A Quote by Shunryu Suzuki
There are, strictly speaking, no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.
Related Quotes
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an enlightened person. There is only enlightened activity.
Enlightened legislation or enlightened social activity of whatever kind, does play into the hands of people with agendas of their own. If you legalize euthanasia, you provide a field day for people who like killing other people.
Strictly speaking, "you" cannot become enlightened, because who you take yourself to be is like a ripple in the ocean of consciousness - or a little wave if you're a VIP - and the ripple doesn't become enlightened until it realizes that its ripple-identity is ultimately a misperception, that it is the ocean taking on a fleeting ripple-form.
Very few people become enlightened in any given lifetime. On the planet earth their might be a dozen who are fully enlightened and several thousand who live in enlightened states of mind.
Celibacy doesn't make you enlightened, otherwise every nun or priest in Buddhism or Christianity would be enlightened. People who don't date and can't get any action would be enlightened.
People have this kind of concept that they can't change but I feel like change is possible. So who you choose to be is who you are and who you will be. I think that you can be enlightened in many different ways and if you choose to be enlightened and are someone who seeks out those things then you can be that and you will be that. If you want to be enlightened you will be enlightened. If you want to be an asshole you will be an asshole. But the greater scope of this statement is if you look at the history of humans, really, nothing has changed.
When you're enlightened, you don't have to reference other people, because you yourself are enlightened. And that's a better Earth. People can make more informed decisions politically, culturally, personally.
In this whole world, there are actually very few people who study meditation with an enlightened master. This is because there are not very many enlightened masters on the entire earth.
How can one become enlightened? One can, because one is enlightened - one just has to recognize the fact.
For a long time, I thought that I was an enlightened parent by virtue of being an enlightened person. What a fool.
Bodhisattva is enlightened in the Buddhist philosophy, religion, tradition. He's enlightened. It's fine - I don't really fight it - but many people use the term 'zen' and terms like 'nirvana,' 'enlightenment' in an almost superficial way. It's not that complicated.
Not everyone who is enlightened by an angel knows that he is enlightened by him.
No one on this earth attains enlightenment anymore without an enlightened master as a guide, unless that person was enlightened in many previous incarnations.
I came to California in 1970 and so many people were asking if I was a Buddhist or knew Zen theory, asking if I was enlightened already or not. So I said, "Yes, I am enlightened," and then I studied quickly to catch up.
The difference between you, if you consider yourself not enlightened, and an enlightened master is not that the enlightened master has more knowledge. University professors have knowledge, and many enlightened masters have very little knowledge. Jesus probably had less knowledge than any university professor alive today in terms of raw information. Even a relatively uneducated person has more information than Jesus or Buddha ever had about things, such as political things and so on.
I know that the blacks, take them half enlightened and ignorant, are more humane and merciful than the most enlightened and refined European that can be found in all the earth.
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