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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHETomorrow or the next life – which comes first, we never know.
More Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes
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How important it is to be skillful and gentle with ourselves, without becoming disheartened or giving up, but trusting the spiritual path and knowing that it has its own laws and its own dynamics.
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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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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?
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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.
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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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What should we “do” with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is.
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Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.
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The future is very much in our hands–in our actions.
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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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Again and again we need to appreciate the subtle workings of the teachings and the practice, and even when there is no extraordinary, dramatic change, to persevere with calm and patience.
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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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Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat,
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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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Devotion {to the spiritual master} becomes the purest, quickest, and simplest way to realize the nature of our mind and all things.
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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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Normally we do not like to think about death. We would rather think about life. Why reflect on death?
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A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion.
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When no such thing occurs, they feel extremely disappointed. But the real miracle of meditation is more ordinary and much more useful. . . .
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Yet is our deepest desire is truly to live and go on living, why do we blindly insist that death is the end? Why not at least try and explore the possibility that there may be a life after?
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE