Chogyam Trungpa Quotes

We need to encourage an attitude of constant questioning, which is a genuine part of our potential as students. If students were required to drop their questions, that would create armies of zombies- rows of jellyfish...The questioning mind is absolutely necessary.

Begin to build up confidence and joy in your own richness. That richness is the essence of generosity. It is the essence of resourcefulness ; that you can deal with whatever is available around you and not feel poverty stricken.

Fearlessness is extending ourselves beyond our limited view.

We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you'll have no problem.

Sit and do nothing. Every once in a while a golden fish swims by and lays her golden eggs. You'll know.

The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything. We can never say that we are simply falling to pieces or that anyone else is, and we can never say that about the world either. Within our lifetime there will be great problems in the world, but let us make sure than within our lifetime do disasters happen. We can prevent them. It is up to us.

Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.

The ideal of warriorship is that the warrior should be sad and tender, and because of that, the warrior can be very brave as well.

The basic work of health professionals in general, and of psychotherapist s in particular, is to become full human beings and to inspire full human-beingness in other people who feel starved about their lives.

If kindness doesn't work, try more kindness.

Nowness is the essence of meditation. Whatever one does, whatever one tries to practice, is trying to see what is here and now. One becomes aware of the present moment through such means as concentrating on the breathing. This is based on developing the knowledge of nowness, for each respiration is unique. It is an expression of now.

Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.

We have to make the first move ourselves rather than expecting it to come from the phenomenal world or from other people. If we are meditating at home and we happen to live in the middle of the High Street, we cannot stop the traffic just because we want peace and quiet. But we can stop ourselves, we can accept the noise. The noise also contains silence. We must put ourselves into it and expect nothing from outside, just as Buddha did. And we must accept whatever situation arises.

The point is not to convert anyone to our view, but rather to help people wake to their own view, their own sanity.

By means of meditation, I feel that we have planted dynamite to transcend the world of confusion. So it would be good if you could practice meditation as much as you can, as much as physically and psychologically possible. You could become more clear and sane, and you could also influence the national neurosis in that way.

The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.

That is the basic pattern of this kind of meditation, which is based on three fundamental factors: first, not centralizing inward; second, not having any longing to become higher; and third, becoming completely identified with here and now.

Just fully being skillful involves total lack of inhibition. We are not afraid to be. We are not afraid to live. We must accept ourselves as being warriors. If we acknowledge ourselves as warriors, then there is a way in, because a warrior dares to be, like a tiger in the jungle.

Artistic vision comes from a mind clear enough to fall in love with what we see.

Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.

Artistic vision is having the clarity to fall in love with what you see.

We must begin our practice by walking the narrow path of simplicity, the hinayana path, before we can walk upon the open highway of compassionate action, the mahayana path.

It's possible to be completely enlightened... except with your family.

Becoming "awake" involves seeing our confusion more clearly.

Watchfulness is experiencing a sudden glimpse of something without any qualifications - just the sudden glimpse itself.

Whatever shakes you should without delay, right away, be incorporated into the path.

Mindfulness does not mean pushing oneself toward something or hanging on to something. It means allowing oneself to be there in the very moment of what is happening in the living process - and then letting go.

The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought.

Look. This is your world! You can't not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don't hesitate - look! Open your eyes. Don't blink, and look, look - look further.

Sanity is permanent, neurosis is temporary.

We say that the sun is behind the clouds, but actually it is not the sun but the city from which we view it that is behind the clouds. If we realized that the sun is never behind the clouds we might have a different attitude toward the whole thing.

we must continue to be open in the face of great opposition. No one is encouraging us to be open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart.

The artist has tremendous power to change the world.

Why don't we just expand ourselves into our perfect form, our perfect being?

The practice of meditation is a way of continuing one's confusion, chaos, aggression, and passion—but working with it, seeing it from the enlightened point of view.

In the practice of sitting meditation you relate to your daily life all the time. Meditation practice brings our neuroses to the surface rather than hiding them at the bottom of our minds. It enables us to relate to our lives as something workable.

There is no such thing as talent, only awareness.

It's all Ati. Now, let's be practical.

In the process of burning out these confusions, we discover enlightenment. If the process were otherwise, the awakened state of mind would be a product dependent upon cause and effect and therefore liable to dissolution. Anything which is created must, sooner or later, die. If enlightenment were created in such a way, there would always be a possibility of ego reasserting itself, causing a return to the confused state. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it.

Although the warrior's life is dedicated to helping others, he realizes that he will never be able to completely share his experience with others...Yet he is more and more in love with the world. That combination of love affair and loneliness is what enables the warrior to constantly reach out to help others. By renouncing his private world, the warrior discovers a greater universe and a fuller and fuller broken heart. This is not something to feel bad about; it is a cause for rejoicing.

The point is that whatever one is trying to learn, it is necessary to have firsthand experience, rather than learning from books or from teachers or by merely conforming to an already established pattern.

This whole world is mind's world, the product of the mind.

Even fear itself is frightened by the bodhisattva's fearlessness.

If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time.

Disappointment results from the removal of illusion.

We are threatened by the now so we jump to the past or the future.