Dalai Lama Quotes

All phenomena are empty.

Reality is devoid of any intrinsic identity that can be captured by any one single proposition - that is what Buddha meant by "voidness."

As a Buddhist, I view death as a normal process, a reality that I accept will occur as long as I remain in this earthly existence. Knowing that I cannot escape it, I see no point in worrying about it. I tend to think of death as being like changing your clothes when they are old and worn out, rather than as some final end. Yet death is unpredictable: We do not know when or how it will take place. So it is only sensible to take certain precautions before it actually happens.

The only "definitive truth" for Buddhism is the absolute negation of any one truth as the Definitive Truth.

Whoever realizes that the six senses aren't real, that the five aggregates are fictions, that no such things can be located anywhere in the body, understands the language of Buddhas.

The idea of interdependence is central to Buddhism, which holds that all things come into being through the mutual interactions of various causes and conditions.

In Catholicism, we would say you're going to be judged, so therefore you should do better now. For me, Buddhism is somewhat more workable because instead of saying I have to do good, it says I have to notice what I'm actually doing.

The Now is as it is because it cannot be otherwise. What Buddhists have always known, physicists now confirm: there are no isolated things or events. Underneath the surface appearance, all things are interconnected, are part of the totality of the cosmos that has brought about the form that this moment takes.

To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering.

Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one's own actions are the creator, ultimately. Some people say that, from a certain angle, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a science of mind.

Once a Buddha, always a Buddha.

Buddhism resonated very powerfully with a lot of my preoccupations.

Buddha was speaking about reality. Reality may be one, in its deepest essence, but Buddha also stated that all propositions about reality are only contingent.

I'm interested in Buddhism. Of all the organized religions, that to me is the only one that makes even vague sense. I just don't have the discipline for that kind of practice.

Buddhism has to do with your daily life, with your suffering and with the suffering of the people around you.

If you want to read a letter from the Buddha's world, it is necessary to understand Buddha's world.

At a personal level, as a Buddhist practitioner, I deliberately visualize and think about death in my daily practice. Death is not separated from our lives. Due to my research and thoughts about death, I have some guarantee and some conviction that it will be a positive experience.

The Tathagatha... is the originator of the path unarisen before, the producer of the path unproduced before, the declarer of the path undeclared before. He is the knower of the path, the discoverer of the path, the one skilled in the path. And his disciplines now dwell following that path and become possessed of it afterwards.

The idea that Buddhism denies what is called in the West 'individual immortality' is a mistake, so far as the Buddhist scriptures are concerned.

According to the Buddhist belief, you can go on and on indefinitely, so you see your life as just a brief moment in time.

Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God.

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.

That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel - the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind.

Buddhas move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will.