Authentic Buddha Quotes

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.

In life hard times will befall you that will create doubt in yourself, and life will ask questions of the authenticity of the person you are. Carrying the lotus means being true to yourself and in the realization that you were always meant to grow above this mud. We are meant to grow, progress, and evolve in this relentless environment of the World and through it all achieve happiness with grace in letting go. Carry the Lotus within; grow and rise above from the harsh and remorseless world beneath you.

When we continue to devalue our inherent needs, when we begin to reduce ourselves as a person in order to stay in a relationship, we are essentially agreeing to limit our potential and anesthetize our authentic self in the name of love or a sense of duty born of our investment in the connections we have formed.

The desire to feel happy or think positively all the time hinders many people's authentic existence. It lowers resilience.

Primordial wisdom [Skt. jñāna; Tib. ཡེ་ཤེས་, yeshé; Wyl. ye shes] has many names, but in truth it refers simply to the inseparability of the ground and fruit, the one and only essence-drop [thig le nyag gcig] of the dharmakaya. If it is assessed from the standpoint of its utterly pure nature, it is the actual dharmakaya, primordial Buddhahood. For, from its own side, it is free from every obscuration. We must understand that we are Buddha from the very beginning. Without this understanding, we will fail to recognize the spontaneously present mandala of the ground, and we will be obliged to assert, in accordance with the vehicle of the paramitas, that Buddhahood has a cause. We will fail to recognize the authentic view of the Secret Mantra.

If a person truly believes in Mahayana Buddhism, then whether they are monk, nun, or layperson, the whole of his or her life will be directed toward the ultimate objective expressed in the final verse of the bodhisattva vow: “The Way of the Buddha is unsurpassed; I vow to attain it.

I believe that all of us have a natural brilliance that is yearning to come out and be expressed in the daily activities of our life, including our work. This spark longs to be seen by others not in a superficial, attention-getting way, but in the most authentic way possible. Buddhists call this “Buddha-nature,” our awakened self. It is luminous and radiant, and it is a gift we give to others. It is our original nature before a whole lot of internal and external crap gets piled on it. That luminosity is there in all of us but we often forget it or lose our way.

Don't waste your life trying to become somebody else.   Don't waste your life trying to live up to your performance expectations.   Don't waste your life imitating others.   Don't waste your life living out other people's expectations.   Don't waste your life envious of other people.   Be authentic. Be genuine. Be real. Be yourself.

I would argue that a life that lacks movement and discovery of the needs of our authentic self—true growth—fails to be in service to the higher good. It may even be accurate to say that we cannot truly be in service to others, even those whom we profess to love, without first discovering our true path. This is the path that makes our heart rejoice—although it may take all the courage we have to walk it.

If we think we monopolize the truth and we still organize a dialogue, it is not authentic. We have to believe that by engaging in dialogue with the other person, we have the possibility of making a change within ourselves, that we can become deeper. Dialogue is not a means for assimilation in the sense that one side expands and incorporates the other into its “self.” Dialogue must be practiced on the basis of “non-self.” We have to allow what is good, beautiful, and meaningful in the other’s tradition to transform us.

But reality is erratic. Surprising. Elegant. We will never earn a respite from all of the things in our lives encouraging us to grow, pushing us to make difficult choices or to strengthen our resolve. There is always something demanding more of us—demanding more of our authentic selves. What is this authentic self? I believe it is the part of us that knows our true capabilities. It knows the desires of our heart, and the strength of our spirit—and life is going to keep offering us the opportunity to get it right (even if it just so happens to kill us in the meantime).

Those who practice the Dharma of the Mahayana in accordance with the Buddha's intention are known as bodhisattvas. If you practice the teachings of the Mahayana, you can reach the level of the great bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri, in the best case, or become like the Buddha's two main disciples Shariputra and Maudgalyayana, who were gifted with insight and miraculous powers. Even if you are unable to practice to the full in this life, you will at least be reborn among the principal disciples of the future Buddha, Maitreya. The buddhas being those who have totally conquered the enemies of ignorance and the other emotions, they are often referred to by the synonym 'Victorious Ones,' while bodhisattvas, in many texts including the Tibetan original of the root verses of these teachings, are called 'children of the Victorious Ones'. Who, then, are the children of the buddhas? In the case of Buddha Shakyamuni, the child of his body was his physical son, Prince Rahula. The children of his speech were all those who heard him teach and attained the level of arhart - the great beings such as Shariputra, Maudgalayana, the sixteen arhats and others, who became the holders of his teachings. Above all, the children of the buddha's mind are the great bodhisattvas like Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri, who carry out their noble intention to bring all beings to enlightenment. For, just as a great monarch with a thousand children would choose the one with the most perfect qualities to be his heir, so, too, a buddha regards as his authentic heirs the bodhisattvas who have perfected the union of wisdom and compassion.

We still talk a lot about ‘authentic’ cultures, but if by ‘authentic’ we mean something that developed independently, and that consists of ancient local traditions free of external influences, then there are no authentic cultures left on earth. Over the last few centuries, all cultures were changed almost beyond recognition by a flood of global influences. One of the most interesting examples of this globalisation is ‘ethnic’ cuisine. In an Italian restaurant we expect to find spaghetti in tomato sauce; in Polish and Irish restaurants lots of potatoes; in an Argentinian restaurant we can choose between dozens of kinds of beefsteaks; in an Indian restaurant hot chillies are incorporated into just about everything; and the highlight at any Swiss café is thick hot chocolate under an alp of whipped cream. But none of these foods is native to those nations. Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all Mexican in origin; they reached Europe and Asia only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico. Julius Caesar and Dante Alighieri never twirled tomato-drenched spaghetti on their forks (even forks hadn’t been invented yet), William Tell never tasted chocolate, and Buddha never spiced up his food with chilli. Potatoes reached Poland and Ireland no more than 400 years ago. The only steak you could obtain in Argentina in 1492 was from a llama. Hollywood films have perpetuated an image of the Plains Indians as brave horsemen, courageously charging the wagons of European pioneers to protect the customs of their ancestors. However, these Native American horsemen were not the defenders of some ancient, authentic culture. Instead, they were the product of a major military and political revolution that swept the plains of western North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a consequence of the arrival of European horses. In 1492 there were no horses in America. The culture of the nineteenth-century Sioux and Apache has many appealing features, but it was a modern culture – a result of global forces – much more than ‘authentic’.

When we package the Dharma in a flashy box with no contents, we offer only the skin of Dharma. It might be better for authentic Dharma to die than to establish large groups and spew out teachers regurgitating sound bites like those that sell special transient mind-states as the Buddha mind.

Specifically, for those of you familiar with the various turnings of the wheel of dharma, or the Buddha’s teachings, this is a book that deals with Mahayana teachings, that is, teachings on bringing an open mind and heart to all of our worldly interactions. This is a guidebook to becoming the kind of authentic leader this world needs. I

Some of the true signs of being unstuck are friendliness, lightheartedness, receptivity, and joy. It’s a friendliness born of aliveness, awe, and fascination. You become able to look kindly into the eyes of others without fear because there’s nothing in the way—no shame, judgments, secrets, or agitation. Authentic warmth and friendliness are hallmarks of people who are free in their hearts and in their lives.

However, as we sit in meditation, to be authentically aware of our selflessness and realize our true selves at the same time we should not let ourselves be agitated by the operation of Mana-vijnana. Hence, it is said, “If you meet the Buddha, kill him; if you meet your ancestor, kill him.” We must stir up our courage to be free from all the phenomena which arise to disturb our meditation. Makyo will then unconditionally surrender and perish and we will be admitted to the state of mind comparable to that layer of ice 25 million miles thick as described by Hakuin.

What a strange business this acting is, Pyke said; you are trying to convince people that you're someone else, that this is not-me. The way to do it is this, he said: when in character, playing not-me, you have to be yourself. To make your not-self real you have to steal from your authentic self. A false stroke, a wrong note, anything pretended, and to the audience you are as obvious as a Catholic naked in a mosque. The closer you play to yourself the better. Paradox of paradoxes: to be someone else successfully you must be yourself! This I learned!

Even when you give a particle of dust, you should rejoice in your own act because you authentically transmit the merit of all buddhas and begin to practice an act of a bodhisattva.

Be authentic. Be genuine.

Be Who You Are Don't waste your life trying to become somebody else.   Don't waste your life trying to live up to your performance expectations.   Don't waste your life imitating others.   Don't waste your life living out other people's expectations.   Don't waste your life envious of other people.   Be authentic. Be genuine. Be real. Be yourself.   You won the lottery, you were born. You won the lottery, you are you.   You

Be Who You Are Don't waste your life trying to become somebody else.   Don't waste your life trying to live up to your performance expectations.   Don't waste your life imitating others.   Don't waste your life living out other people's expectations.   Don't waste your life envious of other people.   Be authentic. Be genuine. Be real. Be yourself.   You won the lottery, you were born. You won the lottery, you are you.   You are Buddha in Blue Jeans.   Enjoy being yourself!   You will learn this sitting quietly.  

The required personal experience may be mediated through a community or church, but it has to be one’s own. Without such a personal, mystical happening, one cannot authentically and honestly call oneself religious.

The buddhas and ancestors were originally ordinary beings like us, and at some point we too will definitely become buddhas and Zen ancestors.

The bodhisattvas Manjushri and Samantabhadra, attendants of Shakyamuni Buddha who stand at his right and left in Buddhist iconography, represent the two aspects of the perfected character of the Buddha: great wisdom and great compassion. But these bodhisattvas are not merely symbols in our consciousness, and thinking them to be unreal is a mistake. Likewise, buddhas such as Vairochana, Baisajyaguru, and Amitabha, as well as the myriad buddhas mentioned in the Sutra of the Three Thousand Names of the Buddha are not only names of the infinite potential of our essential nature, but are actual buddhas.

It is inevitable that all human beings will perfectly realize their essential nature. Each of us, as perfect and infinite existence, is of necessity on the path to buddhahood, even in the phenomenal world. This is what we call “the process of becoming a buddha.

Just sitting” is the English translation of the Japanese word shikantaza. Shikan means “only” or “just.” The za of taza means “to sit,” and the syllable ta is a verbal intensifier. Whereas both counting the breath and following the breath use the breath as their point of focus, just sitting consists of just the sitting itself. In this sense, it is the purest form of meditation, the original meditation practiced by the buddhas and Zen ancestors. If you are sitting to penetrate the innermost recesses of yourself, just sitting is the ideal form of meditation. Dōgen Zenji broke through to complete enlightenment when practicing just sitting.

In authentic Zen practice, the living Zen master is the highest authority on Buddhism, and students should not accept the interference of even Shakyamuni or Amitabha Buddha when it comes to their practice.

Though the practitioner may be unaware of it, he or she is a complete manifestation of the essential world; we all experience the same single buddhahood. From the first step in our practice to the very last, even if there are billions of stages on the way, the content of the meditation at any two stages is exactly the same. We are forever treading the buddha ground and perfectly manifesting buddha nature.

Silence is not merely a discipline; rather, it is primarily a state of being. It is in, through, and as silence that we discover our authentic identity, the Self (ātman, purusha). Thus silence partakes of the golden nature of the ultimate Reality. By comparison, speech is like the silver-bodied Moon, which has no light of its own but is illuminated by the radiance of the Sun. Through silence we can attune ourselves to the supreme stillness of the single Being, which is utter silence that is never disrupted by sound. Jean Klein, a twentieth-century exponent of Advaita Vedānta, comments: The Self is silent awareness and cannot be defined in terms of a silence as opposed to noise. How should we react towards silence or its opposite? If you want to rid yourself of agitation so as to attain a state of silence, you reject, you fight, you defend yourself. But if on the contrary you were to accept it, the agitation—which is part of this silence—will disappear within it. Then you will reach the silence of the Self, beyond silence and agitation.2 Once that great, sustaining Reality has been discovered, all our actions, thoughts, and utterances become spontaneous signals of that infinite silence, which is sheer bliss. Thus, the words of the enlightened adepts have transformative power, because they address that part in us which instinctively knows of that unsurpassed silence. Just as in ordinary life, speech and silence are intimately interwoven, so also in spiritual life do they complement one another. This has been recognized particularly in Taoism. In the language of the I Ching, speech is yang, or the masculine pole of silence; silence is yin, or the feminine pole. Together they are responsible for the creativity of human interaction. In spiritual life we cultivate sacred silence to regenerate our inner being so that we can return to our daily activities and to speech from a new perspective. In his monumental work A Study of History, the great British historian Arnold Toynbee has written about the creative withdrawal of the spiritual heroes of the past—the founders and inspirers of religions. They sought out the wilderness in order to find the fountain of truth within their own being. Then they returned, strengthened and ready to uplift humanity by sharing with others their extraordinary discovery. “Silence,” said Ovid, “is strength.” We need not have the spiritual standing of a Moses, Jesus, Mahāvīra, or Gautama the Buddha to practice sacred silence and benefit from it.

BUKKO SAID: TAKING THINGS EASILY AND WITHOUT FORCING, AFTER SOME TIME THE RUSH OF THOUGHT, OUTWARD AND INWARD, SUBSIDES NATURALLY, AND THE TRUE FACE SHOWS ITSELF. That's what I have been telling you. To be a buddha is not a difficult job. It is not some achievement for which you need a Nobel Prize. It is the easiest thing in the world, because it has already happened without your knowing. The buddha is already breathing in you. Just a little recognition, just a little turning inwards... and that has not to be done forcibly. If you do it forcibly you will miss the point. It is very delicate. You have to look inward playfully, not seriously. That's what he means by "taking things easily." Don't take anything seriously. Existence is very easy. You have got your life without any effort, you are living your life without any effort. You are breathing perfectly well without being reminded; your heartbeat continues even in your sleep -- so easy is existence with you! But you are not so easy with existence. You are very close-fisted. You want everything to be turned into an 'achievement'. Enlightenment cannot be an achievement. That which you have already -- how can it be an achievement? The authentic master simply takes away things which you don't have and you believe you have, and he gives you that which you already have. You are having many things which you don't have at all, you just believe that you have them. The master's function is that of a surgeon, to cut all that is not you and leave behind just the essential core -- the eternal being. It is a very easy phenomenon; you can do it on your own. There are no problems and no risk in taking things easily, but people take things very tensely. They take things very seriously, and that spoils the whole game. And remember, life is a game. Once you understand it as a game, a deep playfulness arises on its own accord. The victory is not the point; the point is to play totally, joyously, dancingly. What is called playfulness is very essential in the inquiry of your own being.

In the Pāli version over 5,000 suttas are gathered together, representing the teaching activity of the Buddha over forty-five years. Even so it appears that much was thought to have been lost after only the first thousand years of the transmission. Supposedly recited by Ānanda at the First Council and so personally witnessed and authenticated by him, each sutta begins with the words ‘Thus have I heard. At one time ...’. However, as already suggested, many of them post-date this time, and some can be seen to be composite in character, with an early core surrounded by additions.

It is because of this point that Gautam Buddha denies the existence of one God. He denies one God, not because he is an atheist; he denies one God because he respects every living being as a god. There are as many gods as there are living beings. A few have attained to the realization of who they are, and most of the people among the living beings are still asleep. They do not know who they are but their ignorance does not change their nature The moment one becomes conscious of himself, he is no longer a mortal; he becomes an immortal. He has always been an immortal but because of his misunderstanding, he degraded himself into being a mortal, into someone who is going to die. But still, those who are aware of their being know that nobody dies. Death is an illusion.The authentic religion does not teach you to worship. The authentic religion teaches you to discover your immortality, to discover the god within you.

As Dogen approached death, what practice did he choose? Did he enter into the utmost serene and radiant concentration? Did he perhaps give his final, transcendent exposition of the authentic dharma? This is what he did: on a long piece of white paper he wrote three large black characters: buddha, dharma, and sangha. He hung this paper on a pillar in his sickroom. In his great illness he roused himself to walk around that pillar, and as he walked he chanted, “I take refuge in buddha, I take refuge in dharma, I take refuge in sangha.

There is no global authority to ascertain and to confirm "authentic" Buddhists. While Buddhist sanghas (monastic communities) have the power to defrock monks from their particular community, there is no global platform to survey all monks, much less an institution to assess the viability of Buddhist laity.

Men and women complement each other’s strengths well. However, when a male perspective dominates female ones, the world ends up living narratives that may be successful in some situations but simply cannot get us the results we want in others. For example, if we want peace, why do we keep telling war stories? Why don’t we turn to the half of the human race that has fostered other means of resolving conflict? Force can stop violent behaviors temporarily, but authentic sharing through story, which often has been nurtured by women, can move antagonists toward understanding one another and building the trust that leads to lasting peace. Similarly, in our politics, warlike competition prevails when candidates run for office, but to govern successfully, they need to utilize more feminine modes, reaching across the aisle to solve problems together. All of the major religions in the world instruct us to love one another as a road to a better collective and personal quality of life. Jesus repeated this decree over and over, in slightly different words: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV). “If you love me, feed my sheep” (adapted from John 21:17). And quoting the Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39, ASV). It was his major message. Rabbi Sefer Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidic Judaism, spoke to the deep roots of love in the Hebrew faith: “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Why? Because every human being has a root in the Unity, and to reject the minutest particle of the Unity is to reject it all.”1 The sayings of Muhammad, selected and translated by the Sufi Kabir Helminski, include the very strong statement, “You will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another.”2 Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet, proclaimed, “It is Love that holds everything together.”3 The Buddha enjoined us to “radiate boundless love towards the entire world—above, below, and across—unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.”4 Loving-kindness remains a cardinal practice of modern Buddhism. In the Hindu tradition, love also is the religion’s central tenet. Swami Sivananda sums this up in these words: “Your duty is to treat everybody with love as a manifestation of the Lord.”5

There is a Tibetan saying that just as a pure stream of water must have its source in pure mountain snow, an authentic teaching of the Dharma must have its origin in the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. That is why there is such emphasis placed on the lineage of the teachings.

In contrast to orthodox notions of climbing up a ladder seeking perfection, psychologist Carl Jung describes the spiritual path as an unfolding into wholeness. Rather than trying to vanquish waves of emotion and rid ourselves of an inherently impure self, we turn around and embrace this life in all its realness—broken, messy, mysterious and vibrantly alive. By cultivating an unconditional and accepting presence, we are no longer battling against ourselves, keeping our wild and imperfect self in a cage of judgment and mistrust. Instead, we are discovering the freedom of becoming authentic and fully alive.

A flower is not a flower. It is made only of non-flower elements — sunshine, clouds, time, space, earth, minerals, gardeners, and so on. A true flower contains the whole universe. If we return any one of these non-flower elements to its source, there will be no flower. That is why we can say, “A rose is not a rose. That is why it is an authentic rose.” We have to remove our concept of rose if we want to touch the real rose.

Be authentic. Be genuine. Be real. Be yourself.