The Path to Enlightenment by The Dalai Lama
“After attaining enlightenment he [the Buddha] turned the Wheel of Dharma for beings of good fortune, revealing what must be overcome and what must be accomplished in order to transcend the stages and levels leading to higher rebirth, liberation and omniscient perfection.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p25
“Although all humans are equal, each of us has our individual background our unique way of seeing and appreciating things, our own spiritual and philosophical tastes.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p26
“The deepest impulse of all sentient beings is to experience happiness and to avoid suffering.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p30
“The difficulty with a purely materialistic interpretation of life is that, in addition to ignoring an entire dimension of the mind, it does not deal effectively with the problems of this life.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p31
“A materialistic mind is an unstable mind, for its happiness is built on transient, physical circumstances.”
– The Dalia Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p31
“To ignore death and its implications will not prevent us from dying nor will it help us to enter the after-death state with any degree of spiritual maturity.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p31
“Although it is essential to maintain a reasonable material basis on which to live, the emphasis in one’s life should be on cultivating the mental and spiritual causes of happiness.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p31
“If one cultivates spiritual qualities such as mental harmony, humility, non-attachment, patience, love, compassion, wisdom and intelligence able to deal effectively with the problems of this life; and because the wealth that one is amassing is mental rather than material, it will not have to be left behind at death. There is no need to enter the after-death state empty-handed.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p31
“They who possess spiritual understanding can control their destiny at the time of death, but for ordinary beings the process is very much an automatic chain reaction of karmic seeds and habitual psychic response patterns.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p32
“Death holds very little hope for ordinary worldly person with no spiritual experience. Having passed their entire lives ignoring death and sheltering themselves from thoughts of it, when it strikes they become utterly shocked and lose all courage and confidence. Everything that confronts them is unknown, for they never took the time to apply the methods that reveal the nature of mind, birth, life and death. Control over one’s future evolution is to be won during one’s life, not at the time of death.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p32-33
“We wish to avoid suffering, but because our minds are not cultivated in wisdom we run directly towards suffering like a moth caught in the light of a flame.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p33
“Our repeated experience of frustration, dissatisfaction and misery does not have external conditions as its root cause. The problem is mainly our lack of spiritual development. As a result of this handicap, the mind is controlled principally by afflicted emotions and illusions. Attachment, aversion, and ignorance rather than a free spirit, love and wisdom are the guiding influences. Recognizing this simple truth is the beginning of the spiritual path.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p33
“A sage with a mind of wisdom, compassion and power dwells in joy and creates only causes of joy. Conversely, the more deluded one is, the more miserable is one’s present condition and the fewer are the causes of joy created by one’s activities throughout life.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p33-34
“Our present condition is not something causeless nor is it something caused by chance. It is something we ourselves have steadily constructed through our series of past decisions and the actions of body, speech and mind that arose from them. To place the blame upon an external person or things is just a source of further confusion and negativity, increasing rather than solving the difficulty.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p33
As aspect of death that most terrifies many beings is that suddenly one is totally alone and unsupported by anything but one’s spiritual knowledge. When this is strong one is able to deal effectively with every circumstance that death brings; but when it is weak, one must enter the dangerous path of the bardo empty-handed. Then one’s heart will fill with regret and one will realize the error of not having pursued deeper goals.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p36-37
“Instead of meaningless literature we should try to read from the biographies and writings of past masters.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p38
“Human beings can fall into the most profound spiritual darkness or attain to the exalted state of perfect illumination. What happens to us lies in our own hands. If we cultivate our minds with spiritual methods and generate positive, creative lifestyles and directions, no doubt we will be benefited. Alternatively, if we merely chase superficial goals and pay no attention to the deeper needs of the minds, we are bound to fall into frustration and confusion.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p38
When we look for the sources of all the problems that confront human life we usually blame everything but the root cause: our lack of spiritual discipline and realization.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p38
“To attain liberation from samsara one must perfect the three higher trainings of self-discipline, meditative concentration, and the wisdom of emptiness.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p40
“When we understand the empty, non-inherent nature of the self and phenomena, the endless forms of delusion that arise from grasping at true existence are directly eliminated.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p40
“In order for the training in wisdom to mature and become strong, one must first develop meditative concentration; and in order to develop and support concentration one should cultivate the training in self-discipline, which calms the mind and provides an atmosphere conducive to meditation.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p40
“Meditation upon impermanence and death is very useful for it cuts off attraction toward transient and meaningless activities and causes the mind to turn towards Dharma.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p87
“We should be mindful of death and should engage in the practices that generate spiritual qualities, qualities that will not only benefit us in this lifetime but will provide us with the ability to face death and the bardo competently.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p90
“Positive ways have positive effects on the mind in this life and lay the foundations for happiness after death.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p94
“Dharma, or the teachings is not a series of instructions to be believed and followed out of blind faith. The practice of Dharma should be carried out on the basis of reason and contemplation.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p99
“All beings suffer in the same way as we do, and some are even more deeply immersed in sorrow. Yet all of these beings wish to experience only happiness and to avoid all suffering, frustration, and pain. They wish lasting happiness but do not know how to cultivate its causes, and they wish to avoid misery but automatically collect only causes of further misery.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p136
“Over the billions of lifetimes that we have experienced since beginningless time, we have known all the living beings again and again. Sometimes they have been parents to us, sometimes friends or mates, sometimes enemies.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p137
“What is [spiritual] progress? How do we recognize it? The teachings are like a mirror before which we should hold our activities of body, speed, and mind. Think back to a year ago and compare the stream of activities of your body, speed, and mind at that time with their present condition.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p176
“As Buddha himself advised, ‘Work out your own salvation.’ We must practice with clarity, humility, and a sense of personal responsibility for our own progress. Then the path to enlightenment is something that we hold in the palms of our own hands.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment, p184
How to See Yourself As You Really Are by The Dalai Lama
“True love and compassion rise on the basis of respecting others. This feeling of empathy is achieved by recognizing that you and all others—whether friends, enemies, or neutral parties—share a central aspiration by wanting happiness and not wanting suffering.”
– The Dalai Lama, How to See Yourself As You Really Are, p206
“We are unnecessarily drawn into suffering by assenting to false appearances, thereby falling prey to lust and hatred and all the actions that stem from them, accumulating karma, and being born over and over again in a cycle of pain.”
– The Dalai Lama, How to See Yourself As You Really Are, p224
The Tibetan Book of the Dead translated by Gyurme Dorje
“Our fundamental ignorance is the root of conditioned existence and karmic energy is its activating force. It’s the nature of our habitual tendencies that generates our future existence, driven by natural law of cause and effect.”
– The Dalai Lama, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Introduction
Teaching New York May 1998 by The Dalai Lama
“Bodhicitta, which literally means generating the mind for enlightenment, carries the sense that we are generating within ourselves a genuine aspiration to attain enlightenment not just for the sake of ourselves but rather for being of benefit to all sentient beings.”
– The Dalai Lama, Teaching New York May 1998
“The key to the attainment of bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, is the cultivation of great compassion. Great compassion is a state of mind that focuses on the suffering of sentient beings and cultivates the strong wish to see these sentient beings free from not only the manifest suffering but also from the causes and conditions that lead to suffering.”
– The Dalai Lama, Teaching New York May 1998
