: Enlightenment Quotations

Enlightenment Quotations

(30 of the 61 quotes from a larger private database.)

go to Enlightenment Central

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
MARIA MONTESSORI

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake."
Thoreau

"Whatever makes us jump back seems at the very least worthy of being examined carefully for its potential usefulness."
Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"The unrest you are experiencing is not individual psychological difficulty but rather, part of a widespread spiritual awakening."
Carol Osborn

Before I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water. After I became enlightened I chopped wood and carried water.
Zen teaching

But the important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it, because your heart would not have been purified by the long quest.
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

There are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take one with a heart.
Lao Tzu

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats

Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.
M. Scott Peck, M.D.

"One day it was announced by Master Joshu that the young monk Kyogen had reached an enlightened state. Much impressed by this news, several of his peers went to speak with him.
"We have heard that you are enlightened. Is this true?" his fellow students inquired.
"It is," Kyogen answered.
"Tell us," said a friend, "how do you feel?"
"As miserable as ever," replied the enlightened Kyogen.
--Source unknown

You may have expected that enlightenment would come Zap! instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first "ah ha" experience, it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds...
Ram Dass

Enlightenment must come little by little, otherwise it would overwhelm...
-Idries Shah

Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray.
Sen Sen Ming, quoted by Ram Dass,

Who you are is more than you are thinking you are most of the time.
Ram Dass, 1996, lecture on Conscious Aging

The attainment of enlightenment from ego’s point of view is extreme death.
-Chogyam Trungpa

"I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescalin or of any other drug, preared or in the future preparable, with the realization of the end and ultimate purpose of human life: enlightenment, the Beatific Vision. All I am suggesting is that the mescalin experience is what the Catholic theologians call ' a gratutituous grace,' not necessary to salvation but potentially helpful and to be accepted thankfully, if made available. To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large - this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual."
Aldous Huxley, Doors of perecption Harper and Row, NY 1963
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -Marianne Williamson, "A Return To Love"
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Charles Jarvis, 1820
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
Rabindrath Tagore

Men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Henry David Thoreau

Q: What does a Zen monk say to a hot dog stand vendor?
A: Make me one with everything.
Q: What does the vendor say when the monk asks for change for his twenty dollar bill?
A: Change comes from within.
To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Liberation is nothing new that is acquired.
Sri Sankaracharya

He, knowing all, becomes the All.
Prasna Upanishad iv. 10

When thou art rid of self, then art thour self-controlled, and self-controlled art self possessed, and self-possessed possessed of God and all that he has ever made.
Meister Eckhart

. the growing and dying of the moon reminds us of our ignorance which comes and goes; but when the moon is full itis as if the eternal light of the Great Spirit were upon the whole world.
Black Elk

Prayer is not verbal. It is from the heart. To merge into the heart is prayer.
Sri Ramana Maharishi

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element; I want to know his thoughts; the rest are details.
Albert Einstein

One moon shows in every pool; in every pool, the one moon.
Zen Forest Saying