Dalai Lama Quotes

I often wonder when I make a film - I'm thinking of making a film of the Buddha - and I often wonder: If Buddha had all the elements that are given to a director - if he had music, if he had visuals, if he had a video camera - would we get Buddhism better?

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

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

I grew up in a Jewish family, and we have raised our children in a Jewish tradition. Religion gives a framework for moral enquiry in young minds and points us to questions beyond the material.

Our public schools began as ministries of the church; now it is time to return them to the Lord.

I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.

I have a vision of homes alerted, of classes alive, and of pulpits aflame with the spirit of Book of Mormon messages.

There have always been revivals. Some have always been successful. And many of them have failed.

Muslims are bound to know all the tenets of their religion, to discuss them and to regulate their lives accordingly. Therefore, a purely secular education without religious instructions would be like a body without soul.

People are looking for a way in which their spiritual life can be deepened. They are finding it in some of our Catholic parishes and sometimes not in others, and that opens the door for them to go elsewhere.

I knew religion from an early age.

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?

In the Buddha's life story we see the three stages of practice: Morality comes first, then concentrated meditation, and then wisdom. And we see that the path takes time.

We have been teaching together [with Kaz] now for more than twenty years in sesshins, in international travel programs in Japan and China, as well as intensives on Buddhism that focus on the work of Zen Master Dogen and Ryokan, as well as on many of the Mahayana sutras.

Churches don't need new members half so much as they need the old bunch made over.

The bad things, don't do them. The good things, try to do them. Try to purify, subdue your own mind. That is the teaching of all buddhas.

Whenever we strive to make progress in our meditations, contemplations and so forth we are practicing effort.

I wish to see the Bible study as much a matter of course in the secular colleges as in the seminary.

The masters only point the way. But if you meditate And follow the dharma You will free yourself from desire. 'Everything arises and passes away.' When you see this, you are above sorrow. This is the shining way.

So too, monks, I saw the ancient path, the ancient road traveled by the Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past. And what is that ancient path, that ancient road? It is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

Choose one meditation and then put all your effort in it. That effort has to be very regular because will is created only out of regularity. It has to be very persistent and a continuity has to be maintained. Even to miss for one day is to destroy much - and at least one hour every day has to be given to it.

If you want to make a decision in life on what to do, but if you're trying systematically, through spiritual practice, through meditation, through the invocation of the name of God, to walk closer and closer in this life to Him, you need someone to guide you. And God has made it possible in Islam for this guidance to exist.

I'd been to Saint Petersburg before, but there's been a change in people's minds. Maybe it's a fashionable thing, but people have returned to the churches. I went to a Russian Orthodox and a Catholic church - both of the queues, enormous!

School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe. To save one sentient being is to save all sentient beings. Your efforts of this moment to save one person is the same as the eternal merit of Buddha.