Death carries off a man busy picking flowers with an besotted mind, like a great flood does a sleeping village.
Gautama BuddhaRead
Thoughtfulness is the way to deathlessness, thoughtlessness the way to death. The thoughtful do not die: the thoughtless are as if dead already.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being thoughtful leads to a lasting legacy, while thoughtlessness results in a hollow existence.
This quote by Gautama Buddha emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and consideration in one's actions and thoughts. It suggests that a life filled with thoughtfulness contributes to one's spiritual immortality and leaves a positive impact, while living without awareness and thought makes life feel empty and ultimately leads to a metaphorical death in terms of significance and meaning.
Themes
ThoughtfulnessMindfulnessLifeDeathExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a meditation retreat, the facilitator quoted Buddha to encourage participants to practice mindfulness.
More from Gautama Buddha
All quotes βA kind man who makes good use of wealth is rightly said to possess a great treasure; but the miser who hoards up his riches will have no profit.
Gautama BuddhaRead
There are having flowers in Spring, breezes in Summer, moon in Autumn, snows in Winter. If there is nothing worrying over you, it will be the best seasons at all times.
Gautama BuddhaRead
Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge; there is no other refuge. Make truth your island, make truth your refuge; there is no other refuge.
Gautama BuddhaRead
When a wise man is advised of his errors, he will reflect on and improve his conduct. When his misconduct is pointed out, a foolish man will not only disregard the advice but rather repeat the same error.
Gautama BuddhaRead
The tongue like a sharp knife ... Kills without drawing blood.
Gautama BuddhaRead
Similar quotes
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
Jonathan SwiftRead
When wealth is centralized, the people are dispersed. When wealth is distributed, the people are brought together.
ConfuciusRead
Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live.
EpicurusRead
This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world.
Emanuel SwedenborgRead
The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.
W. H. AudenRead
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn't be a great moral teacher. He'd be either a lunatic on a level with a man who says he's a poached egg or else he'd be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.
C. S. LewisRead