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 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.
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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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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Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth
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…we and all sentient beings fundamentally have the buddha nature as our innermost essence. . . .
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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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Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.
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We know, in Milarepa’s words: “This thing called ‘corpse’ we dread so much is living with us here and now.”
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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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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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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.
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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 most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.
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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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To be a spiritual warrior means to develop a special kind of courage, one that is innately intelligent, gentle, and fearless.
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The 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
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Tomorrow or the next life – which comes first, we never know.
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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.
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Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.
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All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle.
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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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Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature.
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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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What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones.
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The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.
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Spiritual warriors can still be frightened, but even so they are courageous enough to taste suffering, to relate clearly to their fundamental fear, and to draw out without evasion the lessons from difficulties.
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What should we “do” with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE