It [enlightenment] has not come to you by means of teaching! And-thus is my thought, oh exalted one,-nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! (character of Siddhartha, speaking to the Buddha) - Hermann Hesse Half smiling, with imperturbable brightness and friendliness, the Buddha looked steadily at the stranger and dismissed him with a hardly visible gesture. 'You are clever, O Samana,' said the Illustrious One, 'you know how to speak cleverly, my friend. Be on your guard against too much cleverness. - Hermann Hesse After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to p...

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 [Forster] quotes approvingly from this discussion, from The Magic Flute [by Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson] "Lord Buddha was your gospel true?" "True and False." "What was true in it?" "Selflessness and Love." "What false?" "Flight from Life. - Zadie Smith

And that's how we measure out our real respect for peopleby the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerateand enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you. - Ted Hughes Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering. - Terry Tempest Williams

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong. - John Lennon The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind. - Bodhidharma Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numberous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms-up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. - Bill Bryson No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for...