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Buddhist Quotes

We’ve collected the best Buddhist Quotes from the greatest minds of the world: Sharon Salzberg, Pooja Bedi, Joni Mitchell, Alan Ball, Joan Baez. Use them as an inspiration.

1
In Buddhist teaching, ignorance is considered the fundamental cause of violence – ignorance… about the separation of self and other… about the consequences of our actions.
2
Now my children also don’t have a particular religion as I also didn’t have. The only difference is that now they have Muslim and Parsi also in their blood. So they may be called Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, Christian and Parsi!
3
I’m a Buddhist.
4
I’m a Buddhist, so one of my biggest beliefs is, ‘Everything changes, don’t take it personally.’
5
I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I’m not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.
6
I used homeopathy, acupuncture, yoga and meditation in conjunction with my chemotherapy to help me get stronger again after the cancer. I also chanted with Buddhist friends and prayed with Christian friends. I covered all my bases.
7
Well, I don’t know about my mum; I think she is almost Buddhist in her approach to life in that she’s not going to work very hard at any particular thing and she’s not going to let any particular thing trouble her. I’m very different. I aspire to things and I worry about things.
8
I am interested in suffering and, in particular, the Buddhist idea that in pain, you can find beauty.
9
As we grow up, we’re constantly defining ourselves. In my case: Caucasian, male, born in Iowa, live in Boston, Zen Buddhist, good at learning languages. With countless labels, I build up this creation I call my self.
10
I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.
Hafez
11
It’s not like I’m a Buddhist or anything, but I think we’ve all got, to a certain extent, a predestined life. My journey took me from Boston to Philadelphia to Oakland to Los Angeles and then as a broadcaster. I’ve been fortunate.
12
My father is an atheist. My mother is Buddhist. They encouraged my siblings and me to take the best part of other religions to make our own belief system.
13
Bodhisattva is enlightened in the Buddhist philosophy, religion, tradition. He’s enlightened. It’s fine – I don’t really fight it – but many people use the term ‘zen‘ and terms like ‘nirvana,’ ‘enlightenment‘ in an almost superficial way. It’s not that complicated.
14
My family is Jewish, Buddhist, Baptist and Catholic. I don’t believe in man-made religions.
15
I get up at sunrise. I’m a Buddhist, so I chant in the morning. My wife and I sit and have coffee together, but then it’s list-making time. I have carpentry projects. We have roads we keep in repair. It’s not back-breaking, but it’s certainly aerobic and mildly strenuous.
16
I’m a huge fan of meditation. I know lots of people assume meditation to be some Buddhist mumbo-jumbo, but it’s been scientifically documented to create therapeutic changes in the brain.
17
My first encounter with Buddhist dharma would be in my early 20s. Like most young men, I was not particularly happy.
18
The thing the Buddhists and the Sufis have in common is a belief that religious certainties are destructive.
Luke Rhinehart
19
Laos is a deeply Buddhist country, and my visit included a traditional Tak Bat ceremony, in which you get up at sunrise and make offerings to Buddhist monks.
20
I admire the fact that the central core of Buddhist teaching involves mindfulness and loving kindness and compassion.
21
I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.
22
I know there are footballers who want to fight for justice, whether Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, any belief.
23
Being a vegetarian Buddhist would be a bit harsh to deal with in the kitchen, so I’m a Taoist, I study martial arts, and I don’t drink or smoke.
Arthur Potts Dawson
24
I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.
25
I’m a Buddhist and active in my Buddhist’s Association, and I’m actually a National Young Women‘s representative for the organization, so I travel a lot helping young women who are practicing Buddhism.
Vinessa Shaw
26
I certainly haven‘t lived the life of a Buddhist monk.
Burton Cummings
27
I don’t meditate anymore, and I wouldn’t call myself a Buddhist nowadays, though I do chant mantras here and there depending on the situation.
28
My mom‘s actually a Buddhist. My dad‘s a Christian and he was a Muslim, but he converted to Christianity.
29
From the Buddhist point of view, it is true that emptiness is a characteristic of all of life – if we look carefully at any experience we will find transparency, insubstantiality, with no solid, unchanging core to our experience. But that does not mean that nothing matters.
30
The reason why Broken Men only became Untouchables was because in addition to being Buddhists, they retained their habit of beef-eating, which gave additional ground for offence to the Brahmins to carry their new-found love and reverence to the cow to its logical conclusion.
31
Right now, I’m following the Buddhist principle: Smile as abuse is hurled your way and this too shall pass.
32
Sometimes I feel like a Buddhist and I need to chant; sometimes a Baptist and I need to holler and shout; and sometimes I need to be a Catholic and need to purge my sins and confess. It just depends on where I am.
33
There doesn’t seem to be a religion in ‘Game of Thrones’ that’s totally peaceful… we haven’t seen any Buddhists.
34
Cambodia wanted no part of SEATO. We would look after ourselves as neutrals and Buddhists.
Norodom Sihanouk
35
A fully engaged imagination is essential to the spiritual practice of the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana School, whose artistic tradition is in service of consciousness transformation.
36
I am a Buddhist.
37
When she was younger, my mother was quite committed to Roman Catholicism. But she got disillusioned with it and moved closer to something like Buddhist beliefs near the end of her life.
38
You haven’t partied until you’ve partied at dawn in complete silence with Buddhist monks.
39
‘The Last Airbender’ is genetically engineered for me. I love martial arts. I study it. The movie‘s based on a lot of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. I was raised Hindu.
40
If there were a bunch of Buddhist or Hindus or Roman Catholics carrying out grotesque acts of international terror, I would expect to see their faces on the side of bus.
41
I think Gore does have to worry. He is tied to Bill Clinton. We know that there were telephone calls that he made from his office. We know that there were visits to the Buddhist temple.
Barbara Olson
42
If you’re a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.
43
Because of my Buddhist practice, I’m never lacking for inspiration.
44
If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path I’d walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. And I don’t mind saying that I don’t invalidate any of those paths.
45
In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.
46
I don’t care if you’re Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or whatever your religion is, when you listen to a spiritual song and you really open your heart, you can feel it. You can feel the message of it. Just a simple story.
47
I’m much more Buddhist. I mean, I’m not a Buddhist. I should be so lucky to be a Buddhist, a real Buddhist, but of all the things I investigated, that seems to make the most sense to me.
48
In a way, light unites the spiritual world and the ephemeral, physical world. People frequently talk about spiritual experiences using the vocabulary of light: Saul on the road to Damascus, near-death experiences, samadhi or the light-filled void of Buddhist enlightenment.
49
A lot of people believe that when you are Buddhist, you are the Dalai Lama. I’m certainly not.
50
I’m fascinated by caddy Buddhists popping up all over Hollywood and people that take themselves too seriously.
51
Well, I’m Buddhist, Ray, and so part of my Buddhism has allowed me to look a little more deeply at people and the events in my life that created me. And I think a lot of that Buddhism comes out in the world view in this novel.
52
Thanks to my Buddhist faith, to the positivity that arose from prayer, I put the optimism of determination before the pessimism of logic and reason.
53
To a Buddhist, contradictions only exist in a mind that has been forced to cultivate them.
John Burdett
54
So, immediately after that, I got a commission to write a piece for chamber orchestra, and in working on the material I discovered it was possible to incorporate the Buddhist teachings into the music, so that’s what I started to do.
55
The idea that Buddhism denies what is called in the West ‘individual immortality‘ is a mistake, so far as the Buddhist scriptures are concerned.
56
We’ve always seen ourselves as Indian. We’ve never seen ourselves as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or Buddhists.
57
Once you leave your ego behind and let the good light in, you shine good light back. That may be a bit Buddhist but so what.
58
I used a lot of pancake makeup and a prayer, and a Buddhist chant.
59
I’ve been practicing Buddhism for a while. So, I call myself a Jew-Bu, because my tribe is still Jew. But my philosophy and my practice is really Buddhist.
60
I’m not Buddhist, but I am drawn to it because it seems the most beneficial of organised religions and the most compassionate.
61
I loved science, and when I discovered Buddhist meditative practices and martial arts, I was able to bridge those ways of knowing the world into my own unique way. From that grew the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which became my karmic assignment.
62
That the object of the Brahmins in giving up beef-eating was to snatch away from the Buddhist Bhikshus the supremacy they had acquired is evidenced by the adoption of vegetarianism by Brahmins.
63
I grew up in a mostly Buddhist environment.
64
Palestinians are Christian, Muslims, atheist, Buddhist – you name it. And the majority I know have nothing against Judaism and everything against Israeli oppression.
65
Buddhist practices offer a way of saying, ‘Hey, come back over here, reconnect.’ The only way that you’ll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.
66
Just studying Buddhism, then meditating and going to Buddhist monasteries, talking to Buddhist monks, combined with the Thai people themselves, changed the way I look at the world.
John Burdett
67
I am proud that London is a city where, the vast majority of the time, Jewish people, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, those who are not members of an organized faith, black, white, rich, young, gay, lesbian – don’t simply tolerate each other but respect, embrace, and celebrate each other.
68
Ju jitsu is very Buddhist. All that we fear we hold close to ourselves to survive. So if you’re drowning and you see a corpse floating by, hang on to it because it will rescue you.
69
My relationship with my father was absolutely wonderful. He was the love of my life and pivotal in my life. He was a good, kind man with very strong Buddhist and spiritual beliefs. He could do no wrong and he was my best friend until he died in 2009.
70
Ah-rah-han, the first Buddhist apostle of Burma, under the patronage of King Anan-ra-tha-men-zan, disseminated the doctrines of atheism and taught his disciples to pant after annihilation as the supreme good.
71
From a Buddhist point of view, emotions are not real. As an actor, I manufacture emotions. They’re a sense of play. But real life is the same. We’re just not aware of it.
72
When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, Not really. But it’s more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don’t practice or preach it, however.
73
My mother was a Tibetan Buddhist.
74
There are techniques of Buddhism, such as meditation, that anyone can adopt. And, of course, there are Christian monks and nuns who already use Buddhist methods in order to develop their devotion, compassion, and ability to forgive.
75
Buddhist mindfulness is about the present, but I also think it’s about being real. Being awake to everything. Feeling like nothing can hurt you if you can look it straight on.
Krista Tippett
76
Western Buddhists in many ways are much serious Buddhists than Tibetans are.
77
In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one’s way to godliness. The Hindu sadhu, the pilgrims of Compostela walking past their sins, the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora, the haj.
78
Yoga has brought me closer to myself. It’s helped me realize the interconnectedness of the mind, body and spirit, in the Buddhist sense of the word.
79
I like change. There’s something Buddhist about it – continuous change is wonderful.
80
A friend of mine told me a bunch of stuff on Buddhism and about Avicii being the lowest level of Buddhist hell, and it just sort of got stuck in my head. Later on when I went to setup a MySpace, I tried a bunch of names and they were all taken so I just kind of ended up with Avicii and then I got really attached to it.