Buddhist Wisdom for Today
Quotes and Teachings from the world of Buddhism and beyond, updated each weekday
First, inhale all the obstacles, difficulties, and adversities with your breath. Let them hit your feeling of self-importance like cannonballs until it crumbles like dust. Then enjoy the freedom and lightness of being liberated from the prison of ego-clinging. — Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche. 20 December 2024. 20 December 2024
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- Awareness is the nature of our mind and is not deceived by the world of illusion or display. When mind is deceived, we are deluded, ignorant of our true nature; this is the foundation of samsara, of conflict and suffering. The other side is the awareness or enlightened mind which sounds very grand but is very simple. Each moment is a tipping point—each moment we decide whether or not to be enlightened and free! — Anam Thubten Rinpoche. 19 December 2024
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- Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma / And endlessly chant complicated sutras. / Before doing that, though, they should learn / How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, the snow and moon. — Ikkyū Sōjun. 18 December 2024
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- The doctrine of the Buddha is taught with reference to two truths—conventional truth and ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the difference between these two truths do not understand the profound essence of the doctrine of the Buddha. — Nāgārjuna. 17 December 2024
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- All other foes that I appease and wait upon, will show me favors, give me every aid. But should I serve my dark, defiled emotions, they will only harm me, draw me down to grief. — Shantideva. 16 December 2024
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- One of the greatest blocks to loving kindness is our own sense of unworthiness. If we leave ourselves out of the circle of love and compassion, we have misunderstood. — Jack Kornfield. 13 December 2024
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- Though the moon shines all over the world Leaving no corner in darkness, Only those who gaze upon the moon Appreciate its serene light. — Hōnen Shōnin. 12 December 2024
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- People have a lot of resistance to seeing themselves honestly. But the point of being a Dharma practitioner is to joyfully and universally look at ourselves. To look at ourselves universally means to see that everyone is like us. — Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. 11 December 2024
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- The Buddha attained all of the truths he taught before he put them into words. … He was like the scientists who experiment and get results before writing textbooks. … If we cling merely to the concepts of the Dhamma, simply memorizing them, we’re no more than consumers. Only if we make ourselves into producers, so that others can consume, will we be acting properly. — Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo (1907–1961). 10 December 2024
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- The supreme thing to know is bodhicitta. The supreme thing to learn is bodhicitta. The supreme thing to practice is bodhicitta. The supreme thing to meditate on is bodhicitta. — Khunu Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen. 9 December 2024
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- All things are fundamentally one. There’s no distinction between friends and foes, self and others. Learn to see everyone as your own parents or children. Accept, respect, and care for each other. Do not compare, judge, resent, hate, or be hostile. — Master Huijing. 6 December 2024
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- A bodhisattva is someone whose process of awakening comes about through the process of serving others yet knows that this world is dynamic and unresolvable. Resting in this paradox is bodhicitta or awakened mind. – Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel. 5 December 2024
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- Don’t get caught up in hopes of what you’ll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters. — Pema Chödrön. 4 December 2024
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- There is nothing better in the world than Dhamma. Dhamma can help you from being affected by all forms of suffering. Nothing else in the world can help you, but will only make you suffer more. The more you have, the more suffering you will have, because of your attachment. — Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto. 3 December 2024
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- Be compassionate to yourself, even as you look at your mistakes and mishaps. Then, if others are less than perfect too, use your developing compassion to kill your anger and frustration. Practice this every minute. Life is the practice. As the Buddha said, “Now, everything is totally in your hands.” — His Holiness the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa. 2 December 2024
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- The bodhisattva’s saving of sentient beings is like a lion’s taking of a deer; the action is free of the slightest hesitation and is performed as if in play. Second, it means that in saving, one perceives no object of salvation. The bodhisattva, in observing sentient beings, sees that in the final analysis they are nonexistent. Although he saves countless sentient beings, in reality there is not a single sentient being who realizes nirvana. Manifesting the act of saving sentient beings is thus like play. — Vasubandhu’s Treatise on the Pure Land. 29 November 2024
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- Whenever we feel that we are definitely right, so much so that we refuse to open up to anything or anybody else, right there we are wrong. It becomes wrong view. When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view it wouldn’t cause suffering. — Ajahn Chah. 28 November 2024
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- When the mind’s left as is, the spirit is naturally empty. Without a need for medicine, ills disperse of themselves. When ills disperse, the jewel in the lotus appears. — Layman Pang. 27 November 2024
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- Will you drop all your prejudices, all your opinions about what you are, what you are not, what you should be, so that you have a free, uncluttered mind? — Jiddu Krishnamurti. 26 November 2024
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- It is all up to us. We are the ones who have to keep looking at our thoughts, looking for the nature of our mind. there is nobody else in control of our lives, our experiences, our freedom or our bondage. — Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. 25 November 2024
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- What is this experience we call the breath? If someone were holding your head under water, would the breath be boring? Each breath is actually sustaining our life. Can we be with it fully, just once? — Joseph Goldstein. 22 November 2024
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- In Buddhism, we are told that we all have buddha-nature. The Quakers believe that we all have God within us. Tremendous! That means we are something special. But it doesn’t mean we should be arrogant. Being special means that we should be kind. We should be humble. We should serve others. — Ajahn Sulak Sivaraksa. 21 November 2024
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- We should do all we can on behalf of others and help them to be good. When sitting quietly, we would do well to reflect on our own faults. When talking with friends do not discuss the rights and wrongs of others. In our every action, from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, recite the Buddha’s name. — Master Yin Guang (1862–1940). 20 November 2024
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- The habit of employing self-deception to maintain one’s self esteem has often become so ingrained that the first step to developing accurate self-awareness is honest acknowledgment of the existence of hidden emotions, motives, and tendencies in the mind, without immediately suppressing them. — Bhikkhu Anālayo. 19 November 2024
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- Actually appearance does neither good nor harm, But if we grasp with attachment, we are bound within samsara. We need not analyze the variety of appearance; We only need to cut the root of grasping mind. — Longchenpa. 18 November 2024
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- You should realize that through the blessing and power of the practice, by experiencing sickness and other difficulties now, you are purifying and ridding yourself of negative actions. . . . By purifying them while you have the chance, you will later go from bliss to bliss. — Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. 15 November 2024
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- What are the experiences that the teachings of the Buddha are founded on? They are sadness, love, and openness. Although they appear to be quite different, sadness and openness are in fact intimately connected. The profound sadness that overwhelms us when we understand the impermanent nature of all phenomena opens us up to the world around us. We open our hearts and begin to notice our fellow beings. — Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche. 14 November 2024
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- Nibbana is simply the cessation of mental and physical phenomena that becomes manifest as the signless (animittapaccupanhanam) to a noble one. So although one has experienced it, one cannot describe it in terms of color or form or say what it is like. It can only be experienced or described as the cessation or end of all conditioned mental and physical phenomena. — Mahāsi Sayādaw. 13 November 2024
