Noah Rasheta > Quotes

“From the Buddhist perspective, it’s not that we’re accepting the bad things that happen; we’re just accepting that bad things happen.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes. THE BUDDHA, THE BHADDEKARATTA SUTTA”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Buddhist teachings are not something you’re meant to believe; they’re something you do—you put them into practice.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“It’s there and it’s scary and at some point it’s going to jump out to scare you, but instead of saying “life’s not fair” or “why is this happening to me?” now you’ll remember “I was told that this could happen.”
― Noah Rasheta, Secular Buddhism: Eastern Thought for Western Minds

“Right mindfulness is about paying attention, whether we’re meditating or just going about our daily tasks. Being mindful helps us stay anchored in the present moment, which keeps us in touch with reality as it is. Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh describes mindfulness like this: “When you have a toothache, the feeling is very unpleasant, and when you do not have a toothache, you usually have a neutral feeling. However, if you can be mindful of the non-toothache, the non-toothache will become a feeling of peace and joy. Mindfulness gives rise to and nourishes happiness.” In this sense, mindfulness helps us become aware that at any given moment, we are capable of experiencing contentment. It’s just a matter of increasing our sphere of awareness to notice all the “non-toothaches” we’re currently experiencing.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“To be enlightened is to be liberated from our habitual reactivity, freed from our perceptions and ideas in order to see reality as it is without wanting it to be different.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“From the Buddhist perspective, letting go of hatred is not a moral issue. The problem with hatred isn’t whether it’s morally right or wrong. Clinging to hatred is simply an unwise action because it creates unnecessary suffering for ourselves and others. As a mental state, hatred affects the emotional well-being of the person doing the hating more than the person being hated.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“the unnecessary suffering we experience has more to do with how we see things than with what we see.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“This is emptiness. It’s the understanding that as life unfolds, it doesn’t mean anything. It is neither positive nor negative. All things simply are as they are.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“There’s a story about a monastery in Thailand where the resident monks covered a golden statue of the Buddha in clay to hide its value from an invading army. Those monks were killed during the invasion. Over the course of many years, a new group of monks moved in, and the golden Buddha remained hidden under a layer of clay. One day, the new monks decided it was time to relocate the old clay statue of the Buddha, and in the process of moving it, a piece of clay broke off to reveal the brilliant golden Buddha underneath.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“The Buddhist teaching of nonself says that there is no permanent or fixed you—there’s only a complex web of inseparable, impermanent causes and effects.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“everything you need to know is already present within you.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Where am I? What am I doing? What did it take for this moment to arise?”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“An understanding of impermanence and interdependence can ease the fear of death by reminding us that birth wasn’t the start and death won’t be the end. Every beginning has an end, and every end gives birth to a new beginning. There really is no beginning or end; there is only change.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“When you have a toothache, the feeling is very unpleasant, and when you do not have a toothache, you usually have a neutral feeling. However, if you can be mindful of the non-toothache, the non-toothache will become a feeling of peace and joy. Mindfulness gives rise to and nourishes happiness.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“not only to become awakened but also to awaken all other beings. This difference in approaches arises from the Mahayana view of interdependence, which holds that one being can’t be fully enlightened unless and until all beings are enlightened.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“source of it all. In the book Buddhist Wisdom: The Path to Enlightenment, the Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, “Do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Adhering to the moral code of another place and time, may not be the wisest form of action for our specific time and place.”
― Noah Rasheta, Secular Buddhism: Eastern Thought for Western Minds

“Liberation is the moment you don’t react to being cut off in traffic—because you don’t know what actually happened, so there’s nothing to react to. Liberation is experiencing reality as it is.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Tenzin Gyatso, better known as the Dalai Lama,”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“While on a carriage ride outside the palace, he encountered first an old man, then a sick person, and then a corpse.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“The antidote to ignorance is wisdom about the nature of both reality and the self.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“The two major branches of Buddhism are Theravada and Mahayana.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Liberation is experiencing reality as it is.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“liberation from our own habitual reactivity and the poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance in our own minds.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Buddhism teaches that there are three different types of suffering. The first is called “the suffering of suffering.” This is a natural form of suffering that we experience on a regular basis. Pain might be a good word to summarize it. It’s what we experience when we stub our toe, stay up all night with the stomach flu, or start to feel achy as we age.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“six blind men who stand around an elephant and begin to describe it on the basis of what they can feel by touch. One feels the tail and thinks he’s touching a rope, while another feels the trunk and concludes it’s a snake. The other men describe what they touch as a tree trunk (the elephant’s leg), a fan (its ear), a wall (its side), and a spear (its tusk). Each man is certain that his experience of the elephant is the accurate one, failing to understand that the other descriptions are also accurate—and that all the descriptions are inaccurate as well, in that they each take into account only one part of the elephant. Buddhism teaches that we all see the truth from a unique perspective”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Is the observer of the emotion also angry?” In that moment, he was able to distinguish between the emotion he was experiencing and the observation of the emotion.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

“Buddhism teaches that there are three different types of suffering. The first is called “the suffering of suffering.” This is a natural form of suffering that we experience on a regular basis. Pain might be a good word to summarize it. It’s what we experience when we stub our toe, stay up all night with the stomach flu, or start to feel achy as we age. The second type of suffering is called “the suffering of loss.” This is what we experience when, for example, we lose a job, a loved one, or our youth and vitality. This form of suffering is also natural, and like the suffering of suffering, it’s often connected to specific circumstances. The third type of suffering is called “the all-pervasive suffering,” and it’s the type Buddhism is most concerned with. Unlike the first two types, all-pervasive suffering is self-inflicted, and it generally arises out of an ignorant or delusional understanding of reality. It tends to have very little to do with our actual circumstances and a lot to do with how we perceive and interpret those circumstances.”
― Noah Rasheta, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings