Buddhist 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

To know. Not to know about. — Ted Dekker

Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away. — Robert Baker Aitken

Can you imagine how incredibly quiet it was everywhere, when the gentlemen from this world" - he made a vague circular gesture towards the battalions of meditating Asians behind him - "were hatching and proclaiming their ideas? Anyone who now tries to follow these ideas in order to find the road back to what they were talking about, is faced with obstacles that would have driven an entire tribe of oriental ascetics into the ravine. The world from which they felt it so necessary to retreat would have seemed idyllic to us. We live in a vision of hell, and we have actually got used to it." He looked at his statues and continued, "We have become different people. We still look the same, but we have nothing in common with them any more. We are differently programmed. Anyone who now wants to become like them must acquire a big dose of madness first; otherwise he will no longer be able to bear the life of our world. We are not designed for their kind of life. — Cees Nooteboom

The soul contains few secrets and longings which cannot be sensibly discussed, analyzed, and polled. Solitude, the very condition which sustained the individual against and beyond his society, has become technically impossible. Logical and linguistic analysis demonstrate that the old metaphysical problems are illusory problems; the quest for the "meaning" of things can be reformulated as the quest for the meaning of words, and the established universe of discourse and behavior can provide perfectly adequate criteria for the answer. — Herbert Marcuse

What the warrior renounces is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself more available, more gentle and open to others. — Chogyam Trungpa

I now realize that I should blame myself when men indulge in such wildly wishful thinking that they see a sexual invitation in a simple smile. — David Lagercrantz

When? At this time, while you have all the opportunities, if you do not do your best to achieve the pure, stainless path to enlightenment when will you do it? If you don't meditate, don't practise the graduated path to enlightenment, especially bodhicitta, in this life, then when? When will you practise? When will you have this realization? If, in this life, you don't achieve renunciation, bodhicitta and sunyata, as well as the two stages of tantra, when will you? When will you have these attainments? When will you become enlightened? When will you perform perfect work for sentient beings? — Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

We have one impermanent experience, and, unable to be at peace as it passes, we reach out and grab for another,
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition defines renunciation as accepting what comes into our lives and letting go of what leaves our lives. To renounce in this sense is to come to a state of simple being. — Sharon Salzberg

One who's color blind is the one who sees the way — Thabiso Monkoe

Genius is when you strike a chord accidently, and the ensuing music is beyond your control — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did. — Pico Iyer

Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada. — Voltaire

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

ROMA 11.29. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. — Anonymous

Dreams are life, real life, not simply reflections. Dreams are honest. — Tim Lebbon

When you don't have people in your life pushing you, can you push yourself? — Tori Amos