Buddhism On Love Quotes & Sayings

Focus on the heart center and feel love. There is a flower there, but it's like a rose folded up. As you meditate, feel that the flower is opening. Each time you open a set of petals you're going deeper into eternal awareness. — Frederick Lenz

Societies on this planet are based upon fear, not upon love. The strong dominate the weak. — Frederick Lenz

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. — Sri Aurobindo

Love is not reasonable. If we could assign it to the reasonable world, it would not be useful. — Frederick Lenz

Love is the bridge that joins all the worlds together. — Frederick Lenz

I maintain that Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism all hold up love as an ideal, seek to benefit humanity through spiritual practice, and strive to make their followers better people. All religions teach moral precepts for the advancement of mind, body, speech, and action: do not lie or steal or take others' lives, and so on. Unselfishness is the common foundation laid down by all great spiritual teachers. — Dalai Lama XIV

We break off obsession by laughing at ourselves, by learning to be funny, by just seeing the joy in life and by having a terrific love for this world. — Frederick Lenz

You cannot compel someone to love. Love is like the wind. It comes when it does, it stops when it does, it changes direction when it does. Who are you and I to criticize the wind? — Frederick Lenz

Love more deeply and without the sense of what you love being your personal possession. — Frederick Lenz

When I missed the physical body of my partner, I meditated on its parts, tossed by the waves, torn, dispersed, and deteriorated. When memories of our lives together became acute and intense, I breathed. I breathed through each wave of yearning, of regret, of guilt, of what-could-have-been. Every time I asked him, "Where are you?" A quiet voice immediately responded, "I am here. I have never left you." I did not only lose a partner. I lost my childhood all over again. I lost my soul mate. I lost the accepting father and the gentle mother that he was to me. I lost the dream of a "normal life," which I had tried so hard to achieve. Now I had to face my own mind. — Dang Nghiem

When you find out that there was never anything in the dark side to be afraid of ... Nothing is left but to love. — Alan W. Watts

A number of Guru's feel that there is something wrong or sick about being gay. I think it really doesn't matter what your sexual preference is; what matters is the quality of your love. — Frederick Lenz

I'd love to find some people to teach advanced meditation to. I've been looking for many years. There are a few around. Once in a while I run into another one. It's a very limited league at this time, in this world. — Frederick Lenz

As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love. — Frederick Lenz

Thousands and thousands of incarnations and nothing to show for it. You must choose whether to follow the path of love or the path of attachment. — Frederick Lenz

We have to learn the art of stopping - stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us. When an emotion rushes through us like a storm, we have no peace. We turn on the TV and then we turn it off. We pick up a book and then we put it down. How can we stop this state of agitation? How How can we stop our fear, despair, anger, and craving? We can stop by practicing mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful smiling, and deep looking in order to understand. When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, the fruits are always understanding, acceptance, love, and the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Im often accused of being irreligious, and I suppose it's for this very reason. Whether it's Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Judaism, or any other ism, when a religioin is created on the subtle premise that God withholds his love and you must submit to the system to earn that love, I consider it the worst of corruptions ...
For centuries, the church has been telling us that if we want God to love us, we need to follow the rules. It's been far more important to focus on the sin problem than the love problem. — Erwin Raphael McManus

We can understand the inherent radiance & purity of our minds by understanding metta. Like the mind, metta is not distorted by what it encounters. — Sharon Salzberg

There is no reason not to love. There is no reason not to be joyous. There is no reason not to celebrate because all of this means nothing, absolutely nothing. So why not be happy? — Frederick Lenz

Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves. We can open to everything with the healing force of love. When we feel love, our mind is expansive and open enough to include the entirety of life in full awareness, both its pleasures and its pains, we feel neither betrayed by pain or overcome by it, and thus we can contact that which is undamaged within us regardless of the situation. Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. — Sharon Salzberg

You necessarily have to be lost, before you're found. — T. Scott McLeod

Conquer the angry man by love. — Gautama Buddha

The virtues of free enterprise can become distorted by greed & delusion. — Allan Lokos

We who are like senseless children shrink from suffering, but love its causes. We hurt ourselves; our pain is self-inflicted! Why should others be the object of our anger? — Santideva

Don't try to hold people to you, don't try to push them away. Let life do everything for you. This is the proper attitude on the path of love. — Frederick Lenz

What you call your life is not yours at all
not yours to plan, manipulate, or control, at least not very often ... In fleeting moments of deep satisfaction and insight, I saw the absolute truth of life: the unbroken line of love that had led to my existence and would lead on through my daughter. My mother's love, her mother's love, her mother's love, and back and back forever ago. Love that is no mere word, love that goes beyond feeling, love that is life itself ... What miracles, what sacrifice, what love! ... Can you imagine this love? Can you anticipate it, fabricate it, measure and evaluate it? No you can't, you can only be love, and your child will release its magnitude within you. — Karen Maezen Miller

Truth occurs in unusual places. Sometimes it's in the frozen food section of the supermarket, sometimes it appears while you are waiting for your car to be fixed, sometimes you see it while in bed with someone you love, sometimes you find it while you're meditating on a lone mountain. — Frederick Lenz

Monks, even if bandits were to savagely sever you, limb by limb, with a double-handled saw, even then, whoever of you harbors ill will at heart would not be upholding my Teaching. Monks, even in such a situation you should train yourselves thus: 'Neither shall our minds be affected by this, nor for this matter shall we give vent to evil words, but we shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and we shall not give in to hatred. On the contrary, we shall live projecting thoughts of universal love to those very persons, making them as well as the whole world the object of our thoughts of universal love - thoughts that have grown great, exalted and measureless. We shall dwell radiating these thoughts which are void of hostility and ill will.' It is in this way, monks, that you should train yourselves. — Gautama Buddha

To truly love ourselves, we must challenge our beliefs that we need to be different or better. — Sharon Salzberg

That huge majority of black folks who identify as Christian or as believers in other religious faiths (Islam, Buddhism, Yoruba, and so on) need to return to sacred writings about love and embrace these as guides showing us the way to lead our lives. — Bell Hooks

One should rest with a peaceful and loving mind. Even wrathful emanating Buddhas manifest solely out of the wish to liberate beings. — Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the slightest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. — Hsin Hsin Ming

Like a caring mother
holding and guarding the life
of her only child,
so with a boundless heart
of lovingkindness,
hold yourself and all beings
as your beloved children. — Gautama Buddha

If a person shows anger to you, and you show anger in return, the result is disaster. If you nurse hatred, you will never be happy, even in the lap of luxury. By contrast, if you control your anger and show its opposite - love, compassion, tolerance, and patience - then not only do you remain in peace, but gradually the anger of others also will diminish. — Dalai Lama XIV

Love is something that comes to us in life. Quietly, it overwhelms us. It is something that you cultivate. You make it happen. — Frederick Lenz

Most people tend to excuse themselves with the opportunities they have in life, with how many years of school they have, with the people around them. And in doing so, they fail in realizing many other things, such as the fact that not many are lucky enough to give birth to a world bestseller on spirituality, wealth and success in life. Yes, your child may be a little reincarnation of an awesome buddhist monk, of an alchemist or a famous knight templar. Why most people can't see these things, and keep looking at the past for answers, is something that still puzzles me. — Robin Sacredfire

Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else's success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others. — Sharon Salzberg

As an incarnation of love you put up with flack until it becomes detrimental to a person. — Frederick Lenz

As I cooked in the cauldron of motherhood, the incredible love I felt for my children opened my heart and brought me a much greater understanding of universal love. It made me understand the suffering of the world much more deeply. — Tsultrim Allione

To love is to be balanced, to extend one's self beyond the sense of self. — Frederick Lenz

Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us - and our beloveds - healthier. — Sharon Salzberg

Part of why I love these angry, straight, white punks is that they are stripping the dharma of its bullshit, and applying it to contexts and styles that, even if they aren't mine, are at least different from the norm. — Jay Michaelson

Love has very little to do with a person. It comes from us. You can love a surprisingly great number of people. — Frederick Lenz

In Buddhism, there are three gems: Buddha, the awakened one; Dharma,
the way of understanding and loving; and Sangha, the community that
lives in harmony and awareness. The three are interrelated, and at
times it is hard to distinguish one from another. In everyone there
is the capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love. So in
ourselves we find Buddha, and we also find Dharma and Sangha. — Nhat Hanh

People love misery, they love to feel sorry for themselves, and they definitely don't want to be enlightened. That's the first thing they tell you at boot camp in the higher worlds. — Frederick Lenz

Love is the chariot of emotion which takes us to our beloved. When we love we see beyond the prism of illusion. — Frederick Lenz

As soon as we ask whether or not a story is true in the present moment, we empower ourselves to re-frame it. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation can be a refuge, but it is not a practice in which real life is ever excluded. The strength of mindfulness is that it enables us to hold difficult thoughts and feelings in a different way - with awareness, balance, and love — Sharon Salzberg

The purpose of life is to love, not necessarily to be loved. — Frederick Lenz

The problem with love is attachment; love makes you dependent. Unattached love - you love for the hell of it. — Frederick Lenz

We can discover the capacity of the mind to be aware, to love, to begin again — Sharon Salzberg

Love requires learning to love ourselves in the mirror, and learning to look other people in the eye. Buddhism, in turn, asks us to pause and look at even the subtlest causal connections and take our appreciation of them to greater depths. — Ethan Nichtern

Practice love in your relationships. The key to this is avoiding expectation. It's expectation that makes most people miserable in love - the return on the investment. — Frederick Lenz

Mindfulness is the agent of our freedom. Through mindfulness we arrive at faith we grow in wisdom & we attain equanimity. — Sharon Salzberg

I'm helped by a gentle notion from Buddhist psychology, that there are "near enemies" to every great virtue - reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path. Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion and to love. It is borne of sensitivity and feels like empathy. But it can paralyze and turn us back inside with a sense that we can't possibly make a difference. The wise Buddhist anthropologist and teacher Roshi Joan Halifax calls this a "pathological empathy" of our age. In the face of magnitudes of pain in the world that come to us in pictures immediate and raw, many of us care too much and see no evident place for our care to go. But compassion goes about finding the work that can be done. Love can't help but stay present — Krista Tippett

God stipulates in the Bible that Jesus Followers are to love and serve everyone regardless of their faith or lack of it. But, this does not require us to honour and respect their Biblically-heinous cultural practises like multiculturalism does! — Gary Patton

As you meditate, you will be able to look at the beauties and horrors of life and accept them with an equal mind. You will love more and be kinder to those around you. — Frederick Lenz

The secure attachment of Western psychology is actually akin to Buddhist non-attachment; avoid-ant attachment is the inverse of being mindful and present; and anxious attachment aligns with Buddhist notions of clinging and grasping. — Sharon Salzberg