Enlightenment Thinking Quotes & Sayings

Words are a distraction to enlightenment. Getting rid of conceptual thinking means enlightenment. — Ramesh S Balsekar

While confronting the problems of the present, I often find myself thinking back to the world of books as it was experienced by the Founding Fathers and the philosophers of the Enlightenment. — Robert Darnton

The world of enlightenment, and that which creates enlightenment, is much different than what most people would think. Most people have Hallmark Card descriptions of what creates enlightenment. And if their descriptions were correct, then everyone who is in religious practice would be enlightened. — Frederick Lenz

The joke of it all is that you are looking from your true nature right now without knowing it. If you would stop being fascinated with the contents of your mind, you would experience what I am saying. Feel your way into what I am saying rather than thinking about it. Only a self-concept looks and longs for God. Drop your self-concept and there is only God meeting God. Enlightenment is the restoration of cosmic humor. — Adyashanti

It is perhaps wrong to say that the enemy of enlightenment is logic; rather, it is dualistic, verbal thinking. In fact, it is even more basic than that: it is perception. — Douglas Hofstadter

Now, I don't smile because I have a perfect life or even because I'm having a perfect day - I smile because that's how I choose to deal with whatever life throws my way. — Lindsey Rietzsch

As Enlightenment philosophers and scholars consciously adopted the methods of science to establish such abstract concepts as rights, liberty, and justice, successive generations have become schooled in thinking of these abstractions as applied to others in matrices-like mental rotations. — Michael Shermer

You're only as good as you're next thought of yourself. — Curtis Tyrone Jones

I think the degree of a nation's civilisation may be measured by the degree of enlightenment of its women. — Helen Keller

Self-discover is not as someone would have us think, a heavy, awesome, moral process where everyone sits around and frowns. As you progress towards enlightenment, you become funny. — Frederick Lenz

There's also something that is often mistaken for enlightenment which is a kind of insanity. Often, people will have some kind of weird experience which is quite abnormal and think, "Oh my God, that's it, I understand everything" because they start seeing things in a very weird way and think that's how enlightened people see things as well. — Brad Warner

People mistakenly think that art is about nature, or about an artists feelings about nature. It is instead a path of enlightenment and pleasure, one of many paths, where nature and the artists feelings are merely raw material. — Wolf Kahn

I would encourage you to follow the pathway to enlightenment, to learn to meditate, to practice mindfulness, and not to really care what anybody thinks about you, including yourself. — Frederick Lenz

The motive for purifying yourself - that you feel spiritually impure - will prevent any genuine gain until you learn to love the impurity you started with. Can any being seriously think that he is going to pass through the infinity of time without ever making another mistake? Quite often a flash of enlightenment will give you this message: Go back to where you started and learn to love it more. — Thaddeus Golas

If enlightenment comes first, before thinking, before practice, your thinking and your practice will not be self-centered. By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. This enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this orginal truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based. — Shunryu Suzuki

The objective tendency of the Enlightenment, to wipe out the power of images over man, is not matched by any subjective progress on the part of enlightened thinking towards freedom from images. — Theodor Adorno

Anything worth having doesn't come easy' is a perception of negativity perpetuated by misery looking for company. Accept nothing but the opposite of this intention and soon your life will navigate away from perpetual negative thinking and outcomes to the endless positive quality of life that exists for all of us — Gary Hopkins

It's suggested that enlightenment has some tremendous compassion, some driving necessity to help humanity. I don't think that's the case at all. I think humanity wishes it were the case since it's humanity that writes the various scriptures. — Frederick Lenz

I think it is very important to view life in terms of winning and losing until complete enlightenment has occurred. — Frederick Lenz

Anything that really frightens you may contain a clue to enlightenment. It may indicate to you how deeply you are attached to structure, whether mental, physical, or social. Attachment and resistance are appearances with the same root: when you resist by pulling away your awareness, the emotion is one of fear, and the contraction is experienced as a pull like magnetism or gravity; that is, attachment. That is why we often fear to open our minds to more exalted spiritual beings. We think fear is a signal to withdraw, when in fact it is a sign we are already withdrawing too much. — Thaddeus Golas

If I had done nothing more than bring McCabe's talents to the attention of what has become a world-wide audience--if I had done only this job, I believe I'd have established myself as a force for mass education and enlightenment with immediate and constructive effects on the thinking portion of the population. My association with McCabe has been enough to build a career for anyone.

{Julius on legendary scholar Joseph McCabe} — E. Haldeman-Julius

A great sense of humor is a great gift! — Diamante Lavendar

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen. — Bodhidharma

Enlightenment is very possible for the ordinary individual. Actually, it is easier than for someone who thinks that they are special. — Ravi Shankar

A maze is a puzzle to be solved, with twists and turns and dead ends. It requires logical, analytical thinking and usually has a different way out than the way in. The maze could be a metaphor of struggling through life, going one way and then another until the exit takes your by surprise.

A maze signifies entrapment, while the labyrinth, with its unicursal path leading into the center and out again the same way, provides enlightenment. It's the process, the journey into your deepest self, your soul, the part where God abides. It's a passive path, a surrender even, to an order and design repeated through creation. A sacred geometry. — Kristen Heitzmann

I think enlightenment is something that you decide to do after you have met someone who is enlightened. Something touches your heart, your being at a very deep level. — Frederick Lenz

My favorite cause is the enlightenment of others. I think that is the best place to put money. You get the highest yield in terms of karma on your money. — Frederick Lenz

When you have experienced the depth of your inner self, the idea of enlightenment is no longer a goal to strive towards, but rather an attitude to maintain. — Gary Hopkins

The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not. — J.G. Ballard

We might think we can find a buddha or enlightenment somewhere beyond this mind; we might think we can find serenity, clarity, and meaning beyond this mind, but such place does not exist. Everything that appears is this mind, Bodhidharma says. — Geoffrey Shugen Arnold

Obstructions on the way to enlightenment, are you kidding? Hey, they crucify people here. You think this is an easy place? — Frederick Lenz

Sanity and enlightenment ... I've been reading a new book Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries, and it contains a commentary on Genjo Koan by Shunryu Suzuki, the author who wrote Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. He doesn't mention sanity at all but I think that one possible definition of enlightenment would be a kind of profound sanity, where being insane is no longer an option. — Brad Warner

Ruthlessly, in despite of itself, the Enlightenment has extinguished any trace of its own self-consciousness. The only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately self-destructive. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer

Since we human beings are the cause of the environmental problems that we face today, we can also be the solution. We just need a shift in our thinking. We just need to move away from the paradigm of competition and domination. Then this world will not end. In fact, the world will prosper and return to its original place as the cradle of self-discovery and the advancement of human spirituality. And such a world is a true democracy. — Seung Heun Lee

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

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around. — Anthony De Mello

Women have allowed you to think that, which is a part of their inaccessibility in using their second attention. — Frederick Lenz

If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on... then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. — Immanuel Kant

Enlightenment doesn't mean we were never wounded; it means we've found a way to evolve beyond our wounds. Enlightenment isn't idealistic; it's practical. What's idealistic is thinking we can live from our wounds, stay in our weakness, and ever transform the world. — Marianne Williamson

Taking part in your own creation is as simple as changing your mind. The way you think literally creates your everyday reality. Obsessive and negative thinking fosters a negative or even hostile lifestyle. Positive and constructive thoughts create happiness and contentment in the same manor. The fortunate thing for us is that the frequency wave of a positive thought far exceeds that of a negative one, so even if we suffer through a bout of depression or anger, a few positive thoughts can easily reverse the damage we have created in ourselves — Gary Hopkins

Simply by performing good actions and thinking good thoughts you will not attain enlightenment. It takes something more. — Frederick Lenz

You're thinking that you shouldn't have sex because you're celibate. So you just keep thinking about sex instead of enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz

There are two obstacles to enlightenment: 1. Thinking you know. 2 Thinking you don't know. — Gautama Buddha

It is vain to think that we choose, that our own energy, our own intellect will create the possibility of us experiencing a higher order of existence. Liberation is to know you are that. — Frederick Lenz

It's ridiculous if you ask me. I don't know what any of us are doing here. But we're a tribe, a network, cruising the galaxy. We have offices in every loka, in every part of existence. I suppose you make that out to be a unique situation. We're Unique! No, I don't think so. We're enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz

The majority of times when a man thinks he has been the instigator, which men like to think, in sexual and romantic experiences, that has not been the case. — Frederick Lenz

An enlightened thinker does not waste his precious time thinking about what others think of what he thinks. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

People think that if you are enlightened you are not in touch with the pulse of the physical. Au contraire! The higher you go, the deeper you become, and the more conscious you are of the physical and the sensorial. — Frederick Lenz

Trees are good for contemplation: Plato and Aristotle did their best thinking in the groves of olives and figs around Athens, and Buddha found enlightenment beneath a peepul tree. — Colin Tudge

An essential feature of a decent society, and an almost defining feature of a democratic society, is relative equality of outcome - not opportunity, but outcome. Without that you can't seriously talk about a democratic state ... These concepts of the common good have a long life. They lie right at the core of classical liberalism, of Enlightenment thinking ... Like Aristotle, [Adam] Smith understood that the common good will require substantial intervention to assure lasting prosperity of the poor by distribution of public revenues. — Noam Chomsky

Every second you dwell on the past you steal from your future. Every minute you spend focusing on your problems you take away from finding your solutions. And thinking about all those things that you wish never happened to you is actually blocking all the things you want to happen from entering into your life. Given the timeless truth that holds that you become what you think about all day long, it makes no sense to worry about past events or mistakes unless you want to experience them for a second time. Instead, use the lessons you have learned from your past to rise to a whole new level of awareness and enlightenment. — Robin S. Sharma

Reincarnation is not what a lot of people think. Yes, we are eternal. No, everyone does not attain enlightenment; it's not necessary; life is smarter than we are. — Frederick Lenz

The ills of the world, and their cures, are listed below: 1) A world of privilege is a world of elitism and injustice. Meritocracy is the cure. 2) Capitalism, the creed of "Greed is good", is the disease of materialism and objectification for the sole purpose of profiting the ownership class. A new spiritual, artistic, creative and intellectual paradigm is the cure. 3) Abrahamism is a mental illness. Illuminism is the psychological cure. 4) The religious divide between East and West has held back global progress. Illuminism, a religion of enlightenment and reincarnation in common with Eastern thinking, yet steeped in the most profound Western thinking, is the bridge. The — Michael Faust

I think with all the odd jobs I ever had, there was some kind of enlightenment but, yes, a lot of pain and suffering that I don't want to re-live. — David Boreanaz

What is art is not likely to be decided for decades or longer after the work has been producedand then is often redecidedso we must not think badly if we regard literature as entertainment rather than as transcendent enlightenment. — Richard Condon

Enlightenment, don't know what it is. It's up to you, the way you think. — Van Morrison

Buddhism asks big questions about birth and death, cause and effect, emptiness and form, delusion and enlightenment. I just hope you're not actually thinking about any of that stuff, because Buddhism is fundamentally about something that requires no thought. — Karen Maezen Miller

In the firm belief that the American public deserves a better explanation than that thus far given by the Air Force, I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs, and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment of the subject. — Gerald R. Ford

You don't want to know the Truth, you want to know the truth as you understand it. This is the greatest barrier to your enlightenment. You think you already know the truth! You think you already understand how it is. So you agree with everything you see or hear or read that falls into the paradigm of your understanding, and reject everything which does not. — Neale Donald Walsch

If you have been touched by the success fairy, people think you know why. People think success breeds enlightenment and you are duty-bound to spread around like manure. Fertilize those young minds! — Meryl Streep

God is your very being. So the first thing is, don't think about enlightenment as a goal. — Rajneesh

Even great travelers of the inner world have got stuck in beautiful experiences, and have become identified with those experiences, thinking, "I have found myself." They have stopped before reaching the final stage where all experiences disappear. Enlightenment is not an experience. — Rajneesh

The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

In order to understand why one chooses to be a Tantric practitioner, there has to be an understanding of cause and effect, cyclic existence, the awareness that the reality that we think we are seeing is not reality as it really truly is. So enlightenment is seeing reality with bare awareness, non-conceptual reality. — Zeena Schreck

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days. — Thomas A. Edison

The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then. — Friedrich Schiller

To think is to have doubt ... yet even thinking will bring you to "no thought" ... eventually. — Vivian Amis

You're only as good as your next thought of yourself. — Curtis Tyrone Jones

You think that enlightenment is something other than what is happening right now. This is your primary mistake. — Adyashanti

Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is! — Eckhart Tolle

There are many paths to enlightenment. Some of us who have expanded to a degree of illumination have thereafter preached the dogmatic certainty of one particular path. But enlightenment doesn't care how you get there. And if you aren't going to be thinking about it in paradise, then don't worry about it now. — Thaddeus Golas

If you see the illusion you are enlightened, but if you think that you are enlightened you are in the illusion! — H.W.L. Poonja

Don't think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice. This is egomania. Appropriate rituals channel your emotions and life energy toward the light. Without the discipline to practice them, you will tumble constantly backward into darkness. — Laozi

When you continuously know and sense yourself as the space of consciousness rather than what appears in consciousness - sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions - then it can be said that you are enlightened ... except that you wouldn't think or speak of yourself as 'enlightened', because that would instantly create another mind-based conceptual identity and so it would be the end of 'your' enlightenment. — Eckhart Tolle

ENLIGHTENMENT: RISING ABOVE THOUGHT Isn't thinking essential in order to survive in this world? Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. — Eckhart Tolle

I have taken special interest in these accounts [of UFOs].. I think there may be substance to some of these reports ... I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment on this subject. — Gerald R. Ford

The enlightenment experience is not what you think. How could it be anything that you can configure, anything you can imagine, any way that you think it should be? — Frederick Lenz

From a mind filled with infinite love comes the power to create infinite possibilities. We have the power to think in ways that reflect and attract all the love in the world. Such thinking is called enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a process we work toward, but a choice available to us in any instant. — Marianne Williamson

The key to enlightenment lies in a secret that very few people have ever known, but which Jesus knew well. The way you will experience and feel about yourself is not determined by how other people look at and think about you. — Gary Renard

When we are in the dream state, we do not know what we are doing. We are simply acting out of deep programming. But once we have seen the true nature of things
once Spirit has opened its eyes within us
we suddenly know what we're doing. There's a much more accurate sense of whether we're moving or speaking or even thinking from truth or not. When we act from a place of untruth anyway, in spite of our knowing, it's much more painful than we we didn't know our actions were untrue. When we say something to someone that we know is untrue, it causes an inner division that is vastly more painful than when we said the same thing and thought it was true. — Adyashanti

It is easy to imagine that the Buddha, the awakened one, is something or somewhere other than here or that awakening to reality will happen sometime other than now. But as long as we continue to think in terms of time we will deceive ourselves. The you who is chasing enlightenment will never become enlightened.
Instead of striving towards some distant goal that you will never reach, I invite you to stop and ask: How am I avoiding the enlightenment that is already present in each moment? How am I seeing separation where it doesn't exist? — Adyashanti

In a very philosophic sense I think doing the work is itself a good thing. But at the end of the day, since we're taking other people's shekels to do it, and their work is being able to make a return out of it, it forces you to consider the fact that you're doing it for other people. The whole construct is built around the assumption that it's going to get shared, and that someone else is going to find value in it - entertainment, catharsis, enlightenment, or whatever. — Edward Norton

I think real enlightenment is total sanity, a kind of acceptance of what actually is. It does involve a kind of different way of looking at things. As I've done this Zen practice for years and years, I've acquired what I realize is an almost upside down view of life compared to what most people think, which is just what I used to think it was too. It's not really an insane view, at least I hope it's not. — Brad Warner