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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHEThis 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.
More Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes
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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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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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What should we “do” with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is.
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All my masters would give this as their advice, for this is the essence of what is needed as you come to die: “Be free of attachment and aversion. Keep your mind pure. And unite your mind with Buddha.”
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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.
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A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion.
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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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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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At the beginning of meditation training thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually.
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The future is very much in our hands–in our actions.
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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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The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.
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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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And if you have the understanding that comes from spiritual practice, then falling is in no way a disaster, but the discovery of an inner refuge.
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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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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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When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us.
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Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.
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Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha.
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Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off.
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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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{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don’t question or doubt whether I am in the “correct” state or not.
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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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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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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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There is no armor like perseverance.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE