Devotion {to the spiritual master} becomes the purest, quickest, and simplest way to realize the nature of our mind and all things.
SOGYAL RINPOCHEThis is the real and urgent reason why we must prepare now to meet death wisely, to transform our karmic future, and to avoid the tragedy of falling into delusion again and again and repeating the painful round of birth and death.
More Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes
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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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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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What should we “do” with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is.
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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.
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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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This dying forces you to look into yourself. And in this, compassion is the only way. Love is the only way.
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Our problems, all come from nothing; they are all based on a misunderstanding that does not even exist.
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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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Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light.
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And in the all-revealing clarity of its sunlight, this insight can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own mind and the nature of reality.
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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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How we live now can cost us our entire future.
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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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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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Quoting Dudjom Rinpoche on the buddha-nature: No words can describe it No example can point to it Samsara does not make it worse Nirvana does not make it better It has never been born It has never ceased.
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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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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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Learning to live is learning to let go.
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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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Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.
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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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When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually “become” a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.
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When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us.
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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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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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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