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Nagarjuna Quotes

150–250 India

Nāgārjuna (c. 150 – 250), sometimes called the "second Buddha" in Tibetan and East Asian Mahayana traditions, was an Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher. He systematized Mahayana Buddhist philosophy around the central concept of the emptiness (shunyata) of all existents (dharmas).

India
Non-fiction authors
Philosophers

Also known as: Nagārjuna

Random Nagarjuna quote

15 quotes

Even three times a day to offer
Three hundred cooking pots of food
Does not match a portion of the merit
In one instant of love.

Although you may spend your life killing,
You will not exhaust all your foes.
But if you quell your own anger,
your real enemy will be slain.

The science, which teaches arts and handicrafts
Is merely science for the gaining of a living;
But the science which teaches deliverance from worldly existence,
Is not that the true science?

The accomplishments of a teacher of ants
Are but accomplishments for earning a living.
But the study of the termination of earthly incarnation—
Why should that not be the accomplishment?

Without hope of reward
Provide help to others.
Bear suffering alone,
And share your pleasures with beggars.

Due to having faith one relies on the practices,
Due to having wisdom one truly knows.
Of these two wisdom is the chief,
Faith is its prerequisite.

Even if you seek to harm an enemy,
You should remove your own defects and cultivate good qualities.
Through that you will help yourself,
And the enemy will be displeased.

If you think you see both
Destruction and becoming,
Then you see destruction and becoming
Through impaired vision.

If you desire ease, forsake learning.
If you desire learning, forsake ease.
How can the man at his ease acquire knowledge,
And how can the earnest student enjoy ease?

"I am not, I will not be.
I have not, I will not have."
That frightens all the childish
And extinguishes fear in the wise.

"I, without grasping will pass beyond sorrow,
And I will attain nirvāṇa," one says.
Whoever grasps like this
Has great grasping.

To those possessed of breeding, learning, handsome looks,
Who have no wisdom, neither discipline, you need not bow.
But those who do have these two qualities,
Though lacking other virtues, you should revere.

As a magician creates a magical illusion by the force of magic, and the illusion produces another illusion, in the same way the agent is a magical illusion and the action done is the illusion created by another illusion.

No suffering is self-caused.
Nothing causes itself.
If another is not self-made,
How could suffering be caused by another? If suffering were caused by each,
Suffering could be caused by both.
Not caused by self or by other,
How could suffering be uncaused?

There is pleasure when a sore is scratched,
But to be without sores is more pleasurable still.
Just so, there are pleasures in worldly desires,
But to be without desires is more pleasurable still.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Nagarjuna (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.