Tantric Buddhism Quotes

“Nostalgia is an illness
for those who haven't realized
that today
is tomorrow's nostalgia.”
― Zeena Schreck

“Shapeshifting requires the ability to transcend your attachments, in particular your ego attachments to identity and who you are. If you can get over your attachment to labeling yourself and your cherishing of your identity, you can be virtually anybody. You can slip in and out of different shells, even different animal forms or deity forms.”
― Zeena Schreck

“The material world is all feminine. The feminine engergy makes the non-manifest, manifest. So even men (are of the feminine energy). We have to relinquish our ideas of gender in the conventional sense. This has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with energy. So feminine energy is what creates and allows anything which is non-manifest, like an idea, to come into form, into being, to be born. All that we experience in the world around us, absolutely everything (is feminine energy). The only way that anything exists is through the feminine force.”
― Zeena Schreck

“Always remember, wherever you are, whether near or far, you had a mother who really, really loved you. The original mother. Once you've found your true inner guru you can never again be divided. Perfect union with the divine, through the grace of your real teacher, transcends time, space, death and all worldly limitations. Your real teacher is the original mother - regardless in which manifest or non-manifest form, or gender, she appears. The one who nurtures you and the one who also, out of wisdom and compassion, corrects you if you are misguided.”
― Zeena Schreck

“Nothing could be easier than disturbing a status quo instituted by others; the real work of the sinister
current is to break the rules we rigidly establish for ourselves.”

-Zeena Schreck for "Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity," University of Stockholm, Malin Fitger 2004”
― Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic

“Kundalini means, according to Zeena ‘She Who is Hidden,’ and points to the dormant goddess in every human being’s body. While the kundalini force is found in muladharachakra, she hypnotizes humans, like maya herself, and renders them slaves to the illusory. Kundalini can only awaken people if she travels up along the spine.'

--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004”
― Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic

“There are Tantrics who deliberately seek to do more active forms of renunciation, so transgression of social norms and breaking of taboo, and breaking of social taboos especially, is a form of renunciation.”
― Zeena Schreck

“A unifying factor between the different traditions and lineages of Tantra, is that it is feminine in nature. It acknowledges the feminine as the basis from which all the practices spring. Therefore, Tantra is by its nature, the understanding that all phenomenal existence, the universe, or cosmos, that we experience is feminine in nature.”
― Zeena Schreck

“If you have strength of character, you can use that as fuel to not only be a survivor but to transcend simply being a survivor, use an internal alchemy to turn something rotten and horrible into gold.”
― Zeena Schreck

“In order to understand why one chooses to be a Tantric practitioner, there has to be an understanding of cause and effect, cyclic existence, the awareness that the reality that we think we are seeing is not reality as it really truly is. So enlightenment is seeing reality with bare awareness, non-conceptual reality.”
― Zeena Schreck

“Zeena Schreck believes that the right-hand path and the left-hand path have traditionally had the same end goal; it is only the method that is different and the fact that adepts on the left-hand path seek liberation in this life.

--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004”
― Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic

“One of the biggest dangers on the left-hand path, according to Zeena, is that the initiate often adheres to the need of ‘maintaining his personality’, even when consciousness expands beyond every known border. The left-hand path requires, [...] that certain aspects of the self dies, something which she believes to be elucidated in the tantric death symbolism.

--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004”
― Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic

“Most humans who have been reared with the creature comforts of the spiritually vacuous industrialized Western world will cease their search [for Truth] at the first signs of physical, psychic, or mundane resistance; or as soon as they encounter the difficulties of dissolving deeply entrenched self-delusions. Look at the world around you, and tell me that it appears to be filled with people genuinely in search of Truth!”
― Zeena Schreck, The Zaum of Zeena: A Collection of Interviews, Essays, Quotes and Images by Zeena Schreck

“A certain amount of native skill and training can allow many individuals to be fairly successful magicians, achieving a surprisingly high ratio of positive results through sorcery.(...) These outer changes, no matter how dramatic, will not necessarily have a deep impact on the deepest levels of your psyche, which is where the process of initiation most meaningfully manifests.'

--Zeena Schreck for “Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background
and role within new Western religiosity,” University of Stockholm, Malin Fitger 2004”
― Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic

“There are Tantrics who deliberately break taboos and social norms and then there are other Tantrics who, by means of their practices and the way that they practice, that to society in general, it may have the appearance of breaking social norms but in fact that is just the manifestation of the progress of their practice.”
― Zeena Schreck

“Learn the power of tantra. Focus on your desires with singleness of purpose and align your actions with your desire, and your desires will manifest into your reality.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic

“Zeena believes that the breaking of taboos creates access to blocked energy that is let loose in a forceful way. The left-hand path is about consciously breaking with a ‘sleepwalker orthodoxy’ to be able to act as a fully awaken and conscious individual. In her book, George Orwell (1984) is quoted: “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” At the same time she notes that the left-hand path is the ‘way of action’. It is not about intellectual contemplation, or worse, just reading about action.'

About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger from: Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background
and role within new Western religiosity, University of Stockholm, 2004”
― Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic

“In Demons of the Flesh, Zeena describes how Shiva and Shakti are actually ‘two sides of the same deity’. The goal of the initiate on the left-hand path is to become ‘this bisexual twin godhead’ and activate a state of perceptual sexual ecstasy within one's own consciousness. Zeena points out that a corresponding symbolism is found in the western hermeticism in the idea of ‘the inner androgyne.’

--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004”
― Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic

“Zeena Schreck believes that the right-hand path and the left-hand path have traditionally had the same end goal; it is only the method that is different and the fact that adepts on the lefthand
path seek liberation in this life.

--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004”
― Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic

“Zeena Schreck is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, author, musician/composer, tantric teacher, mystic, animal rights activist, and counter-culture icon known by her mononymous artist name, ZEENA. Her work stems from her experience within the esoteric, shamanistic and magical traditions of which she's practiced, taught and been initiated. She is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist yogini, teaches at the Buddhistische Gesellschaft Berlin and is the spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement (SLM).”
― Zeena Schreck

“Boston is a great center of learning. That surgeon was a tantric Buddha,” said Ram in admiration, “The smell of cautery is the finest incense. It sharpens the mind.”
― Joe Niemczura

“With a pure and balanced mind and a focused desire - we can call forth any truth our soul may wish to live.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic

“Exactly. I think the original tantric Buddhists took notice of was some very wise old people who never studied in their youth, but took part in a range of risk-taking adventures when they were younger, and finally became wise when they reflected upon their lives in old age. There is only one problem.”

“Which is?”

“Risk-taking is a way to die young. It is dangerous and you may forfeit the opportunity to grow old. An early death is not a sure path to wisdom in old age,” Ranjit said, running his finger around the inside of the pipe bowl, “and if you survive without reflecting, then you simply become an old degenerate.”
― Joe Niemczura, The Sacrament of the Goddess

“As in other Buddhist Tantric techniques, recommended preliminaries for these practices include developing skill at both calm-abiding (zhi gnas; śamatha) and insight meditation (lhag mthong; vipaśyanā). As in earlier Buddhist teachings, many Chöd dehadāna practices emphasize renunciation, purification, and self-transformation through the accumulation of merit and the exhaustion of demerit. Rather than suggesting that one must wait to accumulate adequate merit before offering the gift of the body, however, Chöd provides the opportunity for immediately efficacious offering of the body through techniques of visualization. Using a technique which echoes the traditional Buddhist teaching of the of the mind-made body (manomayākāya), the practitioner engages in visualizations which allow her to experience the non-duality of agent and object as she offers her body.

The process of giving the body as a means of attainment is commonly articulated in Chöd practice texts (sgrub pa; sādhana). These practice texts exhibit the framework of mature Tantra sādhana, including the stages of generating bodhicitta, going for refuge, meditating on the four immeasurables, and making the eight-limbed offering. Generally speaking, the main section of a developed Chöd sādhana has three components. The first two—a transference of consciousness (nam mkha’ sgo ‘byed) practice, and a body maṇḍala (lus dkyil) practice—have distinctly purifying purposes. The Chöd transference of consciousness practice has parallels with other Buddhist practices called "’pho ba." In this part of the visualization practice, the practitioner’s consciousness is "ejected" from one's body through the Brahma aperture at the crown of one's head. At this time, one's consciousness can be visualized as becoming identical with an enlightened consciousness, which is embodied in a figure such as Machik, Vajrayoginī (Rdo rje rnal byor ma) or Vajravārāhī (Rdo rje phag mo). [....] In th[e] first stage of this transformation, the practitioner identifies with an enlightened being, thus overcoming attachment to her own body-mind aggregates and purifying them through this non-attachment. In the second stage, the practitioner can extend this identification: the practitioner identifies the microcosm of her body with macrocosms of the mundane and supramundane worlds. The body maṇḍala (lus dkyil) stage also allows the practitioner to reconceptualize her body as expanding through space and time and becoming indistinguishable from the realm of the supramundane, or the Dharmadhātu (chos kyi dbyings). Through the process of reconstructing her identity, the practitioner is able to see herself as the ultimate source of offerings for all sentient beings.”
― Michelle Sorensen, Making the Old New Again and Again: Legitimation and Innovation in the Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Tradition

“In the Supreme Primordial Buddha Tantra, cited in the Stainless Light Commentary, the Primordial Buddha (Ādibuddha) describes the buddha’s gnosis with its five aspects in his discussion of meditation on the five psychophysical aggregates as ultimately being of the nature of the five types of gnosis. The mirror-like gnosis, which is the purified aggregate of form, knows that all phenomena in space are devoid of the nature of ideation (kalpanā) and are seen like an image in a virgin’s prognostic mirror. The gnosis of equality, or the aggregate of feeling, knows that after achieving union with all phenomena, there is only a single, indestructible phenomenon that abides; and arisen from the imperishable gnosis, that single phenomenon is without cessation and without eternity. The discriminating gnosis, or the purified aggregate of discernment, knows that in non-arisen phenomena, which are free from mental formations (saṃskāra), there is neither awakening nor buddhahood, nor a sentient being, nor living beings. The accomplishing gnosis, or the purified aggregate of mental formations, knows the phenomena that transcend the reality of consciousness (vijñānadharmatā) and that are purified in gnosis, untainted, and luminous by nature as the realm of phenomena (dharmadhātu). These five types of the gnosis characterizing the mind of the buddha are represented by five paradigmatic awakened figures, or buddhas: Akṣobhya, Ratnasaṃbhava, Amitābha, Amoghasiddhi, and Vairocana, who also represent the five types of awakened families. Thus, one could say that although the awakened author of the tantra is ultimately a single author, he speaks from the perspective of his five, mutually interconnected types of gnosis manifesting as the five types of buddhas.”
― Vesna A. Wallace, The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy