Sutras Quotes & Sayings

Among all the sutras I have expounded,
Lotus Sutra is the first and foremost!
If you are able to uphold the Lotus Sutra,
it means you are able to uphold the body of a Buddha!
(LS 11: 3.35)
Lotus Sutra, Chapter 11, Section 3, Paragraph 35 — Gautama Buddha

There are immeasurable star misty aeons of universes more numerous than the sands in all the galaxies, multiplied by a billion lightyears of multiplication, in fact if I were to go on you'd be scared and couldn't comprehend and you'd despair so much you'd drop dead,' that's what he just about said in one of those sutras
— Jack Kerouac

These Sutras are reminiscent of the Four Noble Truths of Lord Buddha: the misery of the world, the cause of misery, the removal of that misery, and the method used to remove it. Patanjali tells us that pain can be avoided. He further tells us that its cause is ignorance. (115) — Swami Satchidananda

If your house has Cold Mountain poems They are better for you than sutras Hang them up where you can see them Read them and read them again — Hanshan

It is like a lighted torch whose flame can be distributed to ever so many other torches which people may bring along; and therewith they will cook food and dispel darkness, while the original torch itself remains burning ever the same. It is even so with the bliss of the Way.
[Sutra of 42 Sections] — Gautama Buddha

It came to my mind that in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, in Indian spiritual literature, and in the Bhagavad Gita, and when I started reading about outstanding yogis and people of exceeding spiritual power such as Ramana Maharshi, or Yogananda, they all had the ability to do what we would call - I don't know what you would even call it - psychic phenomenon, magic, transform objects, be able to perceive the future, the past and the present simultaneously. — Fred Alan Wolf

Doctrines, scriptures, sutras, essays, are not to be regarded as systems to be followed. They merely contribute to understanding. They should be for us a source of stimulation, and nothing more ... Adopted, rather than used as a stimulus, they are a hindrance — Wei Wu Wei

The highest Hindu intellectual training was based on the practice of yoga, and produced, as its fruit, those marvellous philosophical systems, the six Darshanas and the Brahma Sutras, which are still the delight of scholars and the inspiration of occultists and mystics. — Annie Besant

To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, "To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss." When you seek nothing, you're on the Path. — Bodhidharma

As we discard a limited mind and a life of limitation to step into the grandness of vastness, we realize infinity itself to be the Guru and all that we do as grace. As we traverse through consciousness that is the Guru, we become the Guru and each thought of ours is perfect in the now, as scriptures. Consciousness is the Guru, the wisdom. — Nandhiji

When carving stone, the sculptor removes everything that is not the statue. [ ... ] The art of revealing beauty lies in removing what conceals it. So, too, Patanjali [in the Yoga Sutras] tells us that wholeness exists within us. Our work is to chisel away at everything that is not essence, not Self. — Judith Hanson Lasater

Our nature is the mind. and the mind is our nature.this nature is the same as the mind of all buddhas. buddhas of the past and future only transmit this mind. beyond this mind there's no buddha anywhere.but deluded people don't realize that their own mind is the buddha.they keep searching outside.they never stop invoking buddhas or worshipping buddhas and wondering where is the buddha? don't indulge in such illusions. just know your mind. beyond your mind there's no other buddha.the sutras say, "everything that has form is an illusion."they also say, "wherever you are, there's a buddha." your mind is the buddha. don't use a buddha to worship a buddha. — Bodhidharma

If you know that everything comes from the mind, don't become attached. Once attached, you're unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. It's thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in midsentence. What good are doctrines? The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions ... Don't cling to appearances, and you'll break through all barriers ... — Bodhidharma

Zen has nothing to do with letters, words, or sutras. — D.T. Suzuki

All the sutras in the world are useless. All the lectures of all the teachers don't really mean anything. They are only words. They point in a direction, that is their only use. — Frederick Lenz

Patanjali specifically says that there are three paths to the goal of yoga. And they are, control of the breath, control of posture, and light-filled herbs. It says it right there. Stanza 6 of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. — Terence McKenna

To find Buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha. If you don't see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking buddhas results in good karma, reciting sutras results in a good memory, keeping precepts results in good rebirth, and making offerings results in future blessings-but no Buddha. — Bodhidharma

I engaged - started engaging in yoga as a physical practice, but very quickly found out there was something broader to it, and that it was actually helpful for my pain, and started to get into meditation, started to study the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita and a lot of the scriptures associated with yoga, the Yoga Sutras, and very quickly came to this conclusion that this had a huge impact on my ability to lead, but, more importantly, the ability to control my sympathetic nervous system, which had a direct tie to the pain in my arm. — Mark T Bertolini

Lost-and-found items left behind on trains and in stations, and the unusual, strange items among them - the ashes of cremated people, wigs, prosthetic legs, the manuscript of a novel (the stationmaster read a little bit of it and found it dull), a neatly wrapped, bloodstained shirt in a box, a live pit viper, forty color photos of women's vaginas, a large wooden gong, the kind Buddhist priests strike as they chant sutras ... "Sometimes you're not sure what to do with them," the stationmaster said. — Haruki Murakami

Among all shravakas and pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas are the foremost. So is the Lotus Sutra; among all sutras, it is the foremost! Just as the Buddha is the King of the Law; so is the Lotus Sutra, it is the King of all Sutras!
(LS 23:2.16)
Lotus Sutra, Chapter 23, Section 2, Paragraph 16 — Gautama Buddha

Success is a journey of transformations. — Vishwas Chavan

Shankara commented on Krishna, on the Upanishads, on the Brahma Sutras. Ramanuja commented on the ancient enlightened people, Vallabha did the same. It has always been so in the East, because much dust gathers as time passes. Now, the Upanishads were written in a totally different world. That man has disappeared, that mind has disappeared, that world no more exists. — Rajneesh

You scour these Chinatowns of the mind, translating them
like sutras Xuan Zhang fetched from India, testing ways
return might be possible against these homesick inventions,
trace the traveller's alien steps across borders, and in between
discover how transit has a way of lasting, the way these Chinatowns
grew out of not knowing whether to return or to stay, and then became home. — Boey Kim Cheng

The sutras liken reincarnation to the relationship between teachers and students. A singing teacher teaches students how to sing. His students learn techniques and benefit from direct experiential advice from their teacher. But the teacher doesn't remove a song from his throat and insert it into a student's mouth. Similarly, reincarnation is a continuity of everything we have learnt, like lighting one candle from another, or a face and its reflection in a mirror. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

In the yoga sutras, they have this beautiful analogy that the journey of life is like the flight of an eagle, or the journey over multiple lifetimes is like a flight of an eagle. First, the eagle stretches its wings high, high, high, and experiences everything that the world has to offer in terms of flight. It's growing and flying and it's experiencing, and then it brings its wings down gracefully and that is the completion of the journey. — Karan Bajaj

If you are thinking, you can't understand Zen. Anything that can be written in a book, anything that can be said - all this is thinking ... but if you read with a mind that has cut off all thinking, then Zen books, sutras and Bibles are all the truth. So is the barking of a dog or the crowing of a rooster. All things are teaching you at every moment, and these sounds are even better teaching than Zen books. — Seungsahn

Each asana is like a sound or letter in an alphabet. Every letter in an alphabet produces a unique sound vibration. Each asana vibrates at a specific frequency. When asanas are performed in sequence, beautiful phrases or sutras result, producing a mystical language. — Sharon Gannon

According to the Sutras, evil deeds result in hardships and good deeds result in blessings. — Bodhidharma

Don't read the sutras - practice meditation. Don't take up the broom - practice meditation. Don't plant tea seeds - practice meditation. — Ikkyu

The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan. — Fritjof Capra

A sutra is, so to speak, the bare thread of an exposition, the absolute minimum that is necessary to hold it together, unadorned by a single "bead" of elaboration. Only essential words are used. Often, there is no complete sentence-structure. There was a good reason for this method. Sutras were composed at a period when there were no books. The entire work had to be memorized, and so it had to be expressed as tersely as possible. Patanjali's Sutras, like all others, were intended to be expanded and explained. The ancient teachers would repeat an aphorism by heart and then proceed to amplify it with their own comments, for the benefit of their pupils. In some instances these comments, also, were memorized, transcribed at a later date, and thus preserved for us. — Swami Prabhavananda

The fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don't believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage ... the sutras say, "Mind is the teaching." But people of no understanding don't believe in their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha-images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity. — Bodhidharma

If you see your nature, you don't need to read sutras or invoke buddhas. Erudition and knowledge are not only useless but also cloud your awareness. Doctrines are only for pointing to the mind. Once you see your mind, why pay attention to doctrines? — Bodhidharma

The Yoga Sutras offers a clear roadmap for the evolution of consciousness from ordinary states of awareness such as waking, dreaming, and sleeping - to higher states of consciousness. — Deepak Chopra