-pervasive suffering is self-inflicted, and it generally arises out of an ignorant or delusional understanding of reality. It tends to have very little to do with our actual circumstances and a lot to do with how we perceive and interpret those circumstances.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“six blind men who stand around an elephant and begin to describe it on the basis of what they can feel by touch. One feels the tail and thinks he’s touching a rope, while another feels the trunk and concludes it’s a snake. The other men describe what they touch as a tree trunk (the elephant’s leg), a fan (its ear), a wall (its side), and a spear (its tusk). Each man is certain that his experience of the elephant is the accurate one, failing to understand that the other descriptions are also accurate—and that all the descriptions are inaccurate as well, in that they each take into account only one part of the elephant. Buddhism teaches that we all see the truth from a unique perspective”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“There’s a story about a monastery in Thailand where the resident monks covered a golden statue of the Buddha in clay to hide its value from an invading army. Those monks were killed during the invasion. Over the course of many years, a new group of monks moved in, and the golden Buddha remained hidden under a layer of clay. One day, the new monks decided it was time to relocate the old clay statue of the Buddha, and in the process of moving it, a piece of clay broke off to reveal the brilliant golden Buddha underneath.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“The Buddha said that the greatest of all teachings is the teaching of impermanence.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“The two major branches of Buddhism are Theravada and Mahayana. Mahayana has several subsets that you may have heard of, like Zen, Tibetan, and Pure Land Buddhism. There is also an extension of Mahayana Buddhism called Vajrayana, which is sometimes referred to as a distinct, third branch of Buddhism. Theravada is the main form of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, while Mahayana dominates in China, Japan, Taiwan, Nepal, Mongolia, Korea, and Vietnam. Vajrayana is the main form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and the form that the Dalai Lama practices and teaches.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Tenzin Gyatso, better known as the Dalai Lama,”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“In fact, in one Buddhist scripture, the Buddha seems to be critical of god worship, telling a young man that it’s far more important to live ethically than it is to worship anything.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“not only to become awakened but also to awaken all other beings. This difference in approaches arises from the Mahayana view of interdependence, which holds that one being can’t be fully enlightened unless and until all beings are enlightened.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“When you have a toothache, the feeling is very unpleasant, and when you do not have a toothache, you usually have a neutral feeling. However, if you can be mindful of the non-toothache, the non-toothache will become a feeling of peace and joy. Mindfulness gives rise to and nourishes happiness.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“What if I knew today was going to be my last day to live? How would that change my interactions with everyone I talk to today?”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist monk, says that “the secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“When we behave reactively, it is very difficult to be mindful of the intent behind our words and actions. It takes practice to become aware of our intentions. You can start this practice by asking yourself, “Why?” as you react to things in life. When I’m feeling anger, for example, I like to ask myself, “Why am I experiencing this emotion?” If I’m being kind to someone, I ask myself, “Why? Is it because I genuinely care about this person, or am I trying to gain something out of this interaction?” When you become aware of your intentions, you can decide if you need to create new intentions and perhaps let go of the old ones. This will cause you to speak and act more skillfully.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings