17 quotes found
“What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)”
“The Four Noble Truths are pragmatic rather than dogmatic. They suggest a course of action to be followed rather than a set of dogmas to be believed. The four truths are prescriptions for behavior r...”
“We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy one word Zen. When asked What is the highest teaching of the Buddh...”
“The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks. (65)”
“To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love. (157)”
“I know very little with anything approaching certainty. I know that I was born, that I exist, and that I will die. For the most part, I can trust my brain's interpretation of the data presented to ...”
“Much of what animated me in those days I now recognize as the romantic yearnings of an idealistic, alienated, and aimless young man. I endowed these strange, exotic people, about whom I knew little...”
“For me, Buddhism is like a living organism. If it is to flourish outside self-enclosed ghettos of believers, it will have to meet the challenge of understanding, interacting with, and adapting to a...”
“I was encouraged to ask in all seriousness what this life is for, what matters most for myself and others, what non-negotiable values I might even be willing to die for. At the same time, I started...”
“After all, people desire immortality and do not wish to embrace the inescapable reality of death; they long for happiness and shy away from the contemplation of pain; they want to preserve their se...”
“Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a...”
“I am empty only in the sense that there is nothing fixed or intrinsically real at the core of my identity as a person.Recognition of such emptiness therefore liberates one to change and transform o...”
“No matter how hard I tried, I was incapable of giving more importance to a hypothetical, post-mortem existence than to this very life here and now.Moreover, the Buddhist teachings and practices tha...”
“I was perplexed by the failure of teachers at school to address what seemed the most urgent matter of all: the bewildering, stomach-churning insecurity of being alive. The standard subjects of hist...”
“Gotama's awakening involved a radical shift of perspective rather than the gaining of privileged knowledge into some higher truth. He did not use the words "know" and "truth" to describe it. He spo...”
“[Mindfulness] is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a scalpel for excising the tumor of metaphysical belief. (130)”
“Without relying on any deities, mantras, or mandalas, without having to master the intricacies of any doctrine or philosophy, I vividly understood what it meant to be a fragile, impermanent creatur...”
