Why exactly are we so frightened of death that we avoid looking at it altogether? Somewhere, deep down, we know we cannot avoid facing death forever.
SOGYAL RINPOCHEReal devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.
More Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes
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There would be no chance to get to know death at all …if it happened only once.
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There is no armor like perseverance.
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So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow.
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Modern society seems to be a celebration of all the things that lead away from the Truth, make Truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists.
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We start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
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Even though the meditator may leave the meditation, the meditation will not leave the meditator.
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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.
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When I came to the West, I realized there was much hunger for spiritual teachings, but no environment for spirituality.
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The whole of meditation practice can be essentialized into these 3 crucial points: Bring your mind home. Release. And relax!
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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.
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The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life.
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Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?
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Let the sky outside awake a sky inside your mind.
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This life is the only time and place we can prepare in, and we can only truly prepare through spiritual practice: This is the inescapable message of the natural bardo of this life.
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The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is simplicity.
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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.
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At a relative level to ask for the growth in our lives of clarity, peace, and discernment, and to ask for the realization of the absolute nature of mind that comes from merging with the deathless wisdom mind of the master.
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The future is very much in our hands–in our actions.
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When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn.
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Saints and mystics throughout history have adorned their realisations with different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind.
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For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality.
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The act of meditation is being spacious.
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In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life.
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Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.
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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.
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Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE