Jean-Yves Leloup > Quotes

“Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being. (109)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“In certain situations, manifesting anger is the right attitude; in others it is not the right thing to manifest because it will only add to the violence. In the first case, anger unblocks the conflict and causes another to become more conscious. In the latter, it only adds to the unconsciousness and inflames the conflict. (73)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“Do not believe anything merely because you are told it is so, because others believe it, because it comes from Tradition, or because you have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect. Believe, take for your doctrine, and hold true to that, which, after serious investigation, seems to you to further the welfare of all beings. (47)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“Once again, we are reminded that awakening, or enlightenment is not the property of Buddhism, any more than Truth is the property of Christianity. Neither the Buddha nor the Christ belongs exclusively to the communities that were founded in their names. They belong to all people of goodwill, all who are attentive to the secret which lives in the depths of their breath and their consciousness. (14)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“To be grounded in an attitude of compassion is to be capable of receiving and welcoming the suffering, which the other is giving us. This does not mean that we suffer for them, but that we offer them possibility of going beyond the separate self in which suffering is harbored. (59)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“If you are a Buddhist, inspire yourself by thinking of the bodhisattva. If you are a Christian, think of the Christ, who came not to be served by others but to serve them in joy, in peace, and in generosity. For these things, these are not mere words, but acts, which go all the way, right up to their last breath. Even their death is a gift, and resurrection is born from this kind of death. (157)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“The meditative mind sees disagreeable or agreeable things with equanimity, patience, and good-will. Transcendent knowledge is seeing reality in utter simplicity. (146)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“Sometimes the best answer to a question is another question. Is it not by asking questions that we stimulate each other to reach more deeply into our own source and, thereby, approach the Source, both together and in our different ways? (7)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“The compassionate person does not require other people to be stupid, in order to be intelligent. Their intelligence is for everyone, so as to have a world in which there is less ignorance. (118)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“The depth of our compassion is proportional to the depth of our living. (65)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“Much blood has been spilled over words, and a great deal of it over the word ‘God.’ (125)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“It [speaking with words that bring about harmony] consists of speaking of what is good about people, instead of what is wrong with them. For some people this is an almost impossible exercise, for they have become totally habituated to speaking critically. We all seem to have a special talent for finding critical things to say about the world, about others, and about ourselves! (117)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“It is important never to separate love and knowledge, compassion and wisdom. A wisdom without compassion is closed upon itself and does not bear fruit. A compassion without wisdom is a madness and a cause of suffering.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“What is the real origin of my own anger? Is it the ego defending its territory, or is it something that has its source in the desire for the well-being of all? (73)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“[W]e need not become fixated upon our own suffering, whatever its origin. We offer it up, thus participating in the well-being of the universe. When we experience an illness or depression not as our own but as the universe’s, we are one with all beings who experience this kind of suffering. (78)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“The ego is like a clever monkey, which can co-opt anything, even the most spiritual practices, so as to expand itself. (155)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“Lead us toward a speech, which is as beautiful as silence, and toward a silence, which is as beautiful as the sweetest and truest of words. (119)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“[C]hange your thinking, your interpretation of he world, change the way you see! To change the way you see is to change the world. (50)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“Quoting Father Seraphim:
Our life hangs only by a breath. It is the thread that links you to the Father, the Source, which brought you into being. Be conscious of this thread, and go where you will. (27)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“There are many greedy and clever human animals in this world, but few human beings. Authentic human beings are so rare that I would even go so far as to say that we do not live in a truly human world.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“The best religion or practice is the one that makes us better. (42)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“And the word for breath is the same as the word for spirit; this is true not only in Hebrew (ruakh), but also in Greek (pneuma) and Latin (spiritus). Thus Yeshua and Miriam shared the same breath and allowed themselves to be borne by the same spirit.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union

“What is harvested in the world is composed of four elements: water, earth, wind, and light. What God harvests is also composed of four elements: faith [pistis], hope [elpis], love [agap], and contemplation [gnosis]. Our earth is faith, for she gives us roots. Water is our hope, for it slakes our thirst. Wind [pneuma] is the love [agap] through which we grow; and light is the contemplation [gnosis] through which we ripen.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union

“There are different styles and levels of pleasure. Of course there is the pleasure of the separate self, with its need for recognition. This ego thrives on seduction, but its type of pleasure is constantly under threat. There will always be people who are not attracted to you, and there is bound to come a time—whether from fatigue, illness, or age—when your power of seduction fades. For those who know only this level of pleasure, growing old is a dreadful drama. They stand to lose their power of seduction, upon which their entire sense of identity is built. Only then do they begin to see that their narcissistic image is an illusion. But we have the capacity to awaken to a state of consciousness and being where pleasure is no longer dependent on this ego. I would not describe it as any sort of nonpleasure but a different pleasure, a different quality of relationship. The old “I” has tremendous difficulty in accepting and understanding this pleasure. Nevertheless, there are certain privileged moments in our existence when we are given a taste of this other pleasure, and the ability to appreciate it, and to understand that the old pleasures, the ones to which we are often most attached, are not the only ones. Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity

“It is the conscious Breath that comes from the unnamable space where inspiration originates, and expiration returns—that space without boundaries, which we are sometimes fortunate enough to taste when silence reigns within us.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

“The canonical Gospels offer no information as to the specific nature of the seven demons or spirits that initially possess Miriam—that is to say, alienate her from her freedom. However, we might make some surmises about them by referring to other texts that were current in those times. According to Evagrius Ponticus, who made a thorough study of such matters, these logismoï (his term for“negative or destructive thoughts”) act to destroy a person’s orientation toward the nous, and then the orientation of the nous toward the Pneuma. In other words, they act to obstruct peace, contemplation, and the Presence of the Son seeking to establish itself in the person. Lists of such demonic spirits vary. In the West they later become known as the seven deadly orcardinal sins: gluttony, fornication, covetousness, sadness, anger, vainglory, pride. Evagrius adds accidie to the list, meaning a kind of despondency or apathetic rejection of spiritual realities.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

“Peter, the chief of the apostles, fled from the face of woman. In fact, his daughter was pretty to see, and having already caused a scandal because of her beautiful looks, he went into prayer, and she became paralyzed.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, The Sacred Embrace of Jesus and Mary: The Sexual Mystery at the Heart of the Christian Tradition

“We still do not know what Yeshua really said. We know only what a number of hearers and witnesses have heard. Scripture consists of what has been heard, not what has been said.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union

“Light and darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers and sisters. They are inseparable. This is why goodness is not always good, violence not always violent, life not always enlivening, death not always deadly.19”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union

“Among the many texts of early Christianity, we might also consider the Pseudo-Clementine Homelies, Theodotus and Asclepius, which identify the Kingdom with the presence of the anthropos in a human individual, whether male or female.22 These texts also speak of the “inner Man” or “essential Man” (ontos Anthropos). For Jacques Ménard, the most relevant example seems to be the passage in the Pistis Sophia in which it is said that Miriam of Magdala feels this inner human in herself, and by identifying with it, understands everything.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, The Sacred Embrace of Jesus and Mary: The Sexual Mystery at the Heart of the Christian Tradition