志昌 陳 > 志昌's Quotes

“The teaching begins by calling upon us to develop a faculty called yoniso manasikāra, careful attention. The Buddha asks us to stop drifting thoughtlessly through our lives and instead to pay careful attention to simple truths that are everywhere available to us, clamoring for the sustained consideration they deserve”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon

“The importance of right view can be gauged from the fact that our perspectives on the crucial issues of reality and value have a bearing that goes beyond mere theoretical convictions. They govern our attitudes, our actions, our whole orientation to existence. Our views might not be clearly formulated in our mind; we might have only a hazy conceptual grasp of our beliefs. But whether formulated or not, expressed or maintained in silence, these views have a far-reaching influence. They structure our perceptions, order our values, crystallize into the ideational framework through which we interpret to ourselves the meaning of our being in the world.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Mindfulness brings to light experience in its pure immediacy. It reveals the object as it is before it has been plastered over with conceptual paint, overlaid with interpretations.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding. Real renunciation is not a matter of compelling ourselves to give up things still inwardly cherished, but of changing our perspective on them so that they no longer bind us. When we understand the nature of desire, when we investigate it closely with keen attention, desire falls away by itself, without need for struggle.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Just as, when a cow to be slaughtered is led to the shambles, whenever she lifts a leg she will be closer to slaughter, closer to death; even so, brahmins, is human life like cattle doomed to slaughter; it is short, limited, and brief. It is full of suffering, full of tribulation. This one should wisely understand. One should do good and live a pure life; for none who is born can escape death.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon

“Both the worldling and the noble disciple experience painful bodily feelings, but they respond to these feelings differently. The worldling reacts to them with aversion and therefore, on top of the painful bodily feeling, also experiences a painful mental feeling: sorrow, resentment, or distress. The noble disciple, when afflicted with bodily pain, endures such feeling patiently, without sorrow, resentment, or distress. It is commonly assumed that physical and mental pain are inseparably linked, but the Buddha makes a clear demarcation between”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon

“The initial response the Buddha intends to arouse in us is an ethical one. By calling our attention to our bondage to old age and death, he seeks to inspire in us a firm resolution to turn away from unwholesome ways of living and to embrace instead wholesome alternatives.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon

“The familiar world of substantial objects and enduring persons is, according to the dhamma theory, a conceptual construct fashioned by the mind out of the raw data provided by the dhammas. The entities of our everyday frame of reference possess merely a consensual reality derivative upon the foundational stratum of the dhammas.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma: The Abhidhammattha Sangaha

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“What's past is prologue.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest