For an aspiring bodhisattva, the essential practice is to…

“What you practice you will cultivate. Simply, if you practice being mean and nasty, you will get meaner and nastier; if you practice being…

— Susan Smalley

When you plant seeds in the garden, you don’t dig them up every day to see if they have sprouted yet. You simply water…

— Anonymous

“Wisdom is a fluid process, not something concrete that can be added up or measured. The warrior-bodhisattva trains with the attitude that everything is…

— Pema Chödrön

Few of us are satisfied with retreating from the world and just working on ourselves. We want our training to manifest and to be…

— Pema Chodron

I realize that there's a thing called the bodhisattva ideal, and it's a very nice pinnacle of attention. It's a very egotistical thought, ultimately.

— Frederick Lenz

I can hope that this long sad story, this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas,…

— Steven Weinberg

Bodhisattva, would you take me by the hand, can you show me the shine in your Japan?

— Steely Dan

Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof - that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal…

— Aldous Huxley

Some students went to Milarepa and said, we should stop living in caves and meditating because we should go out and help beings as…

— Tenzin Palmo

To feel overflowing love and almost unbearable compassion for all living creatures is the best way to fulfil the wishes of all the Buddhas…

— Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Examine thus yourself from every side. Note harmful thoughts and every futile striving. Thus it is that heroes in the bodhisattva path Apply the…

— Shantideva

We have compassion because of the incredible pain and suffering which we as unenlightened beings cause to ourselves and all others through our ignorance.…

— Tenzin Palmo

Meat-eating is condemned by the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Sravakas; if one devours meat out of shamelessness he will always be devoid of sense.

— Gautama Buddha

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe... All is registered in the 'boundless heart' of the bodhisattva. Through our deepest and…

— Joanna Macy

For fear of causing terror to living beings, Mahamati, let the Bodhisattva who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh.

— Gautama Buddha