Henepola Gunaratana Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Henepola Gunaratana's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Henepola Gunaratana's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 41 quotes on this page collected since December 7, 1927! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • They have no power over you. It's all a show, a deception. Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all. You give in out of habit. You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat. It is all empty back there. There is only one way to learn this lesson, though. The words on this page won't do it.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.80, Simon and Schuster
  • You can learn not to want what you want, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.6, Simon and Schuster
  • Meditation changes your character.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.10, Simon and Schuster
  • Vipassana: looking into something with clarity and precision, seeing each component as distinct, piercing all the way through so as to perceive the most fundamental reality of that thing.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.27, Simon and Schuster
  • Watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached manner so you can gain insight into your own behavior.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.12, Simon and Schuster
  • The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.35, Simon and Schuster
  • Discipline is a difficult word for most of us. It conjures up images of somebody standing over you with a stick, telling you that you're wrong. But self-discipline is different. It's the skill of seeing through the hollow shouting of your own impulses and piercing their secret.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.80, Simon and Schuster
  • View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.35, Simon and Schuster
  • But look within and watch the stuff coming up-restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain-just watch it come up and don't get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.80, Simon and Schuster
  • [M]orality is not a ritualistic obedience to a code of behavior imposed by an external authority. It is rather a healthy habit pattern that you have consciously and voluntarily chosen to impose upon yourself because you recognize its superiority to your present behavior.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.10, Simon and Schuster
  • We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted.

  • Civilization changes man on the outside. Meditation softens him within, through and through.

  • Each step along the Buddha's path to happiness requires practising mindfulness until it becomes part of your daily life.

    Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha's Path”, p.3, Simon and Schuster
  • Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.70, Simon and Schuster
  • Prayer and contemplation are both exercises in concentration. The normal deluge of conscious thought is restricted and the mind is brought to one conscious area of operation. The results are those you find in any concentrative practice: deep calm, a physiological slowing of the metabolism and a sense of peace and wellbeing

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.23, Simon and Schuster
  • No matter how hard you pursue pleasure and success, there are times when you fail. No matter how fast you flee, there are times when pain catches up with you.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.4, Simon and Schuster
  • You can't make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do that changes will flow naturally.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.7, Simon and Schuster
  • Don't cling to anything and don't reject anything.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.34, Simon and Schuster
  • Somewhere in this process you will come face-to-face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation they have not.

  • You can only have bliss if you don't chase it.

  • The principal cause of suffering is craving. Once craving is eliminated, much suffering will be eliminated. Still more suffering will be eliminated once ignorance is eliminated. Both craving and ignorance are equally powerful defilements that cause suffering.

    Bhante Henepola Gunaratana (2010). “Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English: An Introductory Guide to Deeper States of Meditation”, p.33, ReadHowYouWant.com
  • The brain does not manufacture thoughts unless we stimulate it with habitual verbalizing. When we train ourselves by constant practice to stop verbalizing, the brain can experience things as they are.

  • DUE TO OUR FEELINGS ARISING FROM CONTACT, we think and we rationalize, conceptualize, theorize, philosophize and speculate. Because of the feeling arising from the six senses, we increase our desire; we come to wrong views and wrong beliefs. We recall our past sights, smells, sounds, tastes, touches and ideas and build up more desires, thoughts, concepts, beliefs, ideas, theories and philosophies.

  • Peace is not a thought, not a concept; it is a nonverbal experience.

  • You can't ever get everything you want. It is impossible. Luckily, there is another option: You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of the endless cycle of desire and aversion.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.6, Simon and Schuster
  • Deeply buried in the mind, there lies a mechanism that accepts what the mind experiences as beautiful and pleasant and rejects those experiences that are perceived as ugly and painful. This mechanism gives rise to those states of mind that we are training ourselves to avoid-- things like greed, lust, hatred, aversion, and jealousy.

  • Whatever attitudes we habitually use toward ourselves, we will use on others, and whatever attitudes we habitually use toward others, we will use on ourselves.

    Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha's Path”, p.78, Simon and Schuster
  • The purpose of meditation is personal transformation.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.10, Simon and Schuster
  • Let come what comes, and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens.

    Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.34, Simon and Schuster
  • Real peace comes only when you stop chasing it. When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real fulfillment arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real beauty of life comes out. When you seek to know the reality without illusion, complete with all its pain and danger, that is when real freedfom and security are yours.

Page 1 of 2
  • 1
  • 2
  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 41 quotes from the Henepola Gunaratana, starting from December 7, 1927! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!