Real 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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHEThe 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
More Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes
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The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification. When you know this, you become humble.
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We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.
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And when you talk about realization, accomplishment for that matter enlightenment is that when you realize the fundamental essence of your mind.
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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.
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Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.
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What should we “do” with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is.
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The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss, clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence of grasping.
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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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The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.
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if we do not change. This is why it is so absolutely important to use this lifetime to purify our mindstream, and so our basic being and character, while we can.
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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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True spirituality is to be aware that if we are interdependent with everything and everyone else, even our smallest, least significant thought, word and action have real consequences throughout the universe.
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Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life.
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Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries.
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As we progress in it, the process reveals itself as wonderfully interdependent: We, from our side, try continually to generate devotion.
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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.
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Quoting Dudjom Rinpoche on the buddha-nature: No words can describe it No example can point to it Samsara does not make it worse Nirvana does not make it better It has never been born It has never ceased.
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How we live now can cost us our entire future.
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. . . when the nature of mind is introduced by a master, it is just too simple for us to believe.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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At every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying?
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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.
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And to think that all this springs from a civilization that claims to adore life, but actually starves it of any real meaning; that endlessly speaks of making people “happy”, but in fact blocks their way to the source of real joy.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE