Buddhism Quotes

Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, into illusion and…

Siddhartha said: “Yes, I have had thoughts and knowledge here and there. Sometimes, for an hour or a day, I have become aware of knowledge, just as one feels life in one’s heart. I have had many thoughts, but it would be difficult…”

In Tibet we used to say, “Knowing one, you accomplish all.” The modern faddish idea that we can always keep all our options open and so never need commit ourselves to anything is one of the greatest and most dangerous delusions of our…

Some of them are starting to sink now. In a few minutes, the only place they’ll still be floating will be inside my mind. That’s quite interesting, because if you look at it a certain way, that’s where they started floating in the first…

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move…

It’s rather significant, we think, that those who have no compassion have no wisdom. Knowledge, yes; cleverness, maybe; wisdom, no. A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn’t really care. Wisdom does. We also consider it significant that cor, the Latin word for “heart,” is the basis for the word courage.

Everything has its own place and function. That applies to people, although many don’t seem to realize it, stuck as they are in the wrong job, the wrong marriage, or the wrong house. When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don’t belong.

Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you’ve got. Do you really want to be miserable? You can begin by being discontented. As Lao Tse wrote, “A tree as big around as you can reach starts with a small seed; a thousand-mile journey starts with one step.”

And when you try too hard, it doesn’t work. Try grabbing something quickly and precisely with a tensed-up arm; then relax and try it again. Try doing something with a tense mind. The surest way to become Tense, Awkward and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard – one that thinks too much.

When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun.

From the state of the Uncarved Block comes the ability to…

But sometimes the knowledge of the scholar is a bit hard to understand because it doesn’t seem to match up with our own experience of things. In other words, Knowledge and Experience do not necessarily speak the same language. But isn’t the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn’t?

…it’s not the Clever Mind that’s responsible when things work out. It’s the mind that sees what’s in front of it, and follows the nature of things.

When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square…