“Apart from consciousness,” answered the Buddha, “no absolute truths exist. False reasoning declares one view to be true and another view wrong. It is delight in their dearly held opinions that makes them assert that anyone who disagrees is bound to come to a bad end. But no true seeker becomes embroiled in all this. Pass by peacefully and go a stainless way, free from theories, lusts, and dogmas.”

- Majjhima Nikaya

I declare that the overcoming of clinging to the impurities of the world is possible for a person who knows and sees but not for a person who does not know or see. In the person who knows and sees, the dustless and stainless Eye of Truth arises. Seeing the truth, he sees things as they are. Seeing the truth, the eye is born, knowledge is born, wisdom is born, science is born, and light is born.

- Samyutta Nikaya

Whoever, with a rod, harasses an innocent man, unarmed, quickly falls into any of ten things: harsh pains, devastation, a broken body, grave illness, mental derangement, trouble with the government, violent slander, relatives lost, property dissolved, houses burned down. At the break-up of the body this one with no discernment, reappears in hell.

- Dhammapada [137-140]

What is laughter, what is joy, when the world is ever burning? Shrouded by darkness, would you not seek the light?
- Dhammapada [146]

Crush your sense of self-allure
like an autumn lily in the hand.
Nurture only the path to peace
–Unbinding–
as taught by the One Well Gone.
- Dhammapada [20]

Get rid of the tendency to judge yourself
above, below, or equal to others.
A nun who has self-possession and integrity
will find the peace that nourishes
and never causes surfeit.

- Therigatha

Sole dominion over the earth,
going to heaven,
lordship over all worlds:
the fruit of stream-entry
excels them.

- Dhammapada [178]

If you worship those worthy of worship,
–Awakened Ones or their disciples–
who’ve transcended
complications,
lamentation,
& grief,
who are unendangered,
fearless,
unbound:
there’s no measure for reckoning
that your merit’s ‘this much.’

- Dhammapada [13]

For those who are ready, the door
To the deathless state is open.
You that have ears, give up
The conditions that bind you, and enter in.

- Majjhima Nikaya

Greed, I say, is a great flood; it is a whirlpool sucking one down, a constant yearning, seeking a hold, continually in movement; difficult to cross is the morass of sensual desire. A sage does not deviate from truth, a brahmana stands on firm ground; renouncing all, he is truly called ‘calmed.’
- Sutta Nipata