At the beginning of meditation training thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually.
SOGYAL RINPOCHEAt every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying?
More Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes
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Normally we do not like to think about death. We would rather think about life. Why reflect on death?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
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
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
As you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea; finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well; Meditation is the road to enlightenment.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
There is no effort, only rich understanding, wakefulness, and unshakable certainty. When I am in the nature of mind, the ordinary mind is no longer there. There is no need to sustain or confirm a sense of being: I simply am.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
Just as if you put your finger into water, it will get wet, and if you put it into fire, it will burn, so if you invest your mind in the wisdom mind of the Buddhas, it will transform into their wisdom nature.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
All my masters would give this as their advice, for this is the essence of what is needed as you come to die: “Be free of attachment and aversion. Keep your mind pure. And unite your mind with Buddha.”
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
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?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE -
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE