Enlightenment

Realization is nothing to be gained anew....Realization consists of getting rid of the false idea that one is not realized.

--Ramana Maharshi

That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside. Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva's progress toward Buddhahood, one by one; when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature which has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all.

--Huang Po

This is the one and only race you will win by going absolutely nowhere!

--Mooji


If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are. Only you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj


No matter how much we keep looking for liberation, for enlightenment, we will never find it as long as we are going somewhere to find it, because actually it is here. Life is enlightenment. Life is the sacredness. Life is emptiness and emptiness is life...Manifested is in the unmanifested and unmanifested is in the manifested. This is the great unity.

--Anam Thubten

Enlightenment is devastatingly simple....Enlightenment is what we are. There is nothing to gain, only its recognition....Awakening to enlightenment is a journey from here to here, not from here to there. There is nowhere to go and nothing to be attained. Enlightenment is simply an awakening to what has always been the case. There is only the seeing through of our own ignorance.

--Gary Crowley

You are already enlightened, but you can never conceptually know what enlightenment is because when you think of it you create a gap between yourself and enlightenment.

--Dainin Katagiri

Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.

--Dogen

The discovery of truth is in the discernment of the false. You can know what is not. What is -- you can only be.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something.

--Charlotte Joko Beck

There is no 'I' to get enlightened. That’s illusion. There’s only being here with what’s here without division.

--Toni Packer

Enlightenment isn’t much more than remembering something long forgotten that’s been with you all along….And while it’s been said that after moments of ecstasy there will still be laundry to do, this is not true about enlightenment. This is because there is no ‘after enlightenment.’ Enlightenment lies beyond any idea of time. Any temporal notions we have about enlightenment come from our dualistic understanding. Like everything else that we can name or describe or conceptualize, [ecstatic moments and blissful states] don’t last…Something else takes place with enlightenment, however, that’s got nothing to do with ecstasy, and from which you don’t emerge. This is because what is finally realized is that there was no ‘you’ to go into enlightenment in the first place…If there’s some particular thing you can name, pick up, single out, or point to, it’s not enlightenment…It’s not true liberation or freedom of mind….Whatever it is, if it’s separated out from the Whole, it will wither and die…We think there is a particular, enduring person here, and then we wonder, ‘Is this person enlightened?’ or ‘Will I ever become enlightened?’ But there is no particular person who becomes enlightened—or who remains deluded. All such questions are off the mark…in each moment, all is fresh and new…

--Steve Hagen

There is no such thing as an awakened person; that’s a contradiction in terms…So let’s say there is just being and ‘me’-ing…If those so-called enlightened people were honest, they would probably say to you that…there can still be a contraction into ‘me’-ing, but the final liberation is that anything is accepted and everything is accepted; nothing is denied. So both are now seen as one…There is being, but contraction can happen. It happens within the perception of the whole. Anything can happen because this is liberation…Liberation includes the total acceptance of all that is….There's nowhere to go. There's no goal. There's no carrot. There's no prize. All there is is this. But the difference between there just being what's happening and the sense that it's happening to you is immeasurable.

--Tony Parsons

Awakening doesn’t mean that you awaken. It means that there is only awakening. There is no you who is awake, there is only awakeness. As long as you identify with a ‘you’ who either is or is not awake, you are still dreaming. Awakening is awakening from the dream of a separate you to simply Being Awakeness….The word enlightenment points to who you are. Who you are is not a state that can be gained or lost. It is not a spiritual experience. All states and experiences come and go. Who you are is the permanence existing right now regardless of states and experiences.

--Adyashanti

Whatever happens, there is only Being. You can't put a foot wrong, because nothing and no one is going anywhere. 'You' are not a character on a journey to self-realisation. It's all a play of appearances.

--Nathan Gill

The Self is ever realized, and whoever claims to be realized for sure is a bogus fraud....Whatever needs change is a thought, an idea, a phantom...Even though you're full of desire to improve or change, really see that there is not now, nor will there ever be, a way out of what you are. You can never become what you already are! The next sip of coffee is not worth less than the highest experience of enlightenment.

--Karl Renz

The hope for spiritual enlightenment is usually the hope of avoiding what we are, the hope of avoiding the pains and confusions of existence, but enlightenment is the realization we can't avoid them.

--Darryl Bailey


Being nailed to a cross just isn’t a whole lot of fun no matter how much enlightenment there is, and enlightenment really just boils down to the acceptance of what is, not some delusional self-mastery or perpetually pleasant state of mind. And acceptance is not something "we" do in order to feel better. The acceptance that is being pointed to is the absolute acceptance that is always already the case: Everything IS (always) allowed to be exactly as it is. Enlightenment is the natural state—what you cannot not be.

--Joan Tollfson


Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed; after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed. You don't make a goal out of relaxation and sensitivity. Have you ever heard of people who get tense trying to relax? If one is tense, one simply observes one's tension. You will never understand yourself if you seek to change yourself. The harder you try to change yourself the worse it gets.

--Anthony deMello

There is absolutely nothing real in the way. What appears to be in the way is that you imagine yourself on the way somewhere.

--Scott Morrison

Spiritual awakening doesn't require a new experience; it's simply seeing clearly what's already happening.

--Darryl Bailey

Enlightenment is not like a sudden realization of something mysterious. Enlightenment is nothing but awakening from illusions and returning to the reality of life.

--Uchiyama

Awakening in its essence is simply being here.

--Jon Bernie

Enlightenment is not a goal to achieve or an idea to grasp. It is the timeless presence that you already are.

--Scott Kiloby

Maybe we have some big spiritual experience, maybe we dissolve and merge into the One, maybe our consciousness expands infinitely across the universe and beyond, maybe we have a kundalini light show. Each time the tendency is to think, ‘This is it.’ Of course, truth is that which does not come (which should have been a big clue—it only took me fifteen years to catch on) and does not go. All of those experiences came, had a life span, and went away. The tendency of mind is to think, ‘If I could just grasp on to that experience, extend it infinitely through time, then that must be what enlightenment is.’ Of course, the truth is so compassionately ruthless it keeps saying, ‘No, no, no my dear, that’s not it.’

--Adyashanti

Enlightenment is not something removed from you, a particular thing you have to get. It’s not something to get an idea of or to figure out. In fact, it can’t be figured out. Nor is enlightenment something hard to experience. You’re experiencing it right now, though you may be ignoring the experience.

--Steve Hagen

To conceive realization as an event in time is an obstacle to enlightenment.

--Francis Lucille

Awakening is simply the direct perception of reality without any filters getting in the way — no projections, no beliefs, no interpretations. Even the one that perceives drops away. So there’s just perception, just awakeness; just aliveness…Awakening is the process of recognizing that reality, over and over and over again. So awakening is not a one-time discovery, but rather an endless re-discovery — a continual deepening into this radiant aliveness that we are, and always have been.

--Jon Bernie

Truth or reality cannot be stored, cannot be amassed - it does not accumulate. The value of any insight, understanding, or realisation can only be in the ever-fresh presence of the moment. Yesterday's realisation is not a bit of good – it is dead, it has lost its vitality. It is useless to try and cling to or hold onto an insight, understanding, or realisation, for only in its movement can ever-fresh and new insights of truth or reality appear. The idea of enlightenment or self-realisation as a onetime event or a lasting and permanent state or experience is an erroneous concept. Understand-ING or know-ING is alive in the immediacy which can never be negated. The emphasis is on the activity of know-ING which is going on as the immediacy now - not the dead concept I understand or I know.

--Sailor Bob Adamson

Waking up is a continuing process. No one wakes up once and for all. There is no limit to wakefulness, just as there is no limit to aliveness....The surprise within the surprise of every new discovery is that there is ever more to be discovered.

--Brother David Steindl-Rast


There is an eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Many people use the wo