Embrace suffering, and you transform your relationship with what causes you to suffer, as well as your relationship with suffering itself.
It is good to remember that the goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians. In the same vein, my teachings are not meant to acquire followers or imitators, but to awaken beings to eternal truth and thus to awakened life and living.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal awakening over merely adhering to teachings or labels.
Adyashanti's quote reflects the essence of spiritual paths in various traditions, advocating for personal experience and awakening rather than simply following doctrines or becoming aligned with a particular group. It suggests that the ultimate goal is to realize one's true nature and attain a state of enlightenment, akin to how Buddhism seeks to create Buddhas and Christianity seeks to create Christs, highlighting the importance of individual transformation over mere identification with religious labels.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about personal growth and spirituality.
More from Adyashanti
All quotes →If we do not live and manifest in our lives what we realize in our deepest moments of revelation, then we are living a split life.
Awareness isn’t something we own; awareness isn’t something we possess. Awareness is actually what we are.
The willingness to not bypass illusion is very important. We come to nirvana by way of samsara. We come to see the true nature of things by seeing through the illusory nature of things. We don't come to nirvana by avoiding samsara. We don't come to clarity by avoiding confusion.
Our illusions-the beliefs we hold on to-are the very doorways to our freedom. We simply have to enter through them without grasping or pushing away. We must not believe them, but we must not run away from them either. We need to see each moment of apparent bondage as an invitation to freedom. Then it becomes an act of love, an act of compassion, to stop running away.
Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and aren’t even generated by you. So why pay so much attention to your imagination when reality is for the realizing right now?
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Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless... and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people.