Tenzin Palmo Quotes

Develop confidence in your innate qualities and believe that these qualities will be brought to fruition.

The purpose of dharma is to help your mind to expand, to grow, to clarify. It should uphold us and create an inner sense of peace, joy, and clarity.

I think the difference is that when we drink tea, we just drink tea. But if you're in the presence of a genuine master, they don't have to do anything but drink their tea, and yet it affects you at an incredibly profound level.

This is a time that calls for extreme restraint. In a world of outright aggression and violence there can be no winners. To respond to violence with counter-violence only throws oil on the fire.

Whether we're in retreat or out in the world, we should try to develop the quality of awareness as much as possible.

Until time and space exist... I vow to come back for the benefit of other beings.

We're not making up merit scores for ourselves. We're making up merit scores so that we can be reborn in a situation where we can really live to benefit ourselves and others.

When we read history we find that in all ages people have thought, this is the dark age.

Yes, times are not good, but when were times good? This is samsara.

Just entering into the dharma and taking refuge and bodhisattva vows is a tremendous amount of merit, but we need more and more and more.

If you go to any nunnery and ask them what the main obstacle is, they'll always say low self-esteem and lack of confidence. It will take time. But the difference between the first girls from Ladakh who became nuns, to the girls we have now, is very encouraging.

The first thing is to learn how to quiet the mind, relax the mind, and bring the awareness to the front so that we are conscious of what we're doing when we're doing it without all the commentary.

I think it's crucial to recognize that we are so fortunate to have this human birth where we can practice what we want, pick up and not just read books but actually understand them. This level of education is very rare throughout history, so we shouldn't take it for granted.

Buddhism helps us to overcome our endless ego grasping mind to open up to something so much more spacious and genuinely meaningful.

It's unlikely that you were a frog in a past life.

One thing in the Buddhadharma is that we are not our body, we are not our gender.

It's interesting that in those countries like Taiwan or Korea, where nuns are given equal opportunities for study and practice, they also develop great social awareness.

You can still practice to be a better and kinder and happier person. That's perfectly possible.

Buddhism is the most active one! The whole time, we're dealing with the mind and how to tame it, and how to transcend our ordinary conventional mind. This takes an enormous amount of determination and perseverance. It also requires an attitude of being relaxed and spacious, rather than tense and stressed. It's certainly not a matter of lying back and expecting it all to happen. If we don't make it happen, it won't!

The dharma is the most precious thing in the world and we should put it at the center of our hearts and transform our whole lives into dharma practice. Otherwise, at the time of death, we will look back and say, now what was all that about? If we truly want to benefit others and ourselves, we have to do it. No excuses.

Realization is wonderful, but you have to expand it until there's not a single defilement left in the mind and the mind is completely open and spacious. Even in that condition, you still use the relative mind. You use them both.

As a human being, we have everything we need. It's enough suffering to give us incentive to go on, but not so much that we don't know where to turn.

The world is full of incredible people who are embodiments of compassion. Some of them have a spiritual path; some of them don't.

My mother was superb. Even when I said to her, when I was nineteen, oh, I'm going to India. Her immediate reaction was, oh yes dear, and when are you leaving? She didn't say, oh how could you leave me, your mother? Or wait a bit dear until you get a bit older and you know your own mind. She just said, well, when are you going? And that was because she loved me, not because she didn't love me.

Perhaps Westerners are in a better position to practice true renunciation than uneducated Orientals because most Western people, by the time they come to the Dharma, have led a pretty full worldly life with lots of sensual pleasures, money and lots of toys to play with. They have seen that the path of accumulation of worldly treasure does not lead to happiness or contentment. That's why they come to the Dharma.

To me the special quality (which of course many men have as well) is first of all a sharpness, a clarityIt cuts through - especially intellectual ossification. Itgets to the point. To me the dakini principle stands for the intuitive force.

I think the problem with Western students is they're very ambitious.

I think many monks hesitate to change things.

When you learn an instrument, it takes an awful lot of time to just learn the scales, and then eventually when you have completely mastered the instrument, the music plays for you. But you still have to keep practicing. And it takes an awful lot of practice. Nonetheless, if you diligently practice, hours and hours and hours and hours, you probably won't get it. You'll probably just end up hurting your fingers.

I do think that someone who decides to devote themselves entirely to the spiritual life, that that is more meritorious.

Until you are open, you cannot receive.

Our pure awareness is not male or female.

When Tibetan lamas die they stay in a realization of clear light nature of the mind for several days or weeks.

We have produced many of our problems through our confused mental states.

If you see young tulkus when they're with other little monks, it's like in a Broadway show or something where the main character is spotlighted and the others kind of fade into the background. And you think, who is that tulku? Because that's all you see, even though they're all dressed the same and they're all the same age, but it's like the tulku is illumined. They don't look like the other ones.

Since I was a small child, I'd believed we were inherently perfect, and that we had to keep coming back again and again until we recognized our innate perfection.

If you just follow your inner calling, then you just go ahead.

Try to develop some genuine love and compassion, some real caring for others.

Buddha activity doesn't mean radiating light and elevating yourself up a thousand feet in the air. That's not the point. The point is, as Zen is always saying - and Tibetans understand this also very well - every activity becomes perfect Buddha activity.

Merit clears away obstacles.

There is an enormous joy and satisfaction in doing what you really want to do and are best fitted to do. When it all comes together like that, it gives you a wonderful sense of well-being and satisfaction knowing that you have been doing what you were intended to do for this lifetime.

The Buddha always emphased the important of good friends.

The Tibetans are good at learning many skillful ways to show that everything we do becomes dharma practice, depending on which kind of approach we use.

Basically, I feel to spend the rest of my life doing retreat.

Most of the spiritual traditions were very theistic and the idea of an external god pulling the strings didn't resonate with me. I then discovered Buddhism and found the perfect path. I felt so grateful to the Buddha for having given the path, and not just explaining the end result, but showing so clearly how to get there.

One of the beauties of the Buddhadharma is there are so many approaches, and not everything is right for everybody.

The future of Dharma is in women's hands now because they have this energy which was never really tapped.

We do have the precious opportunity of this human life.