“It is not within the power of a Buddha to wash away the impurities of others. One could neither purify nor defile another.The Buddha, as Teacher, instructs us, but we ourselves are directly responsible for our purification.”

— Narada Maha Thera

Buddhism in a Nutshell

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Narada Maha Thera 11

Sri Lankan monk and missionary 1898–1983

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“But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.”

Bodhidharma (483–540) Chinese philosopher and Buddhist Monk

Source: The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

“No one saves us but ourselves,
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path
Buddhas merely teach the way.
By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.”

Paul Carus (1852–1919) American philosopher

Translation from the Dhammapada of Gautama Buddha, as translated in The Dharma, or The Religion of Enlightenment; An Exposition of Buddhism (1896)

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), Dhammapada, Ch. 165, as translated in The Dharma, or The Religion of Enlightenment; An Exposition of Buddhism (1896) by Paul Carus; variants for some years have included "We ourselves must walk the path but Buddhas clearly show the way", but this is not yet located in any of the original publications of Carus.

“When we study the discourses of the Buddha or what Gandhiji has to say on, say, fasting, the content is all about looking within, about self-purification. But even when they deal with purely religious subjects the fatwas are all about the form to which the believer must adhere. They resemble instructions a drill sergeant gives to cadets for a parade.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

“It doesn’t mean I’m purer and nicer than others. But it means I have too much ignorance and mental defilement to remove.
I need Buddha's wisdom.”

Richard Gombrich (1937) British Indologist

"When I say I'm a Buddhist"[citation needed]

“It is because we know that we are going forward to life and resurrection that we must purify ourselves in order that we may be presented holy and faultless. This purification, of course, is not just ritual or moral. It is purification from the stains of the world. It will manifest itself in our freedom with regard to the things of the world. This is why hope and freedom are so often related in the texts. The hope which binds us to the risen Christ by a full and actual bond is precisely that which allows us to reject the validity of the secular powers.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 17

“Buddha was not a buddhist. Jesus was not a christian. Muhammad was not a muslim. They were teachers who taught love. Love was their religion.”

Ralph Smart

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“The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.”

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

Die fast unlösbare Aufgabe besteht darin, weder von der Macht der anderen, noch von der eigenen Ohnmacht sich dumm machen zu lassen.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 34
Minima Moralia (1951)

“The Buddha came embodying in Himself the divine quality of wisdom; He was the manifestation of Light, and the Teacher of the way of enlightenment. He demonstrated in Himself the processes of illumination and became "the Illumined One". Light, wisdom, reason, as divine yet human attributes, were focussed in the Buddha. He challenged the people to tread the Path of Illumination of which wisdom, mental perception and the intuition are aspects. Then came the next Teacher, the Christ. He embodied in Himself a still greater divine principle – greater than the Mind, that of Love; yet at the same time, He embraced within Himself all that the Buddha had of light. Christ was the expression of both light and love.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Problems Of Humanity (1944), p. 150/1

“Buddha had said:
"Each of us is a God. Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

“It is not within the power of a Buddha to wash away the impurities of others. One could neither purify nor defile another.The Buddha, as Teacher, instructs us, but we ourselves are directly responsible for our purification.”

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Narada Maha Thera 11

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