Henry Steel Olcott Quotes

Everything in the world of Matter is unreal; the only reality is in the world of Spirit.

Physiologically speaking, man's body is completely changed every seven years.

He found that the pleasures of the eye, the ear, the taste, touch and smell are fleeting and deceptive: he who gives value to them brings only disappointment and bitter sorrow upon himself.

118. Q. Why does ignorance cause suffering? A. Because it makes us prize what is not worth prizing, grieve when we should not grieve, consider real what is not real but only illusionary, and pass our lives in the pursuit of worthless objects, neglecting what is in reality most valuable.

Eternal Rest. If I have the temerity to prefer my own definition of the spirit of Buḍḍha's doctrine, it is because I think that all the misconceptions of it have arisen from a failure to understand his idea of what is real and what is unreal, what worth longing and striving for and what not. From this misconception have come all the unfounded charges that Buḍḍhism is an "atheistical," that is to say, a grossly materialistic, a nihilistic, a negative, a vice-breeding religion. Buḍḍhism denies the existence of a personal God—true: therefore—well, therefore, and notwithstanding all this, its teaching is neither what may be called properly atheistical, nihilistic, negative, nor provocative of vice. I will try to make my meaning clear, and the advancement of modern scientific research helps in this direction. Science divides the universe for us into two elements—matter and force;

Location 29-30 [One who buys butcher's meat or poultry violates this gâthâ. For by paying the butcher for meat be has killed, the buyer shares his sin by "sanctioning" his act.] ========== Location 31-31 A "creature" is something created (by God), but Buddhists regard all living organisms as evolved by due process of natural law. ========== Location 65-65 Hatred is never quenched by hatred; hatred ceases by [showing] love; this is an old rule. ========== Location 66-66 Let a man overcome anger by love, evil by good, the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth. ========== Location 131-132 The evil-doer suffers in this world, and he suffers in the next; he suffers in both. He suffers when he thinks of the evil he has done; he suffers more when going on the evil path. ========== Location 132-134 Surely an evil deed does not turn on a sudden like milk [curdling]; it is like fire smouldering in the ashes, which burns the fool. . . . An evil deed [Page 10] kills not instantly, as does a sword, but it follows the evil doer [even] into the next world. ========== Location 186-187 "He abused me, he reviled me, he beat me, he subdued me"; he who keeps this in his mind, and who feels resentment, will find no peace. ========== Location 208-208 Purity and impurity belong to oneself, no one can purify another. ~~Golden Rules of Buddhism by Henry Steel Olcott

The thoughtful student, in scanning the religious history of the race, has one fact continually forced upon his notice, viz., that there is an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to the weakness of our common humanity.

He found that the pleasures of the eye, the ear, the taste, touch and smell are fleeting and deceptive: he who gives value to them brings only disappointment and bitter sorrow upon himself. The

Everything in the world of Matter is unreal; the only reality is in the world of Spirit. Emancipate yourselves from the tyranny of the former; strive to attain the latter.

Intercessor in Heaven, is besought with prayer and

euhemerisation,

The thoughtful student, in scanning the religious history of the race, has one fact continually forced upon his notice, viz., that there is an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to the weakness of our common humanity. Look where we will, we find the saint-like man exalted into a divine personage and worshipped for a god. Though

display vanity in their worship and ostentation in their almsgiving; that they are fostering sects as bitterly as Hinḍūs? So much the worse for the laymen: there is the example of Buḍḍha and his Law. Am I told that Buḍḍhist priests are ignorant, idle fosterers of superstitions grafted on their religion by foreign kings? So much the worse for the priests: the life of their Divine Master shames them and shows their unworthiness to wear his yellow robe or carry his beggar's

by one thought—the vanity of finite existence, the priceless value of the one condition of

4. What he taught may be summed up in a few words, as the perfume of many roses may be distilled into a few drops of attar: Everything in the world of Matter is unreal; the only reality is in the world of Spirit. Emancipate yourselves from the tyranny of the former; strive to attain the latter. The Rev. Samuel Beal, in his Catena of Buḍḍhist Scriptures from the Chinese puts it differently. "The idea underlying the Buddhist religious system is," he says, "simply this: 'all is vanity'.

he? When did he live? How did he live?

vice-breeding

Earth is a show, and Heaven is a vain reward." Primitive Buḍḍhism was engrossed, absorbed,

accounting for their phenomena by their combinations, and making both eternal and obedient to eternal and immutable law. The speculations of men of science have carried them to the outermost verge of the physical universe. Behind them lie not only a thousand brilliant triumphs by which a part of Nature's secrets have been wrung from her, but also more thousands of failures to fathom her deep mysteries. They have proved thought material, since it is the evolution of the gray tissue of the brain, and a recent German experimentalist, Professor Dr. Jäger, claims to have proved that man's soul is "a volatile odoriferous principle, capable of solution in glycerine". Psychogen is the name he gives to it, and his experiments show that it is present not merely in the body as a whole, but in every individual cell, in the ovum, and even in the ultimate elements of protoplasm. I need hardly say to so intelligent

Approaching the question of the hour in this spirit of precaution, what do we find are the probabilities respecting the life of Sākya Muni? Who was he? When did he live? How did he live? What did he teach? A most careful comparison of authorities and analysis of evidence establishes, I think, the following data: 1. He was the son of a king. 2. He lived between six and seven centuries before Christ. 3. He resigned his royal state and went to live in the jungle, and among the lowest and most unhappy classes, so as to learn the secret of human pain and misery by personal experience: tested every known

Buddha taught that we should not merely not be evil, but that we should be positively good.

I taught you not to believe merely because you have heard, but when you believed of your own consciousness, then to act accordingly and abundantly." (See the Kālāma Sutta of the Anguttara

A. The eight parts of this path are called angas. They are: 1. Right Belief (as to the law of Causation, or Karma); 2. Right Thought; 3. Right Speech; 4. Right Action; 5. Right Means of Livelihood; 6. Right Exertion; 7. Right Remembrance and Self-discipline; 8. Right Concentration of Thought. The man who keeps these angas in mind and follows them will be free from sorrow and ultimately reach salvation.

Hindrances? A. Greed, Malice, Sloth, Pride, and Doubt.

This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history of his life

teachings of this heroic prince of Kapilavasṭu? Lessons

This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful incidents, to fit it to the new character which has been posthumously given him.

THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 1. Question. Of what religion[1] are you? Answer. The Buddhist. 2. Q. What is Buddhism? A. It is a body of teachings given out by the great personage known as the Buddha. 3. Q. Is "Buddhism" the best name for this teaching? A. No; that is only a western term: the best name for it is Bauddha Dharma. 4. Q. Would you call a person a Buddhist who had merely been born of Buddha parents? A. Certainly not. A Buddhist is one who not only professes belief in the Buddha as the noblest of Teachers, in the Doctrine preached by Him, and in the Brotherhood of Arhats, but practises His precepts in daily life.

Q. Was the Buddha God? A. No. Buddha Dharma teaches no "divine" incarnation.

there is an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to the weakness of our common humanity.

gives