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

Sogyal Rinpoche

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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Different Faces Mind Names
At a relative level to ask for the growth in our lives of clarity, peace, and discernment, and to ask for the realization of the absolute nature of mind that comes from merging with the deathless wisdom mind of the master.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Absolute Deathless Mind Nature
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Disheartened Dynamics Lawa Trusting
Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that, with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, our mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Devotion Discipline Essential Mind
The act of meditation is being spacious.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Act Meditation Spacious
When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Encouragement Spiritual
The 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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Cover Death Eyes Jhour Postpone Uncertain
And when you talk about realization, accomplishment for that matter enlightenment is that when you realize the fundamental essence of your mind.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Accomplishment Essence Mind
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Hands Knowing Water
Why, if we are as pragmatic as we claim, don’t we begin to ask ourselves seriously: Where does our real future lie?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Buddhism Lying Real
Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Climbing Helping Life Prioritise
What the world needs more than anything are Bodhisattvas of peace, lawyers, politicians, teachers working tirelessly for the enlightenment of themselves and others.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Enlightenment Needs Teacher
Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Buddhism Issues Real
Just as if you put your finger into water, it will get wet, and if you put it into fire, it will burn, so if you invest your mind in the wisdom mind of the Buddhas, it will transform into their wisdom nature.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Fire Water Wisdom
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Even Karma Purify
if we do not change. This is why it is so absolutely important to use this lifetime to purify our mindstream, and so our basic being and character, while we can.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Character Important Mindstream

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

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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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