Enlightenment Quotes - Page 23

• I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Religious, Believe, Science

  Neil deGrasse Tyson (2000). “The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, Doubleday Books

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• Unity consciousness is a state of enlightenment where we pierce the mask of illusion which creates separation and fragmentation. Behind the appearance of separation is one unified field of wholeness. Here the seer and the scenery are one.

  Deepak Chopra

  Unity, Fields, Spirituality

  Deepak Chopra (2010). “Creating Affluence: The A-to-Z Steps to a Richer Life”, p.42, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• Don't worry. These poses have nothing to do with meditation or enlightenment.

  Dharma Mittra

  Yoga, Worry, Meditation

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• Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

  Dogen

  Buddhist, Compassion, Spirituality

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• Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of the selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision.

  Karen Armstrong

  Mean, Compassion, Perspective

  Karen Armstrong (2010). “The Spiral Staircase”, p.331, Vintage Canada

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• This is what enlightenment is all about - a deep understanding that there is no problem. Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will work, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance - what else is there to do?

  Rajneesh

  Love You, Sleep, Deep Understanding

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• When we recognize that the seemingly object nature of reality is nothing different than the subject nature of mind, which is rigpa, it is called enlightenment.

  Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

  Buddhist, Reality, Mind

  The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche (2006). “Penetrating Wisdom: The Aspiration of Samantabhadra”, p.54, Shambhala

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• By renouncing samsara, we renounce our habitual grasping, unhappy minds. And by renouncing samsara, we embrace our potential for enlightenment.

  Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

  Buddhist, Mind, Unhappy

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• When? At this time, while you have all the opportunities, if you do not do your best to achieve the pure, stainless path to enlightenment when will you do it? If you don't meditate, don't practise the graduated path to enlightenment, especially bodhicitta, in this life, then when? When will you practise? When will you have this realization? If, in this life, you don't achieve renunciation, bodhicitta and sunyata, as well as the two stages of tantra, when will you? When will you have these attainments? When will you become enlightened? When will you perform perfect work for sentient beings?

  Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

  Buddhist, Opportunity, Two

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• Adversity itself may lead toward and not away from God and spiritual enlightenment; and privation may prove a source of strength if we can but keep a sweetness of mind and spirit.

  David O. McKay

  Spiritual, Adversity, Mind

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• If enlightenment comes first, before thinking, before practice, your thinking and your practice will not be self-centered. By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. This enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this orginal truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Buddhist, Believe, Mean

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.109, Shambhala Publications

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• The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-in-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Meditation Practice, Events, Ordinary

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• The Bible has been used as a way of making us accept our situation, and not to bring enlightenment to the poor.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  Justice, Diversity, Way

  Rigoberta Menchú, Elisabeth Burgos (1984). “I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala”, p.245, Verso

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• Only a few things are really important.

  Marie Dressler

  Funny, Life, Happiness

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

  Brendan Gill

  Life, Motivational, Spiritual

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• The moment of enlightenment is when a person's dreams of possibilities become images of probabilities.

  Vic Braden

  Inspirational, Dream, Opportunity

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• Your enlightenment is perfect only when silence has come to be a celebration. Hence my insistence that after you meditate you must celebrate. After you have been silent you must enjoy it, you must have a thanksgiving. A deep gratitude must be shown towards the whole just for the opportunity that you are, that you can meditate, that you can be silent, that you can laugh.

  Rajneesh

  Gratitude, Opportunity, Perfect

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• The sun is but a morning star.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Good Morning, Nature, Stars

  Walden ch. 18 (1854)

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• In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?

  Mary McCarthy

  Class, Humanity, Suffering

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• The the illuminated mind the whole world sparkles with light.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Light, Mind, World

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• Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Judgement, Three, Enlightened

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.140, Penguin

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• To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.

  Dogen

  Spiritual, Self, Trying

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• Enlightenment is always through surrender, but surrender is achieved through intelligence. Only idiots cannot surrender. To surrender you need great intelligence. To see the point of surrender is the climax of insight; to see the point that you are not separate from existence is the highest that intelligence can give to you.

  Rajneesh

  Giving, Needs, Idiot

  Rajneesh (Bhagwan Shree), Swami Krishna Prem (1984). “From I to Q”

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• Art is a necessity, an essential part of our enlightenment process.

  Ken Danby

  Art, Essentials, Process

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• Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Indulge In, Luxury, Liberty

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