Buddha Renunciation Quotes & Sayings

The recollected go forth to lives of renunciation. They take no pleasure in a fixed abode. Like wild swans abandoning a pool, they leave one resting place after another. — Gautama Buddha

Lord Rama renounced his kingdom and became the most powerful king in the land. Buddha renounced the world and the world fell at his feet. Cornelia, my innocent girl, please do not believe that renunciation is to forsake power. Rather, it's the very means to power!' Chandragupta — Ashwin Sanghi

With all respect to the Buddha and to the early Christian celibates, I sometimes wonder if all this teaching about nonattachment and the spiritual importance of monastic solitude might be denying us something quite vital. Maybe all that renunciation of intimacy denies us the opportunity to ever experience that very earthbound, domesticated, dirt-under-the-fingernails gift of the difficult, long-term, daily forgiveness {...} Maybe creating a big enough space within your consciousness to hold and accept someone's contradictions - someone's idiocies, even - is a kind of divine act. Perhaps transcendence can be found not only on solitary mountaintops or in monastic settings, but also at your own kitchen table, in the daily acceptance of your partner's most tiresome, irritating faults. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding. Real renunciation is not a matter of compelling ourselves to give up things still inwardly cherished, but of changing our perspective on them so that they no longer bind us. When we understand the nature of desire, when we investigate it closely with keen attention, desire falls away by itself, without need for struggle. — Bhikkhu Bodhi

Those ... who find delight in freedom from attachment in the renunciation of clinging, free from the inflow of thoughts, they are like shining lights, having reached final liberation in the world. — Gautama Buddha

Without marriage there will be no renunciation, Buddha would not have left the world - for what? His wife, Yashodhara, must have created the situation - Mahavira would not have escaped to the mountains. Without marriage there would have been no Buddha, no Mahavira. Just think: the history would have been very flat, without any salt, tasteless. Marriage keeps this whole "sorry-go-round" on and on. People call it "merry-go-round" ... — Rajneesh

The life of Gautama Buddha illustrates the power of service, compassion and, most importantly, renunciation. He was convinced that material wealth is not the sole goal. — Narendra Modi