Four Noble Buddha Quotes

Isn't it - I can't decide whether to say "ironic" or "appropriate" - that modern technology now brings us wisdom that would otherwise have been considered oh so 2,500 years ago? I refer here to sharing timeless tips from one Siddhartha Gautama, the prince who lived 500 years before the Common Era, a.k.a. the Buddha.

But sage as he was, as relevant today as when he lived, quoting the Buddha is dangerous business. Nothing he said was written down until some 300 years after his death; it was all passed down orally. By the time it got to us - etched onto soap wrapping at 5-star hotels - something's been lost in the translation, like that children's game of telephone. Who knows, or should care, exactly what he said? In fact, who needs to know the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the yellow hat Tibetans from the black hats, to attain Buddha's nature? The lovely thing about Buddhism is you can take its message at its simplest or at its most complicatedness, and it all comes down to common ethical sense. In the age of McBuddhism, a few pithy pearls might be just the little reminders we need to keep us stumbling forward on the path. And yes, others have weighed in with similar advice - "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," "God helps those who help themselves," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - but I find these particularly helpful at various bumpy patches along that path.

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

This does not mean be cynical and distrusting. This is not reconstituted and reincarnated Abbie Hoffman. The idea here is think for yourself, be true to those thoughts, and base those thoughts on your own experience, not someone else's. It also suggests that we follow our own wisdom, gained by that experience, and not follow gurus or ministers or rabbis or, lately, life coaches merely because they say so. Test their "truth" against your own experience-tested truth and trust yours. This is good advice anytime but it's especially appropriate as we become bombarded with increasingly venomous and often erroneous, if not entirely false, campaign advertising.

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned."

If I could whisper this line into the ears of soldiers on the front lines, and politicians who send those troops onto the front lines, there would be no need to study war no more. If I could recite it to couples who've been harboring resentment for years, who bicker rather than let it go, I predict the divorce rate would drop by half. If I could slip it into the cocktails of alcoholics who drink out of anger, bitterness, frustration and internalized rage against society in general, there would be a whole lot more healthy livers around - and a whole lotta happier people around. If I had a nickel for every time I should have reminded myself of it - but forgot - I would be a very rich man.

"Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world."

In a world of words, where you, me, my fellow writers and fellow readers live, the opportunities to experience the effect (positive and negative) of words are boundless. Same holds true for everyone who speaks words to each other. Or even anyone who speaks only to himself. In the moral compass the Buddha devised for living sanely and serenely, called the Eightfold Path, this quotation would fit into the path called "right speech." If we abstain from false speech, slanderous speech, harsh speech and idle chatter, if we could think about the implications of the things that come trippingly out of our mouths or that come dashingly off our fingertips in emails and blogs (or even in comments responding to blogs) before we release them into the universe, just imagine how lovely communication would be.

"Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it."

My father used to remind me when I'd get lost in life, and I have gotten lost often, that when I was about 10 years old I shared a precocious insight into what motives me, and all people.

"I seem to do best at the stuff I love to do," I am said to have said. Mind you, I was 10.

This is reconstituted Joseph Campbell: follow your bliss. Whether consciously or not, Campbell himself made the bridge to Buddhism in his conversation with interviewer Bill Moyers, expanding on his famous message to "follow your bliss." He said: "If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

Follow Perry Garfinkel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Perry Garfinkel

Comments

[johnnyjust]

"Believe nothing, no matter what you read."
Oh, crap...I just read that.
Should I not believe it because I read it, or believe it because Bude A. said it?
"Ambiguity­...the devil's volleyball­." Emo Phillips.
Seriously, though, how does Buddhism jive with evolution? Is enlightenment a process of evolution? Or are they both crap?

[wmbear]

YOU CAN REPEAT WISE SAYINGS TILL YOU'RE BLUE IN THE FACE AND WHAT'VE YOU GOT?...

A blue face....

[Guitarsandmore]

The Sermon at Benares

These two extremes, monks, are not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the world. What are the two? That conjoined with the passions and luxury, low, vulgar, common, ignoble, and useless. Avoiding the two extremes the Tathagata (the perfect one, or the Buddha) has gained the enlightenment of the Middle Path, which produces insight and knowledge, and tends to calm, to higher knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana.

This is the noble Eightfold way: Namely, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This, monks is the Middle Path, of which the Taghagata has gained enlightenment, which produces insight and knowledge, and tends to calm, to higher knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana.

Now this, monks is the noble truth of pain: Birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, sorrow, lamentation, dejection, and despair are painful. Contact with unpleasant things, not getting what one wishes is painful. In short, the five groups of (skandhas) are painful.

Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the cause of pain: the craving, which tends to rebirth, combined with pleasure and lust, finding pleasure her and there; namely the craving for passion, the craving for existence, and the craving for non existence.

[NewFrontier]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI9JP_saR0U

[lungfish]

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, Kill him."

[Amilius]

In my own appreciation of Siddhartha and other avatars, I observe that the wisdom they share arises from two laws of the Universe: The Law of One and The Law of Grace.

The first Law is "We are all One". It is a simple statement of truth these sages clearly understood. It is literally true, not just figuratively. Many of us simply choose to imagine that it is not so. This imagining is itself a simple thing to imagine. This law, suggested by the teachings of Siddhartha and Jesus, was recalled by Edgar Cayce in his readings in the 20's as the Law of One.

The second Law is also mentioned by name in the Cayce readings, but only once. In the past year I figured out what it is. The Law of Grace is "All choice generates benefit for purposes of appreciati­on." Gracious choices generate benevolence for sharing. Ungracious choices generate instructive consequence to remind one that a more gracious choice was missed in the choosing. Both benevolence and instructive consequence may be graciously appreciated. Sages have implied their understanding of this Law by teaching others to 'Choose for others only as one would choose for one's self.' This Golden Rule guarantees gracious choices when honored.
We live in a time when justifications seem to distract us from the unpleasant feelings and instructive consequences that arise from our ungracious choices in social, political, religious, and economic realms of experience. If we were to regard our sacred texts and histories from the perspective of Grace, we would see the Law of Grace functioning in the course of events and results.
The thing about the Law of Grace is that it proves the Law of One. One Being of Absolute Awareness would design the realization of shared experience only this way before embarking on the journey of Many. Confusion, pain, and fear arise from misunderstanding these laws. This is something Buddha understood as well. There is only Buddha. We are all One. One designed it this way. Namaste.

[Wiredwilly]

Yeah, we are all one. Hitler is Gandhi, Picasso is Britany Spears, Hillary Clinton is Willie Mays, Edgar Cayce is Barbara Walters, Ayn Rand is Karl Marx, Malcolm X is Jerry Lewis, Bob Dylan is Winston Churchill, George Bush is Mother Theresa, Trees are Oatmeal, Donald Trump is Lord Byron, and Arianna Huffington is Little Orphan Annie. What UNIVERSE are you living in ? The underlying ultimate unknowable may or may not be One, but the manifestations are anything but.

[Guitarsandmore]

One thing for certain, we all share the same planet with finite resources. You fuck up the environment and we all go down – Britney, Picasso, Hillary, and Barabara Walters et al.
No one will be spared. Conversely, if we improve the condition of the planet, we all benefit. Stretch that analogy to the economy, health care, education, etc. Screw up the health care system enough and everyone will suffer. Another plague could start tomorrow because not enough people care to do the right thing. We have to think of the human race as ONE in order to save ourselves and improve our condition. All the nurses and doctors must work hard to follow the guidelines and the politicians must make health care available to everyone. When people act only for themselves the rest lose and then we all lose. When we act responsibly everyone benefits.

[taoist]

Again lumping everyone into a group is excepted practice. Christians that go to church are just wasteing time? Who are you to tell if a person does or does not get closer to God if they go to church? It makes me wonder when everyone is lumped into what people like you think what they feel.

[dfrossar]

Buddha says:

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

Pandu says:

That is just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The Buddha said it? Wow.

I say:

Depends on how you look at the quote. If it's saying, look at the world and explain it yourself, off the top of your head -- then, yes, that makes no sense (in my view, at least).

If the quote means, Think for yourself -- that's better.

If the quote means, always search for the truth through any, and many, means available to you -- that's very nearly a call for empiricism.

So ... after 2500 years maybe we don't have too firm a grasp on context anymore. I'll still go on interpreting the quote under the second and third interpretations.

But, as the Buddha said, your mileage may differ.

[UtahLiberal435]

Buddhism is indeed an attractive philosophy. But it has its problems too. For example, the Communist Chinese invaded Tibet and razed most Buddhist monasteries. An atrocity, to be sure, but less known is the fact that Tibetan monasteries ate up 85% of the gross domestic product of Tibet...ex­actly like the Catholic churches of medieval Europe impoverished the peasants that fed them, built their cathedrals, and paid their tithes. It was normal for young Tibetan boys to escape the monasteries like they were fleeing prison. If captured, they were returned and put in isolation. Famous sherpa Nawang Gombu actually jumped through an outhouse pit to escape from the monastery where his parents sent him. During an interview, he wouldn't answer why, but became very disturbed and uncomfortable when I asked him about conditions there.

When I asked some NGO friends of mine in Tibet about pedophilia in the monasteries (like Catholic priests and altar boys) they got this big, frightened look in their eyes and said "We never go there." Ahh, but Buddhism is quaint, traditional, and non-Western, so it must somehow be considered superior, I guess.

[Wiredwilly]

The Dharma is invisible to those caught up in aggression.
It's somewhat like a hysterical madman running through a forest fire so fast he doesn't notice he's run past the water hose. Nice to see a post on something other than the absurd machinations of self-serving politicians.

[gala1]

maybe this is the antidote..­.......and they are running right past it

gala

[Wiredwilly]

gala -

:)

you noticed !

ww

[Erdgeist]

"He who has eyes can see the sickening sight,
Why does not God set his creatures right?
If his wide power no limit can restrain, Why is his hand so rarely spread to bless?
Why are his creatures all condemned to pain?
Why does he not to all give happiness?
Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail?
Why triumphs falsehood -- truth and justice fail?
I count your God one among the unjust, who made a world in which to shelter wrong." — Bhuridatta Jataka No. 453

[geobushono]

think about nothing.
think about nothing for 10 minutes.
think about nothing for 20 minutes.
think about nothing.

[wmbear]

UH...

Uh....

[MajorKong]

I was thinking of converting to Buddhism, just because I'm starting to look like him.

[Ohg]

Richard Gere is a buddhist and offers some insight into the practical application of his faith in his life.....
http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/01/25/richard-gere-video-on-being-a-buddhist/

[Krackonis]

The Nation of fearful warmongers must change. Because the rest of the world is not tolerant of it's beligerance.

[UtahLiberal435]

Uh, since the beginning of the 20th Century the 'rest of the world' has seldom done anything about belligerent nations...­instead waiting for the U.S. to bail them out of most international disputes.
So, while most of us here detest the current attitudes in U.S. foreign policy, we're not holding our breath that the 'rest of the world' will get off their Euro-asses, much less do squat. They never have before.