Poetry is a language for when you can't quite write prose about something, you can't quite say it, but if you do a poem, it kind of gets to the point.
Sakyong MiphamWhen I was going into one of my first meditation retreats, I asked my father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, for some advice. He said, "How you act when you're alone affects the rest of your life." Even in solitude, the ruler engages in virtue.
Sakyong MiphamA lot of people dabbling means Buddhism has come into the mainstream, where people begin to use these terms and ideas, and they become less foreign.
Sakyong MiphamA lot of people talk about the spirituality of Buddhism, and it is a spiritual discipline. But in Shambhala there also is a notion that you have to be synchronized with both heaven and earth.
Sakyong MiphamWhen I ask people to contemplate selflessness, the sometimes react as if I've asked them to put their house on the market or give away all their money. If there was a self that existed in the way we think, discovering selflessness would be like putting our house on the market. But in the Buddhist tradition, the discovery of selflessness is called "completely joyful." It's not called "the raw end of the deal," or "I'd rather go back to bed," or "This is scary and depressing."
Sakyong Mipham