Enlightenment Quotes - Page 31

• The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Want, Trouble, Observation

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• Our Christian faith - and correlatively, our account of apologetics - is tainted by modernism when we fail to appreciate the effects of sin on reason. When this is ignored, we adopt an Enlightenment optimism about the role of a supposedly neutral reason in the recognition of truth.

  James K. A. Smith

  Christian, Optimism, Appreciate

  James K. A. Smith (2006). “Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? (The Church and Postmodern Culture): Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church”, p.28, Baker Academic

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• When we want a cup of tea our main wish is to drink tea, but to fulfill this wish we naturally develop the secondary wish to find a cup. In a similar way, the main wish of those who have great compassion is to protect all living beings from their suffering, but to fulfill this wish they know they must first attain Buddhahood themselves and so they naturally develop the secondary wish to attain enlightenment.

  Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

  Compassion, Tea, Suffering

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• As soon as the mouth is opened, evils spring forth. People either neglect the root and speak of the branches, or neglect the reality of the 'illusory' world and speak only of Enlightenment. Or else they chatter of cosmic activities leading to transformations, while neglecting the Substance from which they spring--indeed, there is NEVER any profit in discussion.

  Huangbo Xiyun

  Spring, Reality, Roots

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• We might think we can find a buddha or enlightenment somewhere beyond this mind; we might think we can find serenity, clarity, and meaning beyond this mind, but such place does not exist. Everything that appears is this mind, Bodhidharma says.

  Geoffrey Shugen Arnold

  Thinking, Serenity, Mind

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• Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment.

  Ken Wilber

  Mean, Would Be, Spirit

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• In short, the enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any 'broader good' such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.

  Timothy Keller

  Christian, Children, Character

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.20, Penguin

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• [Men] prefer the foolish belief and the passions of the earth [to the enlightenment of their souls]. They believe the absurd and shrink from the truth.No, they do not. They are afraid, that is all. And they must remain on earth until they come to the way of leaving it.And how do they leave? How is the ascent made? Must one learn virtue?Here she laughs. You have read too much, and learned too little. Virtue is a road, not a destination. Man cannot be virtuous. Understanding is the goal. When that is achieved, the soul can take wing.

  Iain Pears

  Believe, Passion, Men

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• The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none left over for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Spiritual, Science, Men

  "The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge".

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• Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival. This quest for enlightenment must begin now.
  It is essential that all men and women become aware of what they are, why they are here on Earth and what they must do to preserve civilization before it is too late.

  Richard Matheson

  Men, Our World, Civilization

  "The Path". Book by Richard Matheson, 1999.

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• Disease an never be conquered, can never be quelled by emotion's willful screaming or faith's symbolic prayer. It can only be conquered by the energy of humanity and the cunning in the mind of man. In the patience of a Curie, in the enlightenment of a Faraday, a Rutherford, a Pasteur, a Nightingale, and all other apostles of light and cleanliness, rather than of a woebegone godliness, we shall find final deliverance from plague, pestilence, and famine.

  Sean O'Casey

  Prayer, Men, Light

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• ZEN is MEDITATION. ARCHY is Social Order. ZENARCHY is the Social Order which springs from Meditation. As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which a State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.

  Kerry Thornley

  Spring, Government, Order

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• Attachment is the main thing that is blocking your path towards enlightenment.

  Garchen Rinpoche

  Block, Attachment, Path

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• A fully blossomed human potential is enlightenment. It is becoming a child again, and coming back to your original nature.

  Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

  Children, Becoming, Coming Back

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• We do not slight the idea of enlightenment, but the most important thing is this moment, not some day in the future. We have to make our effort in this moment. This is the most important thing for our practice.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Practice, Ideas, Effort

  Shunryu Suzuki (2018). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice”, p.58, House of Majied Publications via PublishDrive

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• In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Doubt, Arrogant, Goes On

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• The air they breathe, being a living element with both physical and psychical properties, carries a subtle vital energy. This in India is named by the Sanskrit word prana; in Tibet it is called sugs, in Aikido, Japan, ki, and in China, chi. By controlling its circulation throughout the body, man is able to attain spiritual enlightenment or illumination.

  Frank Waters

  Spiritual, Men, Air

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• Only the rich can achieve enlightenment because the poor are too busy looking for fridge freezers.

  Rajneesh

  Busy, Rich, Poor

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• I'm very much an Enlightenment kind of guy.

  Jimmy Wales

  Guy, Kind

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• The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Writing, Class, Cities

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• The Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.

  Theodor Adorno

  Men, Earth, Enlightened

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• Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.

  Ben Shahn

  Art, May, Ingredients

  Ben Shahn (1957). “The Shape of Content”, p.9, Harvard University Press

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• If the idea of revolution is to win out, it must be through political enlightenment. It is useless to try to impose it by force of arms.

  Sun Yat-sen

  Winning, Ideas, Political

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• They [the mathematicians of the Enlightenment] defined their terms vaguely and used their methods loosely, and the logic of their arguments was made to fit the dictates of their intuition. In short, they broke all the laws of rigor and of mathematical decorum. The veritable orgy which followed the introduction of the infinitesimals... was but a natural reaction. Intuition had too long been held imprisoned by the severe rigor of the Greeks. Now it broke loose, and there were no Euclids to keep its romantic flight in check.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Law, History, Long

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• Joy is what we are, not what we must get. Joy is the realization that all we want or need in life has been etched into our souls. Joy helps us see not what we are "going through," but what we are "growing to"-a greater sense of understanding, accomplishment, and enlightenment. Joy reveals to us the calm at the end of the storm, the peace that surpasses the momentary happiness of pleasure. If we keep our minds centered on joy, joy becomes a state of mind.

  Iyanla Vanzant

  Accomplishment, Joy, Understanding

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