It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.
Those who act on excitement act intermittently; this is hardly the way to avoid regression. Those whose understanding comes from emotional perceptions are as confused as they are enlightened; this is not a lamp that is constantly bright.
It is you who are choosing, in any moment, to be happy or choosing to be sad, or choosing to be angry, or forgiving, or enlightened, or whatever. You are choosing.
It's very important to approach pedophiles and pedosexuals and offer them therapy. It's been my experience that you can reach your objective with what I would call kind-hearted, informed and enlightened patients - in the sense that they don't lose their desire, but that they no longer have physical contact with children. That would be the goal.
Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.
As a student of enlightenment your attitude should not be to become enlightened. It should be to learn.
Some teachers are extremely inaccessible. They feel their teachings are for very few so they make it intentionally hard to get to themselves.
Democracy, disciplined and enlightened, is the finest thing in the world.
You can’t change the mind with the mind alone, or we’d all be enlightened
To be enlightened means that you really don't change, and yet you're nothing but change.
But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.
Shankara commented on Krishna, on the Upanishads, on the Brahma Sutras. Ramanuja commented on the ancient enlightened people, Vallabha did the same. It has always been so in the East, because much dust gathers as time passes. Now, the Upanishads were written in a totally different world. That man has disappeared, that mind has disappeared, that world no more exists.
Studying the Buddha way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself. Forgetting oneself is being enlightened by all things. Being enlightened by all things is to shed the body-mind of oneself, and those of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues endlessly.
The cloud represents the creative power of the mind, which can assume any imaginable form. It is the ideal medium of creation for the enlightened mind, which manifests itself on the plane of timeless meditative vision.
Enlightenment is cumulative. You become a little more enlightened each day as you practice yoga and Buddhism.
How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be American before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?
How can anybody be enlightened? Truth is after all so poorly lit
One of the great dangers on the spiritual path is that the ego becomes spiritualized. The ego loves to think of itself as spiritually evolved. It is just another way that it manages to feel important and in control. It is very difficult to free yourself from an enlightened ego.
There is deception. People who think they are enlightened and it's just ego.
I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened.