If I were asked the question, “What religion are you?” it would seem very odd if I did not say, “I’m a Buddhist.” After all, people look to me as a Buddhist leader! To keep things simple, it is easier for me to say, “I am a Buddhist.” Yet that is not how I see myself. Rather, I see myself as a follower of the Buddha. I aspire to follow in the Buddha’s footsteps. To hold on to the label of “Buddhist” and wave it like a banner is something else altogether.
When I say I wish to follow in the Buddha’s footsteps, the key point for me is that the Buddha used his own intelligence to discover the meaning of life within himself. He did not discover it from texts written by someone else, or from any formalized set of rules. He found it within himself, within his own noble heart. We all have the potential to do this.

17th Karmapa
from the book The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out
translated by Ngodup Tsering Burkhar & Damchö Diana Finnegan
Read a random quote or see all quotes by the 17th Karmapa.
Further quotes from the book The Heart Is Noble:
- Interdependent reality
- Social action
- Protective Inner Wisdom
- The Wealth of Contentment
- Life in Balance
- Boxing Love with Our Expectations
- Just Love
- Nothing is intrinsically bad
- There are no fixed starting points
- Difference without Division
- Breaking barriers
- Healthy relationships
- Just not been introduced before
- Take joy in your sincere intentions
- Finding our nobility of heart
- Authentic love toward others
- There are no fixed starting points
- Expanding our sense of ourselves
- Open-minded
- Our life is vast