Quotes & Sayings About Buddhist Nirvana

Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Behind the transient reality, there is something else. It is a deeper, more permanent and unchanging reality that we Buddhists call nirvana. — Frederick Lenz

I reached in experience the nirvana which is unborn, unrivalled, secure from attachment, undecaying and unstained. This condition is indeed reached by me which is deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, tranquil, excellent, beyond the reach of mere logic, subtle, and to be realized only by the wise. — Gautama Buddha

Buddhists don't feel that enlightenment is particularly unusual. We feel that it's the natural state. Enlightenment simply means perceiving life directly as it is in all of its infinite, ever changing wonder, in all of its varied, myriad states of mind or as pari-nirvana, or whatever. — Frederick Lenz

The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless - one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is - well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads. — G.K. Chesterton

Beyond learning and unlearning is awareness, and beyond awareness is consciousness, and beyond consciousness is immortality, and beyond immortality is dharma and beyond dharma is nirvana. — Frederick Lenz

Inflowing thoughts come to an end in those who are ever alert of mind, training themselves night and day, and ever intent on nirvana — Gautama Buddha

man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse. He believes, with an innocence peculiar to himself, that they are equally proud of this alleged confraternity. He says, 'Look at my two noble friends - they are dumb, but they are loyal.' I have for years suspected that they are only tolerant. Suspecting it, I have nevertheless depended on this tolerance all my life, and if I were, even now, without either a dog or a horse in my keeping, I should feel I had lost contact with the earth. I should be as concerned as a Buddhist monk having lost contact with Nirvana. — Beryl Markham

Of what I know, I have told you only a little. Why have I not told you the rest? Because it would not lead you to Nirvana. — Gautama Buddha

NIRVANA- In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it. — Ambrose Bierce

A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that Nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect. — Andrew Solomon

Buddhist nirvana ... is based on egolessness and is not anthropocentric but rather cosmological. In Buddhism, humans and the things of the universe are equally subject to change, equally subject to transitoriness or transmigration. A person cannot achieve emancipation from the cycle of birth and death until he or she can eliminate a more universal problem: the transience common to all things in the universe. — Masao Abe

Note the similarities with buddhism
a buddhist who has achieved nirvana is not sad
primarily because it does not know the concept
of sad [ ... ] — Tao Lin

My idea for a Buddhist video game: No guns. Self-immolate instead. Get reincarnated. Repeat until you find Nirvana. Takes forever to play. — Dan Spencer

I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later. There is not much hurry. If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to Nirvana. — Dalai Lama

I have the True Dharma Eye, the Marvelous Mind of Nirvana, the True Form of the Formless, and the Subtle Dharma Gate, independent of words and transmitted beyond doctrine. This I have entrusted to Mahakashyapa. — Gautama Buddha

Knowledge of the Enlightenment Cycle, of the ways that inner dimensions and nirvana work, lifts you far above the transient sorrows, pains, pleasures and joys that the unenlightened masses experience. — Frederick Lenz

The true meaning of the precepts is not just that one should refrain from drinking alcohol, but also from getting drunk on nirvana. — Bassui Tokusho

One is a Buddhist if he or she accepts the following four truths: All compounded things are impermanent. All emotions are pain. All things have no inherent existence. Nirvana is beyond concepts. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

There is a way to be purified, to overcome sorrows and grief, to release suffering, to secure the right path to realize nirvana. This is to be mindful. — Gautama Buddha

Samsara-our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra. — Dalai Lama

The Sanskrit word for awareness is smriti, which no one can pronounce. This may explain why awareness has not become as well-known in the west as karma, dharma, and nirvana. — George K. Ilsley

We seek to unify ourselves with the endless light of truth, of God, of nirvana. We recognize the infinite playing through all beings and all forms, but we only have to concern ourselves with ourselves. — Frederick Lenz

The essential premise of Buddhism is that there is enlightenment, there is nirvana. Beyond this world, beyond all worlds, there's something radiant, perfect and eternal. — Frederick Lenz

There is no meditation without wisdom, and there is no wisdom without meditation. When a man has both meditation and wisdom, he is indeed close to nirvana. — Gautama Buddha

Thus all things are subject to death, sorrow and suffering. I became aware that I too was of the same nature, the nature of beginning and end. What if I searched for that which underlies all creation, that which is nirvana, the perfect freedom from unconditioned existence? — Gautama Buddha

The Buddhist mind is more complicated than the Christian mind. It comes up with endless heavens, endless hells, endless earths, and then we have something lower than hell. We have endless sub-realms that make hell look like Club Med and we have endless nirvana. — Frederick Lenz

What sets Tibetan Buddhism apart from other Buddhist traditions - such as the Zen Buddhism of Japan or the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka - is that while Tibetans aim to become enlightened, they don't want to enter Nirvana. — Scott Carney