Buddhist Wisdom for Today
Quotes and Teachings from the world of Buddhism and beyond, updated each weekday
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
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- The Buddha’s land is always pure; the problem lies in our perception. We cannot see this purity because our minds are polluted by karma. To glimpse the Buddha’s Pure Land, we must rely on his miraculous power, as we are not yet attuned to his frequency. — Master Jingzong. 12 November 2024
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- All of humankind wants to live a free and happy life, but only a few have achieved it. It is because people mistakenly believe that the road to happiness is paved with satisfying their desires. The Buddha teaches that only when we are free from our own desires can we attain true freedom and happiness. — Ven. Pomnyun Sunim. 11 November 2024
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- Gaze into the Emptiness, the illusory changings of this world. Enter the Emptiness. Others have. It’s not so hard. Is there any place that’s unreachable when you make the effort? Don’t be left behind because you’ve confused yourself over this. — Master Xu Yun. 8 November 2024
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- The most important sign of realizing Mahamudra is compassion. The more there is compassion in the mind, the more it enhances itself, and that is the sign of the arising of Mahamudra realization. — Garchen Rinpoche. 7 November 2024
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- Once you understand non-self, then the burden of life is gone. You’ll be at peace with the world. When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness and we can truly be happy. Learn to let go without struggle, simply let go, to be just as you are—no holding on, no attachment, free. — Ajahn Chah (1918–1992). 6 November 2024
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- While sound of mind and fit of body, that’s the time to learn the Dharma, leading us to Sukhavati, a place of bliss with no more karma. — Master Shandao. 5 November 2024
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- Of course we can always imagine more perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone should behave. But it is not our task to create an ideal. It’s our task to see how it is, and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough. — Ajahn Sumedho. 4 November 2024
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- In any single breath each of us can become an enlightening being. In the next breath we might fall into old habits of thoughtlessness and violence. Zazen reveals that this choice is always with us. — Hozan Alan Senauke. 1 November 2024
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- With mindfulness, vigilance, and conscientiousness, constantly guard the gateways of your senses. Again and again, three times both day and night, examine the flow of your thoughts. — Atisha. 31 October 2024
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- All the peace and happiness of the whole globe, the peace and happiness of societies, the peace and happiness of family, the peace and happiness in the individual persons’ life, and the peace and happiness of even the animals and so forth, all depends on having loving kindness toward each other. — Lama Zopa Rinpoche. 30 October 2024
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- How can we transcend aging, illness, and death, and free ourselves from sorrow and afflictions? This is precisely the purpose of the Amitabha-recitation practice. By reciting the name of Amitabha Buddha, our rebirth in the Land of Ultimate Bliss is assured. Once reborn there, we escape the samsara of the Three Domains and Six Realms, freeing ourselves from aging, illness, death, and all forms of suffering. — Master Huijing. 29 October 2024
