Awakening Buddhism Quotes & Sayings

As Buddhism has been integrated into the West, the meaning of sangha has come to include all our contemporaries who in various ways are consciously pursuing a path of awakening. We are held by sangha when we work individually with a therapist or healer, or when a close friend lets us be vulnerable and real. Taking refuge in the sangha reminds us that we are in good company: We belong with all those who long to awaken, with all those who seek the teachings and practices that lead to genuine peace. — Tara Brach

Zen has a pronounced iconoclastic tendency, and regards the study of texts, doctrines, and dogmas as a potential hindrance to spiritual awakening, relying instead on humour, spontaneity, unconventionality, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression to communicate the idea of enlightenment — Damien Keown

Life is a series of awakenings. — Swami Mukerji

The Lotus in Buddhism is a sacred symbol that represents purity and resurrection as attributes that develop through a spiritual awakening of the self. With humble beginnings in swamplands, the Lotus flower exquisitely blooms, pure and untainted, from this murky world it thrives in. The Lotus flower represents a higher state of mind, a strong spirit cultivated far from the suffering and temptations of this muddied world that personifies beauty through the present moment. — Forrest Curran

It is the ultimate religion, through which all humans neuropsychologically morph into Buddhas, or Enlightened Beings. — Abhijit Naskar

Awakening the mystical kundalini prematurely is dangerous, because unless you have refined your being, you'll get all screwed up, entities, weird powers ... strange things. That is why I don't teach anyone how to open up the chakras. — Frederick Lenz

In Buddhism, we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the earth is in danger and living species are in danger. — Nhat Hanh

You will bring yourself the suffering you need to bring yourself so that you may awaken. — T. Scott McLeod

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it's fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there's an arrow in your heart ... — Pema Chodron

Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken. — T. Scott McLeod

The Buddhist ideal of awakening implies that we can sever our links with our evolutionary past. We can raise ourselves from the sleep in which other animals pass their lives. Our illusions dissolved, we need no longer suffer. This is only another doctrine of salvation, subtler than that of the Christians, but no different from Christianity in its goal of leaving our animal inheritance behind.
But the idea that we can rid ourselves of animal illusion is the greatest illusion of all. meditation may give us a fresher view of things but cannot uncover them as they are in themselves. — John Gray

Perfection itself is not the ultimate goal
but the ultimate condition of life. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The Buddha's dharma didn't teach peace and relaxation; it taught awakening - often rude awakening. — Jay Michaelson

Awakening does not mean a change in difficulty, it means a change in how those difficulties are met. — Mark Epstein

Once again, we are reminded that awakening, or enlightenment is not the property of Buddhism, any more than Truth is the property of Christianity. Neither the Buddha nor the Christ belongs exclusively to the communities that were founded in their names. They belong to all people of goodwill, all who are attentive to the secret which lives in the depths of their breath and their consciousness. (14) — Jean-Yves Leloup

In Buddhism, mindfulness is the key. Mindfulness is the energy that sheds light on all things and all activities, producing the power of concentration, bringing forth deep insight and awakening. Mindfulness is the base of Buddhist practice — Nhat Hanh

To just be--to be--amidst all doings, achievings, and becomings. This is the natural state of mind, or original, most fundamental state of being. This is unadulterated Buddha-nature. This is like finding our balance. — Lama Surya Das

A person who is asleep is either lost in deep unconsciousness or absorbed in a dream. Metaphorically, this was how the Buddha must have seen both his previous self as well as everyone else he had known: they either were blind to the questions of existence or sought consolation from them in metaphysical or religious fantasies. — Stephen Batchelor

The depression was not incapacitating. It made it hard to take a lot of my suburban life seriously, but that was inextricably mingled with a growing consciousness of the larger brutalities of the world. Ethiopian children were starving on the evening news and genocide was mushrooming in Cambodia. Was I truly depressed or just awakening to the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, the insight that samsaric life is misery? My melancholy seemed like simple realism; if you weren't depressed, you obviously didn't know what was going on. — Tim Farrington

Once you awaken, you will have no interest in judging those who sleep. — James Blanchard Cisneros

Let whatever happens, be what needs to happen, so that I may awaken. — T. Scott McLeod

Against The Stream is more than just another book about meditation. It is a manifesto and field guide for the front lines of the revolution. It is the culmination of almost two decades of meditative dissonance from the next generation of Buddhists in the West, It is a call to awakening for the sleeping masses. — Noah Levine