Most Influential quotes by Gautama Buddha
By: Sabal Prasain
Tags: Love, Enlightenment, Awakening, Mindfulness, Buddhism

7 Of The Most Influential Quotes By Gautama Buddha

Photo Credit : Anete Lusina : @anetelusina

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you.

Meaning: ‘Conquering yourself ‘means we need to be able to bring our awareness to positivity and try to get rid of all the evils like anger, desire and ego. Constantly focusing on improving ourselves removing self-doubt and self-criticism, and retraining our subconscious mind to always do the right thing, you will be able to make progress in the path to ‘Conquer yourself’. Self-discipline and self-control are the most important qualities needed to help you ‘win yourself ‘ every day.

Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting another person to die. You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.

Meaning: Anger and aggression always triggers the body’s ‘fight for flight’ response. If you could not control your anger and keep yourself holding unto it , it will create many short-term and long-term mental and physical health issues to you. If you cannot manage your anger it will create more stress on to yourself and will do more harm to you than others. So, keeping calm if you can practice forgiveness, it can heal you and your relationship with others. Anger is the result of desire, greed and ignorance.

When the ego dies, the soul awakes.

Meaning: As long as you have an ego, you cannot lead yourself to the path of self-awakening. Ego is one of the main impediments in human spiritual growth and always stand in the way to self-realization. Once you understand the transient nature of life, you will stop hanging on to your ego. Our sense of self is entirely formed by our ego which is built out of our beliefs and ideas imparted to us by the society.

Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.

Meaning: If we want to love others, first we need to be able to love ourselves. We need to train our brain as well to become more positive everyday by removing negativity and surrounding ourselves with optimistic and positive people. One of the purposes of human body is to know ‘who you are’. To understand the ‘real you’ you need to be awakened, and for that a healthy mind and body is needed. Actually, if you cannot love and take care of your body, you cannot love anyone else.

Set your heart just on doing good. Do it over and over again and you will be filled with joy.

Meaning: We should always hack our mind and body to always think positive and do-good work. With constant practice we can retrain our brain and subconscious mind to form good habits. Much of what we do in our day-to-day life is driven by our habits. Once a person starts finding pleasure in doing good again and again, this becomes his lifetime habit, and can change him forever.

If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path.

Meaning: Help others as much as possible, it will actually help yourself. Karma — what goes around comes around- actually mean if you are good and help others, it will eventually make you happy, satisfied and make you feel good. You might not be able to see the good result right away after helping a person, but it will yield good result in the long run. Buddhism says ‘what we are and what we are experiencing now is the result of our past actions. So, if we are able to physically, morally or intellectually light a lamp for someone, these karmas will be accumulated to our ‘Karmic Account’ and will enlighten our path.

All wrongdoing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

Meaning: This is one of the most encouraging quotes from Buddha, even though I do not fully agree with him. Human minds have both dark and bright aspect. Deep down we all have a hidden shadow part which always tries to pull us backward while we are progressing towards truthfulness and righteousness. We need to focus on the bright aspects of our mind more by bringing our awareness to that aspect of mind. By regular practice of mindfulness and meditation we can bring our awareness to that aspect of our mind which is dominated by brightness.

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