Dalai Lama Quotes

A practice can be helpful, but didn't the Buddha compare it to a raft, suggesting it be abandoned when you reach the other shore?

I am a practicing Buddhist. I have been for 25 years.

I call myself a meditation teacher rather than a spiritual teacher.

I admire the fact that the central core of Buddhist teaching involves mindfulness and loving kindness and compassion.

I never stopped studying Buddhism. In the past few years, in between movies, I do a retreat.

Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher's help.

I think Buddhism is a wonderful philosophy. I've had the good fortune to meet many wonderful teachers from that society.

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.

I practice Rasayana Buddhism.

Every few months, I would take off to the U.S., which had people wondering why I went away so often. My trips were always to meet my spiritual guru, Maaji, who is based in the U.S. I would always come back with clear mind and sure footing.

The balance and peace we seek for ourselves and our society won't be achieved through mental effort alone. Mind and spirit are meant to travel together, with spirit leading the way. Until we make a conscious commitment to understand and embrace our spiritual nature, we will endure the ache of living without the awareness and guidance of the most essential part of ourselves.

To be conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.

It is very hard to tell when I started to be a spiritual teacher. There was a time when occasionally somebody would come and ask me questions. One could say at that point I became a spiritual teacher, although the term did not occur to me then.

By growing a spiritual practice, we are given all that we need.

Meditation means to know life beyond the sphere of the physical; to know and experience life not just at the surface but at the source.

The real master is only a presence. He has no intentions of being a master. His presence is his teaching. His love is his message. Every gesture of his hand is pointing to the moon. And this whole thing is not being done, it is a happening. The master is not a doer. He has learned the greatest secret of life: let-go. The master has drowned his ego and the idea of separation from existence itself.

Built on the foundation of concentration is the third aspect of the Buddha’s path of awakening: clarity of vision and the development of wisdom.

So it is not a matter of whether it is possible to attain Buddhahood, or if it is possible to make a tile a jewel. But just to work, just to live in this world with this understanding is the most important point, and that is our practice. That is true zazen.

Whether you’re checked in or checked out, you’re always on a spiritual journey.

The real meditative practice is to open up to the full range of what happens in life. And parenting is a fantastic arena for doing that kind of spiritual training. It's as much a potential door into enlightenment as anything else.

The Buddha also counseled the monks and nuns to avoid wasting any precious time by engaging in idle conversation, oversleeping, pursuing fame and recognition, chasing after desires, spending time with people of poor character, and being satisfied with only a shallow understanding of the teaching.

When you get to a higher level of consciousness, though, when you get into a spiritual approach to life, you are not trying to get someplace else...

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true. You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers and teachers. The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

If I thought it was my identity to be a spiritual teacher, that would be a delusion. It's not an identity. It's simply a function in this world.

One may have many teachers, but only one guru, who remains as one's guru even in many different lives, until the disciple reaches the final goal of emancipation in God. You must remember this, once that relationship is formed.