Consciousness In Buddhism Quotes & Sayings

Diet is a matter of personal preference, but if you're interested in the advanced states of meditation, eating mammals should be avoided. They have a more evolved consciousness and can affect your attention field greatly. — Frederick Lenz

Lakshmi is a celestial being who lives in a higher plane of existence. Her mantra is "Sring." When you chant it, it brings beauty and light into your consciousness. — Frederick Lenz

In the study of consciousness you cannot explain anything verbally. You can only allude to, point in a general direction of. — Frederick Lenz

Very few people are happy in this world. Most are miserable. Even in their so-called happiness, they are unhappy; it is so short of ecstasy, of god-consciousness; it's almost pitiful. — Frederick Lenz

All of the energy of existence is going to flow through you. You will be in thousands of planes of consciousness at once or beyond in nirvana or having a sandwich with a friend. — Frederick Lenz

Mindfulness is Buddha's word for meditation. By mindfulness he means: you should always remain alert, watchful. You should always remain present. Not a single thing should be done in a sort of sleepy state of mind. You should not move like a somnambulist, you should move with a sharp consciousness. — Rajneesh

First, contrary to popular belief, Buddhists can actually be very anxious people. That's often why they become Buddhists in the first place. Buddhism was made for the anxious like Christianity was made for the downtrodden or AA for the addicted. Its entire purpose is to foster equanimity, to tame excesses of thought and emotion. The Buddhists have a great term for these excesses. They refer to them as the condition of "monkey mind." A person in the throes of monkey mind suffers from a consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines. Buddhist practices are designed explicitly to collar these monkeys of the mind and bring them down to earth - to pacify them. Is it any wonder that Buddhism has had such tremendous success in the bastions of American nervousness, on the West Coast and in the New York metro area? — Daniel Smith

On the whole, I think the Darwinian theory of evolution, at least with the additional insights of modern genetics, gives us a fairly coherent account of the evolution of human life on earth. At the same time, I believe that karma can have a central role in understanding the origination of what Buddhism calls "sentience," through the media of energy and consciousness. — Dalai Lama XIV

If the tonal predominates, which we see now more in the world, there's no mystery - understanding of consciousness or awareness. — Frederick Lenz

In this world we see more passion than dispassion. We see more fear than knowledge. Armies rule the world. Fear-net is happening. Consequently, everyone is raised with fear embedded in their consciousness. — Frederick Lenz

Consider this:
1. Would you ride in a car whose driver was on the consciousness-expanding "entheogenic" drug LSD?
And here's a bonus question:
2. Why does an "expanded consciousness" include the inability to operate a motor vehicle? — Brad Warner

As we slam you with more and more devastating blows of the nagual, at the same time, we strengthen and clear the tonal so that it can easily withstand them - so there is no loss in continuity of consciousness. — Frederick Lenz

In Buddhism there is one word for mind & heart: chitta. Chitta refers not just to thoughts and emotions in the narrow sense of arising from the brain, but also to the whole range of consciousness, vast & unimpeded. — Sharon Salzberg

For the Buddha of the Pali Canon, the goal is liberation: the cessation of suffering, the end of the endless hamster-wheel of dependent origination, of mental formations leading to desire leading to clinging leading to suffering and so on. Nibbana, or nirvana, was not originally conceived as some magical heavenly world, or even a permanent altered state of consciousness. It is usually described, in the early texts, negatively: as a candle being snuffed out. — Jay Michaelson

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

When I sit with my students and meditate with them, I channel the kundalini directly into them. I bring them to plane after plane of consciousness. What they would do in 100 years of meditation, I can do in an hour with them. — Frederick Lenz

In Buddhism, since the definition of "living" refers to sentient beings, consciousness is the primary characteristic of "life. — Dalai Lama XIV

Everyone has sunk on this plane to such a low state of consciousness, it is the natural state. We have deviated so far from the norm in this age of darkness. — Frederick Lenz

Each being in the universe, therefore, inhabits a private world. It is as if the universe were populated by countless cinemas, each occupied by a single person, each eternally viewing a different film projected by consciousness, each eternally suspending disbelief. For the Yogacara, ignorance and suffering result from believing the movie to be real, from mistaking the projections to be an external world, from thinking that what appear to be external objects are independent of consciousness, and then running after them, desiring some and hating others. For the Yogacara, wisdom is the insight that everything is of the nature of consciousness and the product of one's own projections. With this insight, desire and hatred, attachment and aversion, naturally cease, for their objects are seen to be illusions. With the achievement of enlightenment, the substratum consciousness is transformed into the mirror like wisdom of a buddha. — Donald Lopez

Meditation is a practice of detaching and then stopping ourselves from thinking; our thoughts are interruptions in the flow of awareness. Consciousness, in its highest aspect, is perfect and formless. — Frederick Lenz

The action of giving is in a certain vibratory level, meaning giving exists in a certain plane of consciousness. — Frederick Lenz

Focus your awareness on the heart chakra. As you do, you will feel your consciousness shifting. You may feel different perceptions of energy in different parts of your body. — Frederick Lenz

We are all trying to find a path back to the present moment. And good enough reason to just be happy here ... Mindfulness meditation is just a trick for doing that. It's a trick for setting aside your to-do list, if only for a few moments, and actually locate a feeling of fulfilment in the present — Sam Harris

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

Buddhism is not concerned just with private destiny, but with the lives and consciousness of all beingsAny attempt to understand Buddhism apart from its social dimension is fundamentally a mistake. Until Western Buddhists understand this, their embrace of Buddhism will not help very much in the efforts to bring about meaningful and positive social change, or even in their struggle to transform their ego. — Sulak Sivaraksa

What we see in this world is a gross abnormality. The human consciousness fails to perceive the very simple, divine nature of every atom in every moment. — Frederick Lenz

The highest octave kundalini is the golden light which occurs in the supraconscious; it is the supraconscious. It's what they call Sat Chit Ananda - existence, consciousness, bliss ... full consciousness. — Frederick Lenz

In Buddhism we meditate. We make our minds quiet by learning to focus on the chakras, release internal energy that we call kundalini, and bring ourselves into high states of consciousness. — Frederick Lenz

Whenever you are in a perceptual field, it seems like it's ultimate. It's a self-wrapping consciousness. There doesn't seem or appear to be anything else other than the attention field that you're in. — Frederick Lenz

In Buddhism, we say reincarnation is the conscious taking of rebirth by a Bodhisattva, or by a high being, whereas rebirth, is what most people do. Rebirth is an involuntary process where they seek traction by finding a new body after their subtle mind loses the old one. There are two things commonly said about this. One- there is no evidence for it and two- if there is evidence, what's the mechanism which carries the consciousness from one life to another. — Robert Thurman

When things are good, it is because we remember a time when they were not. When there was pain. But now the pain is gone, so things are 'good'. When we hurt, it is because we recall a time when we did not. When there was no pain. But now we suffer, so things are 'bad'. The tiger sipped from the cup, peering at the boy over the rim. Stars swirled in its eyes. "Good. Bad. The cup holds both. — Brooke Burgess

It is not advisable for persons who are in the early stages of meditation to mediate on the two lower chakras. You will unleash powers and forces that will throw you into very powerful altered state of consciousness that might not be pleasant at all. — Frederick Lenz

When your consciousness expands you are in a world, literally, of light. You live in a world of light where nothing is solid. You don't have to be enlightened to have this experience. You just have to start the inner journey. — Frederick Lenz