Tao Te Ching
Enlightenment
Most may consider “enlightenment” as a far and distant goal, unattainable for all but the most exceptionally superior and advanced, incomparably beyond the common person. Contrariwise however, in the Buddhist/Taoist/Confucian/Hindu and mystical traditions; enlightenment is understood as our basic state of being. In order to control their populations, governments frequently promote the view that people are deeply and sinfully flawed to justify their despotic political, cultural, and religious positions as well as genocide, imperialism, racism, and misogyny. This potently spreads epidemic beliefs in human “Basic Badness” and helps keep ruling classes in power. It also leads to self-contempt, suicide, war, murders, and various atrocities. The contrary view of enlightenment has a foundation in an experience of Basic Goodness that builds a foundation for democracy, personal choice, and individual liberation. When this attitude came into Western Civilization, it became the bedrock for the Enlightenment, Humanism, Science, and the Age of Reason. When this attitude comes into the world of philosophy, it brings an appreciation for everyday life, nature, compassion for other people and animals. When it comes into the spiritual realm, it brings realizations like the wu wei of Taoism, the Buddhist approach of Journey Without Goal, and mystical understandings of oneness and non-duality. The emphasis shifts from goal-oriented attainment to realizations of who and what we really are.
Quotes (77)
“A sage’s movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo.”
“Avoiding extremes, the wise gain the experience of the Middle Path which produces insight, calms, and leads to higher knowledge, enlightenment.”
“We must go beyond word and discrimination and enter upon the path of realization.”
“‘Love' is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”
“Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home.”
“A special teaching, without scriptures, beyond words and letters, pointing to the mind-essence of man, seeing directly into one’s nature, attaining enlightenment.”
“The kingdom of God comes not with observation… the kingdom of God is within you”
“Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.”
“It is called, ‘consummation of incomparable enlightenment.’ attained by freedom from separate personal selfhood and by cultivating all kinds of goodness… though there is no goodness; such is merely a name.”
“Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.”
“Whoever realizes that from the very beginning there has been nothing other than mind, has acquired the realization of all the Buddhas of the three times.”
“Now I know the pearl of the Buddha-nature, know its use: a boundless perfect sphere”
“The basis for realizing enlightenment is a human body. Male or female, there is no great difference. But if she develops the mind bent on enlightenment, the woman's body is better.”
“A mere glimpse… of pure light form destroys mental fiction like an elephant berserk.”
“At the moment of my realization, my mind basked in the radiance of its own emptiness. Even Buddha became a meaningless label.”
“Bodhi is attainable at the very moment we make up our minds to achieve it....”
“When the conscious spirit transforms into the primordial spirit, it attains an unending capacity for transformation and brings the six-fold present, the golden spirit.”
“When you aren't either attached to or detached from, you enjoy perfect unobstructed freedom, the seat of enlightenment.”
“Talking about ‘attaining enlightenment’ is the one of the best ways to drive true realization far away.”
“Whoever realizes the purity of his own mind, sees through the Buddha's eyes.”
“The true nature of passions has turned out to be the sublime knowledge of emancipation.”
“When there is continuous awareness from mind-moment to mind-moment you will naturally meet the Source on all sides.”
“Naturally the mind flowers, radiance shines out, you travel without hindrance, free at last.”
“I seek no state of enlightenment. Neither do I remain where no enlightenment exists. If hundreds of birds strew my path with flowers, such praise would be meaningless.”
“A thunderclap under the clear blue sky
All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.”
“enlightenment after enlightenment with no trace of enlightenment”
“Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.”
“There is no beginning to practice nor end to enlightenment; There is no beginning to enlightenment nor end to practice.”
“When a person sees All in all, then they stand beyond mere understanding.”
“Enlightenment sets the mind free and is like returning home from an alien world, like a mother and child huddling together, like a light gathered and beamed onto its source.”
“What is this precious love and laughter budding in our hearts?
Is is the glorious sound of a soul waking up!”
“I have not heard of a single Buddha, past or present, who has been enlightened by sacred prayers and scriptures.”
“The Buddha sells the doctrine;
The patriarchs sell the Buddha;
She sells her body — That the passions of all beings may be quieted.
Form is emptiness, the passions are enlightenment.”
“This very earth is the Lotus Land of purity,
And this very body is the Body of the Buddha.”
“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Have courage to use your own reason!”
“Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.”
“Delusion and enlightenment produce one another… You get rid of this, then grab hold of that. Don’t you see how stupid it is!”
“Even if all the Buddhas were to appear before me, I would have no doubts for them to clarify.”
“The quest for enlightenment only makes sense because buddha-nature is already present.”
“To be awake is to be alive… millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in hundreds of millions is awake enough for a poetic or divine life.”
“Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light
and of every moment of your life”
“Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment... the elimination of egoism and pride which always plunges the world into primeval barbarism and strife”
“The qualities of enlightenment are inherent in consciousness but can remain invisible for a long time... always present in us but latent until we recognize it”
“'Yes,' I thought, 'this is it, my world, the real world, the secret where there are no teachers, no schools, no unanswerable questions, where one can be without having to ask anything'... In real life, I have promised myself this splendor again and again, but I have never kept my promise.”
“The greatest obstacle to enlightenment is getting past your delusion that you are not already enlightened.”
“My suffocating soul, unable any longer to fit within its cage of clay, was hanging from my scalp and weighting whether or not to flee... It was being convulsed by a cry, a command to break our prison bars of morality, shame, and hope, and to give ourselves over to, lose ourselves in, become one with the fearful, enticing Lover who lies in wait in the darkness and whom we call God... I felt that love, death, and God were one and the same.”
“If only we could see man crucified and man resurrected in every heartbeat, could sense that ants, stars, ghosts, and ideas all issue from the same mother as we do, that we all suffer and all hope the day will come when our eyes will be opened and we shall see that we all are one”
“The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind... the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.”
“If you meet someone never looking for a reward, acting completely unselfishly but leaving visible traces on the world, you are in the presence of an enlightened, unforgettable character.”
“To the enlightened man... whose consciousness embraces the universe, to him the universe becomes his 'body', while the physical body becomes the manifestation of the universal mind.”
“Taoism and Buddhism pursue the same aims... The highest goal of Taoism as well as Buddhism is a state of enlightenment which the Buddha defines as the overcoming of greed, hatred, and ignorance—not stupidity but the ignoring of facts which appear uncomfortable or against our desires.”
“When your practice is calm and ordinary, everyday life itself is enlightenment.”
“We have to believe in something that has no form and no color – something that exists before all forms and colors appear… By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing.”
14. Finding and Following the Formless Form
11. Appreciating Emptiness
“Since all things are naked, clear and free from obscurations, there is nothing to attain or realize.”
“enlightenment isn't something we march toward, and one day, somehow, we grab it. Enlightenment is the ending in yourself of that hope for something other than life being as it is.”
“a state of being where the mind knows the source of all light... the saints, the arhats, the bodhisattvas, the jivanmuktas who knew something or everything about this state of being... we wanted you to know who and what Jesus and Gautama and Lao Tzu and Shankaracharya and Huineng and Sri Ramakrishna, etc., were before you knew too much or anything about Homer or Shakespeare or even Blake or Whitman, let alone George Washington and his cherry tree... or how to parse a sentence”
“If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive - that you can touch the miracle of being alive - then that is a kind of enlightenment.”
“We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.”
“If we can recognize our own mysterious secret wisdom essence... then enlightenment is no longer mysterious because—inseparable from the Buddha—we are the mysterious.”
“When one of the emperors of China asked Bodhidharma what enlightenment was, his answer was, ‘Lots of space, nothing holy’… It’s all good juicy stuff … the art of living in the present moment.”
“Milarepa reached the 'old dog' stage, his highest attainment. People could tread on him, use his as a road, as earth; he would always be there. He transcended his own individual existence so that there is a sense of the universality of Milarepa, the example of enlightenment.”
“You can achieve complete freedom; you can experience vastness. Genuine wakefulness is possible constantly.”
“The only kind of progress we can have is a kind that is easy to miss while we are living through it... long term gains with short-term setbacks... Pulling us forward are ingenuity, sympathy, and benign institutions. Pushing us back are the darker sides of human nature and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.”
“As enlightenment begins to dawn, reality, which had seemed all chopped up, turns out to possess an underlying continuity, a kind of infrastructure of interconnection.”
“Those who do not pursue praise and gain, those who do not shun criticism and loss may be stigmatized as insane because they cannot be lured by material gain, don’t look for thrills, have no face to lose, never do anything to impress people.”
“When we wake up from our confused state of mind, that is enlightenment.”
“Physical death offers the best opportunity for enlightenment; and enlightenment offers the best opportunity for helping others.”
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