Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes

Yet is our deepest desire is truly to live and go on living, why do we blindly insist that death is the end? Why not at least try and explore the possibility that there may be a life after?

To be a spiritual warrior means to develop a special kind of courage, one that is innately intelligent, gentle, and fearless. Spiritual warriors can still be frightened, but even so they are courageous enough to taste suffering, to relate clearly to their fundamental fear, and to draw out without evasion the lessons from difficulties.

The absolute truth cannot be realized within the domain of the ordinary mind, and the path beyond the ordinary mind is the path of the heart.

Meditation is bringing the mind home.

At every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying? What more wonderful and consoling gift could you give to dying people than the knowledge that they are being prayed for, and that you are taking on their suffering and purifying their negative karma through your practice for them?

The act of meditation is being spacious.

Generally we waste our lives, distracted from our true selves, in endless activity. Meditation is the way to bring us back to ourselves, where we can really experience and taste our full being.

. . . when the nature of mind is introduced by a master, it is just too simple for us to believe. Our ordinary mind tells us this cannot be, there must be something more to it than this. It must surely be more "glorious", with light blazing in space around us, angels with flowing golden hair swooping down to meet us, and a deep Wizard of Oz voice announcing, "Now you have been introduced to the nature of your mind." There is no such drama.

Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation

Don't you notice that there are particular moments when you are naturally inspired to introspection? Work with them gently, for these are the moments when you can go through a powerful experience, and your whole worldview can change quickly.

Sitting like a mountain let your mind rise and fly and soar.

Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and that everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer "yes" to both of these, then you really understand impermanence.

More and more, I have come to realize how thoughts and concepts are all that block us from always being . . . in the absolute. . . . When the view is there, thoughts are seen for what they truly are: fleeting and transparent, and only relative. . . . You do not cling to thoughts and emotions or reject them, but welcome them all within the vast embrace of Rigpa.

The whole of meditation practice can be essentialized into these 3 crucial points: Bring your mind home. Release. And relax!

The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is simplicity.

More important than finding the teacher is finding and following the truth of the teaching.

There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.

Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life.

Once an old woman came to Buddha and asked him how to meditate. He told her to remain aware of every movement of her hands as she drew the water from the well, knowing that if she did, she would soon find herself in that state of alert and spacious calm that is meditation.

All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle. When no such thing occurs, they feel extremely disappointed. But the real miracle of meditation is more ordinary and much more useful. . . .

What should we "do" with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is.

The definition of mantra is "that which protects the mind." That which protects the mind from negativity, or that which protects you from your own mind, is called mantra.

We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don't know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home.

Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to bother it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar

Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha.

There is only one way of attaining liberation and of obtaining the omniscience of enlightenment: following an authentic spiritual master.

What is born will die, What has been gathered will be dispersed, What has been accumulated will be exhausted, What has been built up will collapse, And what has been high will be brought low.

For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch on to happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now at this very moment: How we live now can cost us our entire future.

Perhaps the deepest reason we are afraid of death is that we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity; but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography", our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit card ... It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

If all we know of mind is the aspect of mind that dissolves when we die, we will be left with no idea of what continues, no knowledge of the new dimension of the deeper reality of the nature of mind. So it is vital for us all to familiarize ourselves with the nature of mind while we are still alive. Only then will we be prepared for the time when it reveals itself spontaneously and powerfully at the moment of death; be able to recognize it "as naturally," the teachings say, "as a child running into its mother's lap"; and by remaining in that state, finally be liberated.

Just because we go through a difficult situation, it doesn’t mean that the future is predetermined. The future is very much in our hands, in our actions.

It is compassion, then, that is the best protection; it is also, as the great masters of the past have always known, the source of all healing.

Our problems, all come from nothing; they are all based on a misunderstanding that does not even exist.

In meditation take care not to impose anything on the mind, or to tax it. When you meditate there should be no effort to control, and no attempt to be peaceful. Don't be overly solemn or feel that you are taking part in some special ritual; let go even of the idea that you are meditating. Let your body remain as it is, your breath as you find it, and remain in your natural condition of unchanging pure awareness.

Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything, counts.

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them.

The future is very much in our hands--in our actions.

Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating - the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to - you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide.

Switch on the television or glance at the newspaper: You will see death everywhere. Yet, did the victims of those plane crashes and car accidents expect to die? They took life for granted, as we do. How often do we hear stories of people whom we know, or even friends, who died unexpectedly? We don't even have to be ill to die: Our bodies can suddenly break down and go out of order, just like our cars. We can be quite well one day, then fall sick and die the next.

At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment. Even if we have accumulated a lot of negative karma, if we are able to make a real change of heart at the moment of death, it can decisively influence our future, and transform our karma, for the moment of death is an exceptionally powerful opportunity to purify karma.

Tertön Sogyal, the Tibetan Mystic, said that he was not really impressed by someone who could turn the floor into the ceiling or fire into water. A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion.

Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.

There would be no chance to get to know death at all ...if it happened only once.

This dying forces you to look into yourself. And in this, compassion is the only way. Love is the only way.

The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this lifetime.

The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the sky-like nature of mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness, which underlies the whole of life and death

...we and all sentient beings fundamentally have the buddha nature as our innermost essence. . . .

I can't say it strongly enough; to integrate meditation in action is the whole ground and point and purpose of meditation