Hope and fear cannot alter the seasons
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAHope and fear cannot alter the seasons
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAThe discovery of magic can happen only when we transcend our embarrassment about being alive, when we have the bravery to proclaim the goodness and dignity of human life, without either hesitation or arrogance. Then magic can descend onto our existence.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAYou can’t feel the earth if you can’t feel the space.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPADeveloping confidence is like watching the sun rise. First it seems very feeble and one wonders whether it will make it. Then it shines and shines.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAIn Tibetan, authentic presence is wangthang, which literally means, ‘field of power’… The cause or the virtue that brings about authentic presence is emptying out and letting go. You have to be without clinging.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPASpirituality doesn’t exist on another level different from ordinary life.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAFundamentally, no one can help us. If we seek to relieve our loneliness, we will be distracted from the path. Instead, we must make a relationship with loneliness until it becomes aloneness.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAThe bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAThe essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAWarriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle. You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin. You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone and marrow to the world.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAIn fact, a person always finds when he begins to practice meditation that all sorts of problems are brought out. Any hidden aspects of your personality are brought out into the open, for the simple reason that for the first time you are allowing yourself to see your state of mind as it is.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAA great deal of chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves. Having never developed sympathy or gentleness toward themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is also inharmonious and confused.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAChaos should be regarded as extremely good news!
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAWhen you relate to thoughts obsessively, you are actually feeding them because thoughts need your attention to survive. Once you begin to pay attention to them and categorize them, then they become very powerful.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAMy advice to you is not to undertake the spiritual path. It is too difficult, too long, and is too demanding. I suggest you ask for your money back, and go home. This is not a picnic. It is really going to ask everything of you. So, it is best not to begin. However, if you do begin, it is best to finish.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPAThe challenge of warriorship is to live fully in the world as it is and to find within this world, with all its paradoxes, the essence of nowness. If we open our eyes, if we open our minds, if we open our hearts, we will find that this world is a magical place.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPA