“A tourist makes a show of giving a ten-dollar tip to the doorman for pushing a revolving door, and the next minute he’s bargaining for a five-dollar T-shirt from a vendor who is trying to support her baby and family.”

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“All emotions are basically a form of prejudice.”

Chapters: 26. The Still Rule the Restless

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“all of our existence is merely labels placed on phenomena that do not truly exist”

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“As stubborn and permanent-seeming as our obstacles may be, they are actually unstable, compounded phenomena... they can be completely removed.”

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“At the point of total realization, you must abandon Buddhism. The spiritual path is a temporary solution, a placebo to be used until emptiness is understood.”

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“because we don't have the intelligence to see things in parts, we settle for looking at them as a whole.”

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“Believing that your life is harder and sadder than everyone else's is simply a manifestation of clinging to self.”

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“By understanding emptiness, you lose interest in all the trappings and beliefs that society builds up and tears down—political systems, science and technology, global economy... you become like an adult who is not so interested in children's games anymore.”

Chapters: 11. Appreciating Emptiness

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“Clinging to the fallacy of the self is a ridiculous act of ignorance that… permeates everything we do, see, and experience… our whole existence is based on very flimsy premises.”

Chapters: 12. This Over That

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“Destitution and the desires of the destitute are endless. Even the desires of the wealthy are endless... the miser, the self, is the main culprit, providing nothing but a feeling of poverty.”

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“Driven by the hunger for fame, we... have all kinds of small ambitions, such as impressing a girl, or big ambitions, such as landing on Mars. And time after time we end up in the water with nothing to hld on to and not knowing how to swim.”

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“Enlightenment transcends doubt, just as knowledge gained through experience transcends doubt... the defilements and confusions that obstruct our enlightenment are not fixed in place.”

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“Every time we make an assumption we are exposing ourselves like an open wound... At any moment, one of the uncountable possible contradictions can pop up and sprinkle salt on our assumptions.”

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“For a serious seeker, inspiration is everything.”

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“For the serious seeker, inspiration is everything.”

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“From time immemorial we have been addicted to the self that loathes suffering and loves the causes of suffering.”

Chapters: 13. Honor and Disgrace

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“From time immemorial we have been addicted to the self... it is what we love most dearly. It is also what we hate most fiercely”

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“Habit makes us weak. Even simple habits die hard... But the habit of self is not just a simple addiction like smoking cigarettes. It is how we identify ourselves.”

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“Happiness is a flimsy premise upon which to base one’s life... If enlightenment were merely happiness, then it too could be discarded when something better comes along.”

Chapters: 58. Goals Without Means

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“Hell is merely the perception of your own aggression.”

Chapters: 69. No Enemy

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“if it helps you to get invited to some social functions, it is totally fine to hide that you are a Buddhist. But keep in mind that as a Buddhist, you have a mission to refrain as much as possible fro harming others, and to help others as much as possible.”

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“If it were not for certain people's greed for wealth, the highways would be filled with cars powered by the sun, and no one would be starving. Such advances are technologically and physically possible, but apparently not emotionally possible.”

Chapters: 53. Shameless Thieves

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“If we are serious about achieving enlightenment, we need the strength to renounce the things that are a big deal for us, we need a great dal of courage to step onto the path”

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“If we couldn't be bought by praise or defeated by criticism, we would have incredible strength. we would be extraordinarily free... Free from chasing after and avoiding other people's acceptance and rejection”

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“If you dream that you are flying and continue to believe that you can fly even after you wake up, that becomes a problem.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

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“If you still define yourself as a Buddhist, you are not a buddha yet.”

Chapters: 37. Nameless Simplicity

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“Ironically, we never truly appreciated the experience for which we are nostalgic because we were too busy clinging to our hopes and fears at the time.”

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“It is the self that fears failure and longs for success, fears hell and longs for heaven... It weaves a cocoon around itself like a silkworm; but, unlike a silkworm, it doesn't know how to find the way out,”

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“Like a child at the cinema, we get caught up in the illusion. From this comes all of our vanity, ambition, and insecurity. We fall in love with the illusions we have created and develop excessive pride in our appearance, our possessions, and our accomplishments. It’s like wearing a mask and proudly thinking that the mask is really you.”

Chapters: 39. Oneness

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“Like an adult no longer interested in children’s games… you lose interest in all the trappings and beliefs that society builds up and tears down — political systems, science and technology, global economy, free society…”

Chapters: 80. A Golden Age

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“like salad to a tiger… no longer falling prey to small praises and criticisms.”

Chapters: 15. Inscrutability

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“motivation, action, and the resulting karma are inherently like a dream, an illusion... Even if you were to feed all the hungry beings in the world... it might be a righteous act designed to feed and support the ego.”

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“One of the main effects of science an technology has been to destroy the world more quickly.”

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“One who desires unending praise and attention is like a butterfly trying to find the edge of the sky.”

Chapters: 49. No Set Mind

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“Probably the biggest discovery in human history was Siddhartha's realization that the self does not exist independently, that it is a mere label, and therefore that clinging to it is ignorance.”

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“Proud families spend fortunes on a one-day wedding ceremony for a marriage that may or may not last, while on the same day, in the same village, people are dying of starvation.”

Chapters: 30. No War

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“Recognizing the humor in our situation prevents suffering... If we know that some of our familiar concepts, feelings, and objects exist only in a dream, we develop a much better sense of humor.”

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“Siddhartha emphasized to his followers the futility of seeking peace and happiness, in this world or in the afterlife, if they were serious about freeing themselves from samsara.”

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“Siddhartha’s path does not ultimately lead to happiness… it’s a release from the the straitjacket of delusion… a direct route to freedom from suffering and confusion.”

Chapters: 3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones

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“Some find it difficult to understand why Muslins use their profound philosophy of forbidding idol worship as justification for demolishing the sacred icons of other religions, while in Mecca, the Ka`aba, Hajr-e-Aswad (the sacred black stone), is a physical object of worship.... But these are all appearances. Judging or valuling a path or religion by such appearances in not wise”

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“Struck by the arrows of greed, we don’t see that it is our own desire for conveniences… that actually supports the wars that are devastating our world.”

Chapters: 68. Joining Heaven & Earth

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“the Jain message of ahimsa is so beautiful that one wonders why this great religion is not flourishing like other religions.”

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“The only view that truly works for a dharma practitioner is that there are no solutions to the sufferings of samsara and it cannot be fixed… absolutely nothing genuinely works in samsara.”

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“The self loathes suffering and loves the causes of suffering.”

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“This vanity feeds the cosmetic industry, which is one of the causes and conditions that literally destroys the environment.”

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“Those who do not pursue praise and gain, those who do not shun criticism and loss may be stigmatized as insane because they cannot be lured by material gain, don’t look for thrills, have no face to lose, never do anything to impress people.”

Chapters: 41. Distilled Life

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“True buddhist meditation - using any techniques or practices that help transform our habit of thinking that things are solid into the habit of seeing them as compounded, interdependent, and impermanent.”

Chapters: 16. Returning to the Root, Meditation

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“We are lured by the expectation that… one day we will reach ‘happily ever after’ … We believe our grand performance is yet to come, so we do not live for today.”

Chapters: 57. Wu Wei

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“We live behind bars of responsibility and conformity.”

Chapters: 72. Helpful Fear

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“We rarely hear more than one side of the truth, and on the rare occasions that we do, it's usually in fine print.”

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“When struck by the desire arrow, all our common sense… go out the window, we… might even find a streetwalking hippopotamus sexy, even as a beautiful girl loyally waits at home.”

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“When you are awake into enlightenment, you have never been a sentinet being, you have never struggled... There is nothing to remember, because you have never forgotten anything.”

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“You might read about these four truths for the sake of entertainment, but if you don't practice them, you are like a sick person reading the label on a medicine bottle but never taking the medicine.”

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