Siddhartha Gautama Buddha:
(Sanskrit, Pali: Gotama Buddha) was a spiritual leader on whose teachings Buddhism is based. According to Buddhist tradition, he lived from around 450 BC to around 370 BC in Nepal and India. Modern historians suggest ca. 480-400 B.C.[1] According to religious lore, Gautama Buddha attained complete and full enlightenment, Buddhahood.
How can there be laughter, how can there be joy, when this world is always on fire?
Doubt everything…find your own light…
Difficult to see is the law of causation, the chain of causes and effects.
The mind is everything. What you think you become.
Patience is the best prayer.
We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
The heart often sees clearer than the mind.
Joy and sorrow alternate through the ages, as long as the wheel of birth and death turns.
If a man can come to a higher joy by forsaking lower joys, he must give up the lower and reach for the higher.
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
Like a bull I have torn the bonds, like an elephant breaking through lianas. I will not return to a mother’s womb.
He is able who thinks he is able.
What you think; you become. What you feel; you attract. What you imagine; you create.
Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.
As the field is spoiled by weeds, so man by his lusts.
The truth is hidden from those who are filled with lusts and hatreds.
Keep the mind straight and the gaze lowered. Don’t look at women inappropriately. Physical desire confuses a person.
Don’t feed the burning fire: cut off the fuel that feeds it.
The suppression of thirst by the total destruction of all desires is the cessation of suffering.
If one were to chop up all the plants and trees in the whole world into counting sticks, it would not be possible to express the number of my former existences.
Whoever has not heard the teaching cannot turn away from his body, become free from desire and detach himself from it.
Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
One who is subject to birth, but seeing birth as evil, seeks the birthless, unforgettable certainty, Nirvana.
He whose lusts are at rest, like horses well trained by the one who trains them, he who has laid aside all pride, who is freed from all impurity, he who has thus become perfect, is envied even by the gods.
Not doing all evil; Undertaking good; Purifying one’s mind: Such is the teaching of the Buddhas.
An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.
Hatred does not cease in this world by hating, but by not hating; this is an eternal truth.
Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
We are what we think.All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
To forgive is to pull a poisoned arrow out of your body before asking yourself who shot it and how and why or what wood it was made of.
I want to beat the drum of immortality in the darkness of this world.
By effort, by watchfulness, by self-control, the sage creates for himself an island that will not be swallowed up by the flood.
This knowing and understanding has risen in my mind: this is my last birth.
The world is blind; few are those who see clearly.
Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.
Blessed is the man who has found enlightenment. That man overcomes, even when he is wounded.
Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.
Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
He who becomes watchful, having been negligent, illuminates the world like the moon emerging from the clouds.
Nor observance of the rules of nakedness, nor the braiding of hair, nor the mud with which one covers one’s body, nor fasting, nor sleeping on the bare ground, nor the dust and dirt that cover the body, nor worship, can cleanse a mortal who has not overcome his doubts.
I have told you what suffering is, what is the origin of suffering, how suffering is abolished and which way leads to the cessation of suffering.
What do you think, which is more, the water that is in the four great seas, or the tears you shed, when you wandered that long way and wept because you got what you hated and didn’t get what you loved?
After this life of suffering there will be a continuation in heaven or hell, but even the heavenly joys are fleeting. Then follows a new existence on earth, which is just as transitory, just as fleeting as the previous one.
Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate. Live in joy, in health, even among the afflicted. Live in joy, in peace, even among the troubled. Look within, be still. Free from fear and attachment, know the sweet joy of the way.
The Dharma and the Discipline, which I have taught you, will be your Master after my death.
ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS! – Grapes must be crushed to make WINE. – DIAMONDS form under pressure. – Olives are pressed to release OIL. – Seeds GROW in darkness. Whenever you feel crushed, under pressure, pressed, or in darkness, you’re in a powerfuL place of transformation. TRUST THE PROCESS.
In this world, Hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, Ancient and inexhaustible.
We constantly crave certainties, but they will not contribute to our growth.
I have left everything behind, through the destruction of all my desires I have achieved liberation.
Cheerful patience is needed with mischievous children and with your own mind.
The doctrine which I have proclaimed and the order which I have instituted, these are your master after my death.
What we think we become.
The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have.
There will come a day when the Pacific is dried up, decaying and no more, but I assure you that the beings that wander and wander, caught in ignorance and plagued with the thirst to live, will find no end.
Only those who go where few have gone can see what few have seen.
Don’t accept what you hear secondhand, don’t accept tradition, don’t accept a statement just because it can be read in a book, neither because it agrees with your beliefs, nor because your teacher says so. Be your own lamp.
Evil comes from a lack of awareness.
Just as a stream goes impetuously and does not return, so man’s life passes and does not return. Even he who lives a thousand years will die and perish.
As an archer straightens his arrow, so does the sage direct his wandering, unsteady thoughts.
A life full of lust, yielding to pleasure and desire, is base, evil, sensual, and vain.
Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy.
It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one’s own faults.
Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
A life of self-flagellation is painful, ignoble and vain.
There is an antidote to suffering: freeing yourself from craving, from attachment, from self.
You can’t fend off the first arrow, but you can fend off the second.
Sprinkle the seeds of peace and joy everywhere in your path. When you pass by again, you will behold the splendour of flowers.
A drop of tenderness is more than money and power.
To find inner peace, you must finish what you started.
Growing is not becoming bigger, but becoming aware of your greatness.
Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.
Master, how can I make a perfect painting?’ – Be perfect and then just paint.
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
All creatures fear pain and fear death. Put yourself in their situation and leave them alone.
That everything that happens now fades in time, because it is all fleeting and unreal, unsteady as a mirage, that is indeed the deepest meaning of suffering.
All forms are subject to impermanence.
Do not accept what you hear second-hand, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement just because it can be read in a book, nor because it conforms to your beliefs, nor because your teacher says it. Be your own lamp.
There are two kinds of joy, that in the world and that in isolation. The joy in solitude is the most sublime.
From those who live in love or in hate, the teaching is hidden.
Just as the Pacific has only one taste: that of salt; so our education has only one taste: that of freedom.
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
What is difficult to grasp and what is contrary to the worldly, cannot be seen by people who cherish desires and are surrounded by darkness.
The eight-part path leads to Nirvana: straight faith, straight mindedness, straight speech, straight action, straight life, straight effort, straight awareness, straight contemplation.
It is a duty to keep our bodies in good health, otherwise we will not be able to keep our minds strong and clear.
Wonderful, indeed, it is to subdue the mind, so difficult to subdue, ever swift, and seizing whatever it desires. A tamed mind brings happiness.
The gates of eternity open to everyone who has ears.
There is no beginning to be discerned, beyond which the beings wander and roam, overcome by ignorance and tormented by the thirst for life.
It is better to travel well than to arrive.
The life between self-torture and lust leads to insight, knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana.
I have proclaimed my teaching because it leads to an end of all impermanence, to peace, to enlightenment, to Nirvana.
You attain immortality by filling your minds with truth. Therefore, become like vessels fit to receive the Master’s words.
By oneself is evil done, by oneself defiled, by oneself it’s left undone, by self alone one purified. Purity, impurity on oneself depend, no one can purify another.
I was born into the world as the king of truth for the salvation of the world.
In times when people become worse and true doctrine perishes, the number of legal provisions increases.
Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
If there had been no desire, there would be no suffering.
We share the air with the forests and the water with the seas. As a body, they and we are one.
If you respond to anger with anger, you only create more anger.
Carpenters shape wood; arrow makers make arrows; the sage shapes himself.
If you want to discover the meaning of life, do what brings you joy.
As the field is spoiled by weeds, so is a man by his lusts.
Every thought that falls into the soul is a seed that germinates and continues to grow in silence.
One candle can light thousands of other candles without shortening its lifespan.
Do not speak unless what you have to say is better than silence.
One should distrust women. Against the one who is wise, there are more than a thousand who are foolish or mean.
Greater happiness is achieved with simplicity, not complexity.
In the end, these things matter most: How well did you love? How much did you love? How fully did you learn to let go?
Pursue an untethered mind, from below from above and right through it. How we react to situations is often determined by our habitual thought patterns. As long as those patterns exist, we react in the same automatic way over and over again. Recognising our conditioned thoughts is the first step to stop the cycle and break through our self-imposed bonds, thus opening the path to imagination, emotional freedom, personal fulfilment and spiritual enlightenment.
So let us live happily without hating those who hate us.
Remember, my children, that nothing is as immutable as change.
Every problem holds a gift for you.
All descriptions of reality, are temporary assumptions.
You are the lamp that lights your way. Do not delay, make haste.
You will be free the moment you stop worrying about what other people think of you.
The more you try to control something, the more it controls you. Free yourself and let things take their own natural course.
No temporal guilt, however severe, can result in eternal punishment.
Someone who has set out in the vehicle of a Bodhisattva should decide that ‘I must lead all the beings to nirvana, into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind.’
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
One is not called noble who harms living beings. By not harming living beings one is called noble.
Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so let us all be thankful.
There is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind, and there is nothing so obedient as a disciplined mind.
Some do not understand that we must die, but those who do realize this settle their quarrels.
To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.
In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west, people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.
Three things cannot be long hidden: The sun, the moon, and the truth.
Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.
Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes.
Long is the night to him who is awake. Long is a mile to him who is tired. Long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law.
However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do if you do not act upon them?
Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a blessing of some kind. The goal is to find it.
I never see what has been done. I only see what remains to be done.
If your compassion does not include yourself, then it is incomplete.
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth, not going all the way, and not starting.
There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts. It is a sword that kills.
Nothing ever exists entirely alone, everything is in relation to everything else.
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
In whom there is no sympathy for living beings, know him as an outcast.
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.
Offend in neither word or deed. Eat with moderation. Live in your heart. Seek the highest consciousness. Master yourself according to the law. This is the simple teaching of the awakened.
Whoever doesn’t flare up at someone who’s angry wins a battle hard to win.
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, not to anticipate the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Rule your mind or it will rule you.
