Enlightenment Quotations | Page 2

You may have expected that enlightenment would come ZAP! instantaneous and permanent.This is unlikely.After the first ah ha expereince, it can be thougth of as a thinning of a layer of clouds.

There is no beginning to practice nor end to enlightenment; There is no beginning to enlightenment nor end to practice.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

The coming and going of birth and death is a painting. Unsurpassed enlightenment is a painting. The entire phenomenal universe and the empty sky are nothing but a painting.

Studying the Buddha way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself. Forgetting oneself is being enlightened by all things. Being enlightened by all things is to shed the body-mind of oneself, and those of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues endlessly.

Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, Nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, The ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.

Practice and enlightenment are not two.

To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.

Enlightenments, like accidents, happen only to prepared minds.

Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.

What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?

Freedom of speech and of the press are essential to the enlightenment of a free people and in restraining those who wield power.

You have visits, then you have disappearances. You enter, then you exit. You come, you go. It would be so great if you could just get to human enlightenment on a linear path.

Enlightenment is being able to go to your own home and feel comfortable.

There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment.

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!

I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.

Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment. "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" (1785)

I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.

We must therefore turn to history for enlightenment; here we find that none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position, that even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines. Furthermore, we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists, and therefore at opposite poles from our position. We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical.

They [zealots] would have everybody be as blind as themselves: to them, to be clear-sighted is libertinism.

Clearly, Enlightenment thinkers were seeking a God substitute.

Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment.

One of the Age of Enlightenment's most hypnotic images is Ledoux's rendering of his neoclassical theater of 1775 - 1784 in Besancon, surreally reflected in the colossal eye of an unidentified cosmic being.

Thomas Jefferson, the leading Enlightenment figure in the United States, along with Benjamin Franklin, who took exactly the same view, argued that dependence will lead to "subservience and venality", and will "suffocate[s] the germs of virtue". And remember, by dependence he meant wage labor, which was considered an abomination under classical liberal principles.

Enlightenment is awakened awareness.

Psychological breakdowns are actually breakthroughs to enlightenment.

The 7 factors of enlightenment: mindfullness, investigation of mental objects, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration and equanimity.

Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.

You are a Buddha, and so is everyone else. I didn't make that up. It was the Buddha himself who said so. He said that all beings had the potential to become awakened. To practice walking meditation is to practice living in mindfulness. Mindfulness and enlightenment are one. Enlightenment leads to mindfulness and mindfulness leads to enlightenment.

There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.

Enlightenment is lightening up.

A burrito is a delicious food item that breaks down all social barriers and leads to temporary spiritual enlightenment.

Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment.

Enlightenment is its own reward, its own punishment. You begin to see so much more. And so much more sees you.

The succession of thoughts appears in time, but the gap between two of them is outside time. The gap itself is normally unobserved. The chance of enlightenment is missed.

Relationship are part of the vast plan for our enlightenment.

No true search for enlightenment ignores the suffering of other sentient beings. Ever. We simply need to create a way to address that suffering while remaining in a blissful center.

The last thing we should do is allow ourselves to be infantilized by a counterfeit version of enlightenment.

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.

Enlightenment is the only real antidote to the world's despair.

Our public monuments are memorials to the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment needs more shadow; the Romantic Movement less.

The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

That's the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.

The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.

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

Enlightenment is the journey back from the head to the heart.

Enlightenment is nothing but your consciousness being concentrated on a single point - now and here.

Enlightenment happens only in that moment when there is no complaint in you,when you are not going anywhere, not desiring, not condemning, not judging.You simply exist and with total acceptance. This moment there is enlightenment.

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.

Enlightenment is finding that there is nothing to find. Enlightenment is to come to know that there is nowhere to go.

Do not cling to anything, to any idea; because clinging is the bondage, even to the idea of enlightenment.

The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving.

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

Enlightenment is when all hope disappears. Enlightenment is disappearance of hope.

Relaxation is the point. And if you can relax with an enlightened person his enlightenment will start penetrating you, because when you are relaxed you become porous. When you are tense you are closed; when you relax he will enter

Be - don't try to become. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.

Total relaxation is the ultimate. That's the moment when one becomes a buddha. That is the moment of realization, enlightenment, christ-consciousness. You cannot be totally relaxed right now. At the innermost core a tension will persist.

Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.

The natural/supernatural distinction itself, and the near-equation of 'supernatural' with 'superstition', are scarecrows that Enlightenment thought has erected in its fields to frighten away anyone following the historical argument where it leads. It is high time the birds learned to take no notice.

Society needs to see science not as a luxury of funding but as a fundamental activity that drives enlightenment, economics, and security.

The limits on your enlightenment come not from the age you stopped going to school but from the age you stopped being curious.

Many (Christians) have zeal without knowledge, enthusiasm without enlightenment. In more modern jargon, they are keen but clueless.

Logic is the key to an all-inclusive spiritual well-being.

Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.

The United States has degenerated into a social order that is awash in public stupidity and views critical thought as both a liability and a threat. Not only is this obvious in the presence of a celebrity culture that embraces the banal and idiotic, but also in the prevailing discourses and policies of a range of politicians and anti-public intellectuals who believe that the legacy of the Enlightenment needs to be reversed.

In this world, there is a fine line between enlightenment and brain damage.

Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.

You are here for no other purpose than to realize your inner divinity and manifest your inner enlightenment.

Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all that you encounter.

The Art of Peace begins with you...

So I cast my lot with Him-not the one who claimed wisdom, Confucius; or the one who claimed enlightenment, Buddha; or the one who claimed to be a prophet, Muhammad, but with the one who claimed to be God in human flesh. The one who declared, 'Before Abraham was born, I am'-and proved it.

Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.

Enlightenment is not the process of learning 'new' information. It is the process of 'reminding' ourselves that the answers are already 'within our consciousness'. All knowledge, all energy, all information is within us, not outside of us. it always has been and always will be.

You are not seeking to attain some future state. That is the fallacy of many spiritual seekers. They have an image of some state - enlightenment, or whatever they call it - they want to achieve.

So the single most vital step on your journey towards enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.

If there isn't an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment.

To nobody can you communicate in words and teachings, what happened to you in your hour of enlightenment.

Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.

For each inclosed spirit is a star Enlightening his own little sphere

If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation.

Whether or not enlightenment is possible at the moment of death, the practices that prepare one for this possibility also bring one closer to the bone of life.

The whole purpose of life is to gain enlightenment. Nothing else is significant compared to that completely natural, exalted state of consciousness. So always strive for that. Set your life around that goal. Don't get caught up in small things, and then it will be yours.

The process of education takes place in the field of consciousness; the prerequisite to complete education is therefore the full development of consciousness - enlightenment. Knowledge is not the basis of enlightenment, enlightenment is the basis of knowledge.

In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

I don't want enlightenment, I want him. Sorry Buddha, I loved him more than you.

Sexual enlightenment is that hardhearted process which for hygienic reasons forbids young people to satisfy their curiosity themselves.

The courage to be as oneself within the atmosphere of Enlightenment is the courage to affirm oneself as a bridge from a lower to a higher state of rationality. It is obvious that this kind of courage to be must become conformist the moment its revolutionary attack on that which contradicts reason has ceased, namely in the victorious bourgeoisie.

Secular humanism proposes ... the complete implementation of the agenda of modernism ... what is necessary for it to occur is a ... New Enlightenment.

The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-in-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.

The approach is that the best way to use unwanted circumstances on the path of enlightenment is not to resist but to lean into them.

Enlightenment is a direct experience with reality.

If there's any possibility for enlightenment, it's right now, not at some future time. Now is the time.

Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.

Every day is a new opportunity to work with what you have inside toward enlightenment.

Discomfort is always a necessary part of enlightenment.

The progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken.