Bodhisattva Path Quotes

“You who thoroughly cultivated loving-kindness are the spiritual guide of all beings. Unshakeable like Mount Meru, you remain utterly unperturbed. —THE KING OF MEDITATION SUTRA, CHAPTER 14

When the Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi Tree and the hordes of demons, known as maras, rose up around him, hurling spears and shooting arrows, his samadhi transformed the weapons into a rain of blossoms. Loving-kindness has the power to turn enemies into teachers and aggressions into adornments. It is the ground from which the other three immeasurables draw their power. When we train in loving-kindness, we expand outward into the experience of those around us. Our tightness loosens, our compassion grows. We feel the joys and sufferings of others more deeply, and we are moved to help them. We take delight in the successes of our friends. Our equanimity becomes rooted in an indestructibly pure intention, in which distance and closeness of relation are no longer relevant. This is why the Buddha said we can become unshakeable like Mount Meru.”
― Phakchok Rinpoche, In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas: Buddhist Teachings on the Essence of Meditation

“The dualistic mind cannot apprehend the nondual union of form and emptiness. Only by giving rise to the nondual mind can nondual experience unfold. No matter how much we think about nonduality, we will not experience it unless we walk a path that leads us to suspend conceptuality altogether.”
― Phakchok Rinpoche, In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas: Buddhist Teachings on the Essence of Meditation

“Another way of contemplating the virtues of Enlightened beings is to read accounts of their lives, whether the life of the Buddha himself or, say, that of Milarepa, the Enlightened yogi from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. One can also contemplate the spiritual qualities of the Buddhas by means of visualization exercises, as developed particularly in Tibetan Buddhism, by conjuring up a vivid mental picture, a sort of archetypal vision, of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. What one does in these practices – to summarize very briefly – is to see this visualized form more and more brightly, more and more vividly, more and more gloriously, and then gradually feel oneself merging with it, one’s heart merging with the heart of the Buddha or Bodhisattva, the heart of Enlightenment. In this way one contemplates, one assimilates, one becomes one with, the virtues of the Tathagatas.”
― Sangharakshita, The Bodhisattva Ideal : Wisdom and Compassion in Buddhism

“The Buddha never worked for his living, as far as we know. He was born into a wealthy, aristocratic family. He had lots of servants. According to all the accounts he spent most of his time in palaces with singing girls, dancing girls, and musicians. Then, after he left home as a mendicant, other people gave him food and clothing. He never did anything to earn his keep. Of course he taught the Dharma, but he would have done that anyway; it was his nature, just as the nature of the sun is to shine. He never worked for money; he never did a day’s work in his life. I have so far been referring to work in the sense of employment; but there is such a thing as creative work. Indeed, creative work is a psychological necessity. It may be in the form of bringing up and educating children. It may be in the form of writing or painting or cooking, or engaging in some constructive social venture. To produce, to create, is a human need. But it need not be linked with employment. In an ideal society, no one would have to work for wages. One would give to the community whatever one could, and the community would give to each person whatever they needed.”
― Sangharakshita, The Bodhisattva Ideal : Wisdom and Compassion in Buddhism

“Spiritual receptivity is of the utmost importance; without it, spiritual progress simply cannot be maintained. We need to hold ourselves open to the truth as the flower holds itself open to the sun. This is what spiritual receptivity means: holding ourselves open to the higher spiritual influences that are streaming through the universe, but with which we are not usually in contact, because we usually shut ourselves off from them. We should be ready if necessary to give up whatever we’ve learned so far, which isn’t easy by any means, and to give up whatever we have become so far, which is still more difficult.”
― Sangharakshita, The Bodhisattva Ideal : Wisdom and Compassion in Buddhism

“For humanity to heal, we must reconnect with the Soul. We must become Ensouled. For us to reverse, in whatever way possible, the direct path of self-destruction we’re forging right now, we must be initiated into the spiritual path. We must walk the path of the embodied Mystic or the Bodhisattva.”
― Aletheia Luna

“[Tenzin Palmo]: The practice is [snapping her fingers] to wake up and develop clarity and alertness and at the same time love, kindness and consideration. You are kind not just to all sentient beings in the 10 directions as a wish, but practically to the person who is next to you, your wife or husband, your children, colleagues at work, the stranger you meet on the bus, to anybody. You are just aware that these people are suffering as you are suffering. That extra smile, that extra kindness can mean so much to people. This is practice.
It is not how many millions of mantras you say. This is so irrelevant. I feel it is a big mistake when people get the idea that unless they go into long retreats and do millions of different kinds of practices they are not going to get anywhere. True practice on the Bodhisattva path has very little to do with that but an enormous amount to do with the quality of our everyday lives and our relationships.”
― Martine Batchelor, Walking on Lotus Flowers: Buddhist Women Living, Loving and Meditating