Buddhist Philosophy

"Wisdom is purified by morality, and morality is purified by wisdom: where one is, the other is, the moral man has wisdom and the wise man has morality, and the combination of morality and wisdom is called the highest thing in the world."

"The light of wisdom burns brightly in order to shed light on the vacuity of indulgence."

"Because his preaching of the Law is pure, his wisdom is pure. Because his wisdom is pure, his mind is pure."

"Focus right at the mind. Whichever defilement arises first, that’s the one to abandon first."

"When I observed that by the performance of certain actions, unwholesome factors increased and wholesome factors decreased, then that form of bodily action was to be avoided. And when I observed that by the performance of such actions unwholesome factors decreased and wholesome ones increased, then such bodily action was to be followed. ... The same applies to conduct of speech and the pursuit of goals."

"Abandoning false speech, the ascetic Gotama dwells refraining from false speech, a truth-speaker, one to be relied on, trustworthy, dependable, not a deceiver of the world. Abandoning malicious speech, he does not repeat there what he has heard here to the detriment of these, or repeat here what he has heard there to the detriment of those. Thus he is a reconciler of those at variance and an encourager of those at one, rejoicing in peace, loving it, delighting in it, one who speaks up for peace. Abandoning harsh speech, he refrains from it. He speaks whatever is blameless, pleasing to the ear, agreeable, reaching the heart, urbane, pleasing and attractive to the multitude. Abandoning idle chatter, he speaks at the right time, what is correct and to the point, of Dhamma and discipline. He is a speaker whose words are to be treasured, seasonable, reasoned, well-defined and connected with the goal."

"If a person's mind is pure, then he will see the wonderful blessings that adorn this land."

"Because his wisdom is pure, his mind is pure. And because his mind is pure, all the blessings he enjoys will be pure. Therefore, Ratnākara, if the bodhisattva wishes to acquire a pure land, he must purify his mind. When the mind is pure, the Buddha land will be pure."

"People who practice mental concentration may inhibit the True Mind within themselves by being dependent on sensory perceptions, coarse states of mind, and restricted breathing. Before achieving mental purity, [such people may undertake] the constant practices of concentrating the mind and viewing the mind. Although they do so during all their activities, [such people] cannot achieve [mental] clarity and purity, nor illumine that mind which is the sources of all dharmas."

"2. Samudaya: There is a cause of suffering. Suffering is due to attachment. It is the desire to have and control things. It can take many forms: craving of sensual pleasures; the desire for fame; the desire to avoid unpleasant sensations, like fear, anger or jealousy."

"4. Magga: In order to end suffering, follow the Eightfold Path"

"3. Nirodha: There is an end to suffering. Attachment can be overcome. Suffering ceases with the final liberation of Nirvana (Nibbana). The mind experiences complete freedom, liberation and non-attachment. It lets go of any desire or craving."

"1. Dukkha: Suffering exists: Life is suffering. Suffering is real and almost universal. Suffering has many causes: loss, sickness, pain, failure, and the impermanence of pleasure."

"A lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison."

"Herein, monastics, right livelihood is what? A monastic is (1) scheming, (2) ingratiating, (3) hinting, (4) extorting, and (5) longing for gain upon gain."

"Selling poison, selling weapons, selling living beings, selling alcohol, selling meat, and, without having inspected (first), pounding sesame and mustard seed (and so on) is wrong livelihood, abstaining from it is right livelihood."

"It is wiser to contemplate the law of impermanence than to try to repeal it."

"Knowledge of the stability of the Dhamma is also subject to destruction, vanishing, fading away and cessation."

"Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse."

"Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß."

"The support of the world is a myth, know this my friend Nanak says, it isn’t stable, no more than a wall of sand Ram has gone, Ravan has gone, they of the great lineages Nanak says nothing endures, the world is but a dream Think of the calamities that may befall Nothing on this path is durable, says Nanak Whatever has sprouted will end, today or tomorrow Nanak sing the praises of Hari, leave aside the webs of the world"

"Whatever is will be was"

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this."

"Something offered is not offered. Something finished is not finished. Nothing changes."

"In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is me."

"All things are impermanent in nature."

"Karma is a being’s intentional ‘actions’ of body, speech, and mind—whatever is done, said, or even just thought with definite intention or volition."

"At root karma or ‘action’ is considered a mental act or intention; it is an aspect of our mental life: ‘It is “intention” that I call karma; having formed the intention, one performs acts (karma) by body, speech and mind.’"

"Nirvana, liberation, is nothing more than this imperishable state, removed from the becoming of things. (p. 27)"

"No breathing in and out—just the steadfast heart The sage who is free from lust has passed away to peace. With mind unshaken he endured all pains: By Nibbana the Illumined’s mind is freed."

"The Buddhist nirvana is defined as release from samsara, literally the Round of Birth and Death, that is, from life lived in a vicious circle, as an endlessly repetitious attempt to solve a false problem. Samsara is therefore comparable to attempts to square the circle, trisect the angle, or construct a mechanism of perpetual motion. A puzzle which has no solution forces one to go over the same ground again and again."

"Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come."

"Nirvana is a state of pure bliss and knowledge. ... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further ... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier."

"Nirvana transcends all duality of knower and known, of being and non-being."

"Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss."

"[Nirvana has been called] the harbour of refuge, the cool cave, the island amidst the floods, the place of bliss, emancipation, liberation, safety, the supreme, the transcendental, the uncreated, the tranquil, the home of ease, the calm, the end of suffering, the medicine for all evil, the unshaken, the ambrosia, the immaterial, the imperishable, the abiding, the further shore, the unending, the bliss of effort, the supreme joy, the ineffable, the detachment, the holy city, and many others."

"At his death, the Arhat is never reincarnated; he invariably attains Nirvana— a word, by the bye, falsely interpreted by the Christian scholars and skeptical commentators. Nirvana is the world of cause in which all deceptive effects or delusions of our senses disappear. p. 346"

"I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman; ... it came first simply by an absolute stillness and blotting out as it were of all mental, emotional and other inner activities. ... I did not become aware of any pure 'I' nor even of any self, impersonal or other - there was only an awareness of That as the sole Reality, all else being quite unsubstantial, void, non-real. As to what realized that reality, it was a nameless consciousness which was not other than that; one could perhaps say this, though hardly even so much as this, since there was no mental concept of it, but not more. ... Consciousness (not this or that part of consciousness or an 'I' of any kind) suddenly emptied itself of all inner contents and remained aware only of unreal surroundings and of Something real but ineffable."

"There is, in the Buddhist philosophy, a wonderful sentence of the Lord Gautama Buddha, where he is striving to indicate in human language something that would be intelligible about the condition of . You find it in the Chinese translation of the Dhammapada, and the Chinese edition has been translation into English in Trübner’s Oriental Series. He puts it there that, unless there were Nirvana, there could be nothing; and he uses various phrases in order to indicate what he means, taking the uncreated and then connecting with it the created; taking the Real and then connecting with it the unreal. He sums it up by saying that Nirvana is; and that if it were not, naught else could be. That is an attempt (if one may call it so with all reverence) to say what cannot be said. It implies that unless there existed the Uncreate, the invisible and the Real, we could not have a universe at all. You have there, then, the indication that Nirvana is a plenum, not a void. That idea should be fundamentally fixed in your mind, in your study of every great system of Philosophy. So often the expressions used may seem to indicate a void. Hence the western idea of annihilation. If you think of it as fullness, you will realize that the consciousness expands more and more, without losing utterly the sense of identity; if you could think of a centre of a circle without a circumference, you would glimpse the truth."

"After all, Nirvana is not a concept: this is why attempts to illustrate it through language and logic lend themselves to various misunderstandings. Some Buddhists understand it literally: as a state of “extinction”, comparable to the extinguishing of a flame. Yet the Buddha often criticised proponents of the nihilistic interpretation: “nibbàna” should not be conceived as pure nothingness. [...] It does not designate the abyss of a void, nor a worldly dimension comparable to those that exist: it can simply be said that pain is definitively eliminated there. (pp. 72-73)"