Buddhavac Quotations from 2017
Summary: The 2017 Buddhavac reflections focus on self‑awareness, impermanence, emotional clarity, and the subtle workings of karma. The quotations explore memory, perception, prejudice, trust, and the challenges of human relationships. They highlight the importance of compassion, mindfulness, and the acceptance of change. Many entries address the nature of suffering, the role of discernment, and the need to slow down and observe life without judgment. The teachings encourage detachment, gratitude, and the cultivation of inner stability while navigating uncertainty. Overall, the collection offers steady guidance for living with awareness, humility, and spiritual purpose.
The Buddha is our highest and purest consciousness and intelligence. He represents all the best, the highest and the noblest thought and conduct in you. The following quotations are compiled from the 2017 messages of Buddhavac. May they awaken you and inspire you in your daily life.
We like people who are like us. That is self love expressing itself.
Your opinion of others is always tinged with your opinion of yourself.
The prejudice and divisions begin with names because your name is associated with your faith or ethnicity or culture or geography or gender.
Wake up. Yesterday is gone. Today is awaiting.
The past is a graveyard of memories. The future is a distant cloud. The present is just a moment that comes and goes.
The memory of a person outlasts the death of the person. It is from there myths are made.
The ignorant one seeks attention. The mindful one pays attention. One path leads to suffering, and the other to discernment and Nirvana.
A teacher can only teach, but the decision to learn rests with the student.
When things are heated, they remain heated for sometime. So is the case with anger.
Virtue is difficult to cultivate. Vice is difficult to overcome.
Aging is the most chronic, incurable and universal sickness in this world. It inflicts the sentient as well as the non-sentient.
Karma connects people, and karma separates them.
Most of the time, the conflict, friendship or enmity is with the image or the memory of the person we remember, not with the person as such.
Some truths hurt. Some lies hurt even more.
Trust is the foundation of any relationship. Without it, there’s nothing to hold the relationship, except fear, forgiveness or self interest.
Begin the day with thoughts and feelings of love and compassion as a morning mental ablution to fill your mind with positive vibrations.
Having renounced earthly delights and the fire of desire, a steadfast monk settles into the vessel of life like water without complaint and breathes free air with a serene mind.
But then change is what brings randomness into play and creates possibilities and opportunities. It throws a wrench into the wheel of fate.
When you want change, you must be prepared for all consequences.
In this world we are all trying to solve the puzzle called life in our own ways, and finally we all end up at the same place without ever knowing it.
Accepting your emotions without judgment and any associated guilt is the first step to self-acceptance and self-transformation.
A smile can be pretentious, but anger is rarely.
Worship the Buddha Not to earn his Grace,But to Engage in good karma And Remember his teaching.
Impermanence is also a blessing. Otherwise, we will be stuck forever in a rut, with no hope for change, improvement or Nirvana.
Meditation is just what it is, meditation.
Your actions are like boomerangs. They come back to you with lessons of their own.
The mind is an obstacle when we are ignorant and deluded, and the mind is a facilitator when we have intelligence and discerning wisdom.
If you're NOT feeling your feelings and emotions, you're disconnected from yourself. You are Alive but not Awake, in the world but not in you.
The problem is the solution When You understand the problem.
The Buddha Is not a Person Or a Name. The Buddha Is not God Or a Heavenly Being. The Buddha Is a State of Knowing Being and Seeing.
Nurture The Love that gives The Compassion that heals The Knowledge that frees The Seeing that discerns and The Conduct that leads to Nirvana
If hate is hidden in the heart, Hate becomes self evident Through speech and actions. If compassion, compassion. You give what you have.
Each life on earth Is a unique story We never know. Except a few. Even they, hardly.
We don't know what May happen tomorrow. We're unsure what Happened yesterday. Still it's reason enough to be Alive active and persistent.
A house without loving and caring people is an empty house.
What is the lesson for today? Slow Down. Slow Down. Take a breath and look around.
What we need most today is compassion. Only compassion will save the planet and the humanity.
A photographer needs the instinct of a hunter, the patience of a mother and the compassion of a monk.
There are essentially two truths about everything, the truth in it itself and the truth which is knowable. They're usually not the same.
Pay the dues of karma, but do not accumulate the debt. It is the way to lighten yourself for the enlightenment.
In life, you have two fundamental choices, what life wants to give you or what you can get from it.
Show gratitude to older people and be courteous when you meet them. Show gratitude to those who passed away. For it's on the foundations they built, we enjoy peace and prosperity.
The world is like a treadmill. Once on it, you can't stop, unless you step aside.
The idea of eternal soul is mind's defense against the fear of impermanence. To overcome fear, establish the mind in the idea of Not Self.
When you think others are happier than you, you may not feel good. But when you see no one is free from suffering, you will feel compassion.
From mindfulness arises discernment. With discernment only you can practice the Eightfold Path.
When two people go to a movie, they do not necessarily watch the same one.
Living as if you do not exist and do not matter, yet striving for perfection on the righteous path, that is the true mark of renunciation.
If you want to improve some aspect of your life or circumstances, begin with small changes.
If you expect "THE ANSWER" to any existential question, you are bound to be disappointed.
Soft spoken gentle and contented, the steadfast monk stands firmly on the raft of life in the ocean of Samsara, swayed by neither emotions nor suffering.
You resurrect the true Masters each time you practice their wisdom. It's the only resurrection I know for sure.
The Buddha's body perished long ago. But the Buddha still lives on, illuminating the minds of many.
The purpose of meditation is Direct Perception, which is perception with clarity and without hindrances such as attachment and delusion.
Giving without attachment or expectation, this is the highest giving (dana).
Whatever you do with love, care and compassion prevails, lasts longer and transforms whomever it touches.
In the imperfections of life are all the possibilities.
Let's be Bodhisattvas, the guardians of the world, helping the little creatures and the helpless ones survive and saving them from destruction.
You have some powers, strengths and abilities. Use them wisely.
Out of a multitude of possibilities at any given moment one possibility becomes the reality. Existence is so fluid, uncertain and impermanent.
Compassion should not just be an emotion which one occasionally feels. It has to be a way of life for the Buddha mind to manifest.
In existence, there is order in chaos, and chaos in order, so that in life there is scope for both hope and uncertainty.
Take your life into any direction. It will eventually resolve itself into a pattern or a story, as your mind weaves its own narrative and connects the dots.
You are truly free, only when you are not disturbed by anything.
Love the people in your life, but without becoming too attached. Eventually, they all will leave you, or you will leave them.
Life eventually resolves itself into two possibilities: Death or Salvation.
The mind is not bound to Time although the body is. You can go back and forth in your mind as you wish. You imagination is open to all possibilities, just as the universe. Just as the universe, your mind has no set boundaries. What may hold you back are fear and disbelief.
Meditation is taking your thoughts for a walk in search of yourself.
The train in which you start the journey to go somewhere is not the same train from which you get down when it reaches the destination.
Right now what can you change for better? Change that! It is by doing what you can, you make progress.
Make each day a better day in some way.
When the "I" goes out of the window, we all are the same.
What has passed is not necessarily superior. What is yet to come is not necessarily inferior. Coming and going, it is the nature of existence.
You're a moment in the life of the Planet, and not even a fleeting thought in that of the universe. Yet, in that little time so much life happens.
The mind is where the Buddha is hidden. It is from where the possibilities of Nirvana begin like little streams, and gather momentum on the Eightfold Path to coalesce into a river.
True compassion is being kind to other people's imperfections, suffering and shortcomings.
With material wealth you may make others happy for awhile. But with spiritual wealth you can show them the right Way to be happy with or without wealth.
On the way to my home, three birds are gathering food, and one dog is immersed in sniffing the grass.
Aren't you that wonderful person, which you are already, yet still want to be? Accepting who you are is more imp than chasing an illusion of who you want to be.
May all those who are striving to achieve success somewhere, somehow, in whatever they choose to, may they all succeed in their efforts.
If you are suffering, know that you are a good person. The truth is Good people suffer more because that suffering has a purpose.