The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose

by Stephen Mitchell (Editor)

A magnificent compilation of sacred writings from all traditions and the perfect companion to Stephen Mitchell's poetry collection,  The Enlightened Heart , and the bestselling  Tao Te Ching A collection of prose--discourses, sermons, essays, and aphorisms--includes texts and authors such as the Hindu, Confucian, and Buddhist sciptures, Heraclitus and Plato, Chuang-tzu, Jesus, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Symeon the New Theologian, the Chinese Zen masters, and others.

Genres: Spirituality, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion, Nonfiction, Zen, Essays

240 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1991

About the author

Stephen Mitchell was educated at Amherst College, the Sorbonne, and Yale University, and de-educated through intensive Zen practice. He is widely known for his ability to make old classics thrillingly new, to step in where many have tried before and to create versions that are definitive for our time. His many books include The Gospel According to Jesus, The Second Book of the Tao, two books of fiction, and a book of poetry.

Mitchell’s Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke has been called “the most beautiful group of poetic translations [the twentieth] century has produced.” William Arrowsmith said that his Sonnets to Orpheus “instantly makes every other rendering obsolete.” His Book of Job has been called “magnificent.” His bestselling Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, and Gilgamesh—which are not translations from the original text, but rather poetic interpretations that use existing translations into Western languages as their starting point—have also been highly praised by critics, scholars, and common readers. Gilgamesh was Editor’s Choice of The New York Times Book Review, was selected as the Book Sense 2004 Highlight for Poetry, was a finalist for the first annual Quill Award in poetry. His translation of the Iliad was chosen as one of the New Yorker’s favorite books of 2011. He is a two-time winner of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets.

His books for young readers include The Wishing Bone, winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award as the best book of poetry for children published in the United States in 2003, and Jesus: What He Really Said and Did, which was chosen by the American Library Association’s Booklist as one of the top ten religious books for children in 2002.

He is also coauthor of two of his wife Byron Katie’s bestselling books: Loving What Is and A Thousand Names for Joy. www.thework.com

You can read extensive excerpts from all his books on his website, www.stephenmitchellbooks.com.

Reviews

[kelly]

Can you really give the collective wisdom of mankind throughout the ages anything less than 5 stars?

[Tg]

Excellent compilation of Saints , Mystics, Sages and Philosophers--I give it a 4.65 out of 5
I love the sections on Thoreau, Socrates, Dogen--The Buddha, Jesus and many others...
Definitely an compilation extensive ---Superbly done...……….. I bought this book 20 years ago when I was really Soul searching in my thirties ….it definitely was a beacon of hope....

[Ben Tipper]

Not a bad book at all. The first quote/page/part was so good that it compelled me to read through a ton of God stuff that I wasn’t at all times feeling in the middle. It’s a nice collection though, and will certainly serve as a jumping off point to find more readings from. Would recommend as a spiritual reading.

[Mckinley]

Excerpts of religious people through the ages. Not much about the author or context. Hard to know how I'd refer to this since you can't really read it in the typical way.

[Ms.]

Quotes from the book which is an anthology of writing by sages:

"That is perfect. This is perfect. Perfect comes from perfect. Take perfect from perfect, the remainder is perfect. May peace and peace and peace be everywhere."

"Grant me, Apollo, contentment with what I have
and let me, whole in mind and in body,
enjoy an old age not lacking in honor
and cheered by the presence of the poem." (Montaigne)

[Mark DeGange]

This compilation of words by master spiritual teachers is fantastic. I give it the highest rating because it offers so much from so many masters. You drink it in, go over it again. Mitchell has siphoned the wisest sayings of each down to a few that feed the spirit. It would be neat to see an update or more contemporary spiritual thinkers, or maybe going on Instagram is enough.

[Maga Fuse4]

One thing I’ve been reflecting on as I read the different voices in The Enlightened Mind is how easily we can separate “wisdom” from everyday life. We can admire a profound teaching, agree with it, and even feel moved by it, but the real question seems to be what happens afterward.
The traditions gathered here seem to suggest, in different ways, that understanding is only the beginning. Wisdom becomes meaningful when it changes the way we see a difficult moment, respond to another person, handle uncertainty, or examine ourselves when our beliefs are challenged.
I also appreciate that the anthology does not make the search for truth feel completely comfortable. Putting these traditions side by side allows us to encounter ideas that may contradict one another, challenge our assumptions, or force us to sit with questions we cannot immediately resolve. Perhaps that discomfort is part of the value of reading across traditions.
For me, one of the most interesting questions is this: if a teaching genuinely changes the way we see the world, how do we recognize that change in the way we actually live?
I’d be curious to hear whether anyone has encountered an idea in this anthology that stayed with them beyond the reading itself, something that made them behave, think, or respond differently afterward.

[Ojekola Kehinde]

One of the things I keep coming back to in The Enlightened Mind is the idea that wisdom is not simply something we acquire by learning the right ideas. It seems to ask something more demanding of us: What happens when an insight actually changes the way we live?

Reading voices from such different traditions, I was struck by how often wisdom seems connected to self-examination, compassion, humility, and a willingness to look beyond our immediate assumptions. The traditions may use very different language, but many of them seem to challenge the reader to become more conscious of how we see ourselves and how that shapes the way we treat others.

That makes the anthology feel surprisingly relevant today. We live in a time when information is everywhere, but having more information does not necessarily make us wiser. Perhaps one of the questions this book leaves us with is whether wisdom is measured by how much we know, or by how deeply what we know transforms us.

For me, that is what makes these ancient voices worth returning to. Their value may not be that they give us definitive answers, but that they continue to make us ask better questions about who we are and how we want to live.

[Ken Victor]

I’ve been thinking about how The Enlightened Mind presents wisdom not as something that can simply be possessed, but as something we continually have to seek, question, and live out.
What I appreciate about bringing so many traditions together is that the anthology doesn’t make the search for truth feel simple. Some voices seem to point toward certainty, while others seem to suggest that genuine understanding begins when we recognize the limits of what we think we know. That tension actually makes the reading more meaningful for me.
It also made me wonder whether wisdom is less about having all the answers and more about developing the humility to keep asking deeper questions. We can encounter an idea that challenges us, disagree with it, return to it later, and still allow it to change the way we see something.
For me, that may be one of the most lasting lessons of this anthology: perhaps the purpose of wisdom is not to end our search for meaning, but to teach us how to search more thoughtfully.
I’d be interested to hear how others experienced this. Did reading across these different traditions make you feel that there is a common truth beneath them, or did it make you more aware of how many different ways there are to understand truth?

[Rick Tose]

One of the things I keep coming back to in The Enlightened Mind is the idea that wisdom is not simply something we acquire by learning the right ideas. It seems to ask something more demanding of us: What happens when an insight actually changes the way we live?
Reading voices from such different traditions, I was struck by how often wisdom seems connected to self-examination, compassion, humility, and a willingness to look beyond our immediate assumptions. The traditions may use very different language, but many of them seem to challenge the reader to become more conscious of how we see ourselves and how that shapes the way we treat others.
That makes the anthology feel surprisingly relevant today. We live in a time when information is everywhere, but having more information does not necessarily make us wiser. Perhaps one of the questions this book leaves us with is whether wisdom is measured by how much we know, or by how deeply what we know transforms us.
For me, that is what makes these ancient voices worth returning to. Their value may not be that they give us definitive answers, but that they continue to make us ask better questions about who we are and how we want to live.

[Shannon Thaxton]

One thing I’ve been thinking about while reading The Enlightened Mind is how wisdom can sometimes reveal itself through the way we respond to experiences rather than through the ideas we can explain.

A teaching may sound profound when we first encounter it, but its deeper meaning may only become clear when we are faced with disappointment, uncertainty, conflict, or a difficult choice. That made me wonder whether wisdom is something we truly understand intellectually, or something we gradually recognize through the way we live.

I also appreciate how the different traditions in this anthology leave room for that kind of personal discovery. Two readers can encounter the same teaching and take away something completely different because they are meeting it from different places in their lives.

Perhaps that is why some wisdom stays with us long after we have finished reading. It continues to meet us differently as we change.

Has anyone else found that an idea in this book seemed different when you returned to it after some time or after experiencing something that changed your perspective?

[Kenny Olugbemigas]

Something else I’ve been noticing in The Enlightened Mind is the importance of what is left unsaid. We often approach books like this looking for the most profound sentence or the clearest teaching, but sometimes a passage seems to become more meaningful when we pause rather than immediately trying to explain it.

With so many different traditions gathered together, I find myself wondering whether wisdom sometimes lies not in finding the perfect interpretation, but in becoming comfortable enough with a question that we no longer feel compelled to resolve it immediately.

Perhaps that is one reason these older teachings can continue to speak to different generations. Each reader brings a different life experience, so the same words can open a different door at a different time.

Maybe part of becoming wiser is learning to recognize the difference between a question that needs an answer and a question that needs to be lived with.

I’m curious what others think: have you encountered a passage in this anthology that became more meaningful when you stopped trying to interpret it and simply sat with it for a while?

[Brown Kay]

What I find especially compelling about The Enlightened Mind is the way it places very different traditions in conversation with one another without requiring us to choose a single answer to what wisdom or truth should look like.
What stood out to me is that, despite the differences in language, culture, and spiritual tradition, many of these voices seem to return to surprisingly familiar concerns: how we understand ourselves, how we relate to others, how we respond to suffering, and what it means to live with greater awareness and compassion.
At the same time, I think the differences between the traditions are just as valuable as their similarities. They remind us that wisdom does not necessarily mean reaching the same conclusion. Sometimes it means becoming more willing to question our assumptions and see a familiar question from another perspective.
I’d love to hear what others noticed while reading: Was there a particular passage, voice, or tradition that changed the way you thought about yourself or the world, even if only slightly?

[Bigkenny Networks23]

One thing I’ve appreciated about The Enlightened Mind is that the ideas don’t feel like they are meant to remain on the page. Many of the teachings seem to point back to ordinary choices—how we respond to people, how we deal with difficulty, and how honestly we look at ourselves.

I also find it interesting that wisdom is expressed so differently across the traditions, yet many of them seem concerned with similar questions about how we should live. The differences make the similarities more meaningful because they show that these questions have been explored from many different directions.

It makes me wonder whether the real value of wisdom is not simply in understanding it, but in recognizing it when we actually have to put it into practice. What idea from the anthology has made you think differently about something in your everyday life?

[Eze Ken]

One thought I keep coming back to while reading The Enlightened Mind is the difference between knowing something and actually allowing it to change us. It’s possible to read beautiful teachings, understand their meaning, and still return to our everyday lives exactly as before.

What makes these writings interesting to me is that they seem to challenge that gap. They invite us to look at our reactions, choices, relationships, and the way we understand ourselves. In that sense, wisdom feels less like something we collect and more like something we practice.

Perhaps the real test of a teaching is what happens when life becomes difficult. Do we remember it only as something we read, or does it influence the way we respond? I’d be interested to know which passage others feel has the greatest potential to change the way we actually live.

[Eze Kens]

What stood out to me in this anthology is how often the teachings seem to turn our attention inward. Instead of simply telling us what is right or true, many of the passages seem to ask us to examine the way we are living and the assumptions we carry.

I especially like that the different traditions don’t all offer the same answers. That makes the reading feel more like an invitation to explore than a lesson with a single conclusion. Sometimes being exposed to a different way of seeing things can be valuable even when we don’t completely agree with it.

For me, that may be one of the strengths of this book: it encourages reflection rather than rushing toward certainty. Has anyone else found themselves questioning an assumption they previously took for granted while reading it?

[Abidemi Olanike]

Something I keep noticing in The Enlightened Mind is how much of the search for wisdom seems to begin with understanding ourselves. We often look outward for answers, but these writings repeatedly bring the attention back to our own thoughts, desires, fears, and assumptions.

That made me think about how difficult self-knowledge actually is. It’s easy to believe we understand ourselves until a situation exposes a part of us we hadn’t noticed before.

I’m beginning to see enlightenment less as reaching some perfect state of understanding and more as becoming increasingly honest and aware of how we live. Did anyone else come away from a particular passage feeling that it was describing something about themselves rather than simply teaching them something?

[Vantress Kaelia]

One thing I’ve noticed while reading The Enlightened Mind is that many of these teachings don’t make it easy to settle on one clear answer. Instead, they seem to encourage us to become comfortable with uncertainty and keep looking more deeply.

I find that interesting because we often want wisdom to give us certainty, especially when life becomes complicated. But perhaps wisdom is sometimes about recognizing the limits of what we know and remaining open enough to learn.

The different traditions in this collection seem to approach that idea in their own ways, which makes the reading feel like an ongoing conversation rather than a final conclusion. Has anyone else felt that the book is teaching us not only how to seek answers, but also how to live with unanswered questions?

[Teresa Dinh]

One thing I’ve noticed while reading The Enlightened Mind is that many of these teachings don’t make it easy to settle on one clear answer. Instead, they seem to encourage us to become comfortable with uncertainty and keep looking more deeply.

I find that interesting because we often want wisdom to give us certainty, especially when life becomes complicated. But perhaps wisdom is sometimes about recognizing the limits of what we know and remaining open enough to learn.

The different traditions in this collection seem to approach that idea in their own ways, which makes the reading feel like an ongoing conversation rather than a final conclusion. Has anyone else felt that the book is teaching us not only how to seek answers, but also how to live with unanswered questions?

[Oluwagbemi Ezekiel]

I’m finding that some of the most valuable passages in The Enlightened Mind are not necessarily the ones I immediately understand. A few ideas have made me pause because they challenge the way I normally think about life, the self, or what it means to be wise.

Instead of trying to quickly decide whether I agree or disagree, I’m starting to see value in simply sitting with the idea for a while. Sometimes understanding doesn’t come from reading more explanations, but from allowing a question to stay with us.

That makes me wonder: can a difficult or confusing teaching sometimes be more valuable than one that we immediately understand?

[Kehinde Ojekola]

One thing I’ve taken from The Enlightened Mind is that wisdom doesn’t always seem to require something extraordinary. Sometimes it appears in the simple act of paying closer attention—to our thoughts, our actions, and the way we experience the world around us.

I liked this because it makes the search for wisdom feel less distant. We don’t necessarily have to find all the answers before we can begin changing how we live. Even becoming more aware of how we react to everyday situations can be a meaningful beginning.

It makes me wonder how much wisdom we overlook simply because we are moving too quickly to notice what ordinary experiences are trying to teach us.

[Joy'S Come]

One thing I’ve taken from The Enlightened Mind is that wisdom doesn’t always seem to require something extraordinary. Sometimes it appears in the simple act of paying closer attention—to our thoughts, our actions, and the way we experience the world around us.

I liked this because it makes the search for wisdom feel less distant. We don’t necessarily have to find all the answers before we can begin changing how we live. Even becoming more aware of how we react to everyday situations can be a meaningful beginning.

It makes me wonder how much wisdom we overlook simply because we are moving too quickly to notice what ordinary experiences are trying to teach us.

[Taiwo Kay]

I’m Taiwo, and what stayed with me most is how The Enlightened Mind reminds us that wisdom is not just about finding answers, but learning to see ourselves and the world with greater understanding. Different traditions may take different paths, yet they often lead us back to the same deeper questions about how we should live.
Perhaps true wisdom begins when we become willing to question what we think we already know.

[Jentech]

What I find meaningful about The Enlightened Mind is that wisdom seems to become most valuable when it changes not only how we understand ourselves, but how we see and treat other people. Perhaps the real test of what we learn is not what we can explain, but whether it makes us more patient, compassionate, and open to perspectives different from our own.
Can wisdom truly transform us if it never changes the way we relate to others?

[Kehinde Kola]

ne thought I keep returning to is that wisdom can be easy to recognize in words, but much harder to recognize in practice. The Enlightened Mind made me wonder whether wisdom is found in what we say we believe, or in how we respond when life tests those beliefs.
Perhaps the deepest wisdom is not what we understand in moments of reflection, but what remains with us when we are faced with difficult choices

[Ezekiel Kennyolu204]

One thing I’ve been thinking about while reading The Enlightened Mind is how wisdom can sometimes reveal itself through the way we respond to experiences rather than through the ideas we can explain.

A teaching may sound profound when we first encounter it, but its deeper meaning may only become clear when we are faced with disappointment, uncertainty, conflict, or a difficult choice. That made me wonder whether wisdom is something we truly understand

[Kaison Pruittstefan]

What stood out to me in The Enlightened Mind is that wisdom may sometimes require us to become quiet enough to truly listen. In a world filled with opinions and answers, these different traditions remind us of the value of reflection before judgment.
Perhaps wisdom begins not when we have something to say, but when we learn how to listen.

[Moses Kay]

One thing I appreciate about The Enlightened Mind is how it reminds us that we don’t always need immediate answers. Sometimes a different perspective is enough to help us see a difficult situation more clearly.
Maybe wisdom is not always knowing what to do, but learning to see things differently before we decide.

[Elisha Kay]

Maybe enlightenment is not about escaping life, but learning to see life more deeply.

What I appreciate about The Enlightened Mind is how it encourages us to look beyond the surface of everyday life. The different traditions remind me that meaning is often found not in having extraordinary experiences, but in learning to see ordinary moments with greater awareness.

[Kenny Jacob]

Perhaps some truths are not meant to be understood all at once, but lived with until they begin to reveal themselves.

One thing this book makes me appreciate is that wisdom often takes time. We may read an idea today and only understand its deeper meaning much later, when life gives us a different experience to see it through.