“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is the real and urgent reason why we must prepare now to meet death wisely, to transform our karmic future, and to avoid the tragedy of falling into delusion again and again and repeating the painful round of birth and death.

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

At every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying?

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.

We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.

There is no armor like perseverance.

Even though the meditator may leave the meditation, the meditation will not leave the meditator.

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.

When I came to the West, I realized there was much hunger for spiritual teachings, but no environment for spirituality.

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

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.

There is no general information about the nature of mind. It is hardly ever written about by writers or intellectuals; modern philosophers do not speak of it directly.

I don’t think the public is dying to see me necessarily be funny all the time.

He comic page is dying; I didn’t want to go with it.

Going to prison is like dying with your eyes open.

Our people are dying, poverty and unemployment are on the rise, but the rest of the world says that Musharraf is needed because [only] he can stop nuclear proliferation, [only] he [can launch] an operation in the tribal areas.

I’m defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

You can have your own watch and always doubt it. If I had a watch I’d probably always be doubting it or the batteries would be dying. I just know that people always have trouble with their watches, and that’s why I like public clocks.

I’m more afraid of falling than I am of flying high. I’m not as scared of dying as I am of growing old. Every battle has its glory and its consequence.

Sarcasm is the language of people whose emotions are dying.