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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.

Sogyal Rinpoche

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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Confusion Nature Spiritual
The future is very much in our hands–in our actions.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Action Actions Hands Our
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Compassion Inescapable Moment Natural Urgent
How we live now can cost us our entire future.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Cost Entire Future Live Now
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
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Life Meditation Sky
When no such thing occurs, they feel extremely disappointed. But the real miracle of meditation is more ordinary and much more useful. . . .
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Disappointed More Occurs Such Things Useful
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Lying Peace Real
The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is simplicity.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Balance Keys Simplicity
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Nature Reality Show Subtlest Sunlight Working
We know, in Milarepa’s words: “This thing called ‘corpse’ we dread so much is living with us here and now.”
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Dread Know Meditation Words
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Compassion Fragility Preciousness
Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Buddha Voice Writing
The other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to – you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Attendedm Rarely Other Uncovered
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?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Being Consulting Karma Knowledge Negative
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Gratitude Intelligent Real
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Enligt Meditation Natural Release
We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Believing Beyond Ordinary Senses
Spiritual warriors can still be frightened, but even so they are courageous enough to taste suffering, to relate clearly to their fundamental fear, and to draw out without evasion the lessons from difficulties.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Difficulties Fundamental The Lesson
Perhaps the deepest reason we are afraid of death is that we do not know who we are.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Believe Jobs Spiritual
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Country Describe Example Fall
This dying forces you to look into yourself. And in this, compassion is the only way. Love is the only way.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Compassion Dying Love
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Giving Spiritual Teaching Up
So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Go Inspiring Letting Order
. . . when the nature of mind is introduced by a master, it is just too simple for us to believe.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Angel Believe Drama
Tomorrow or the next life – which comes first, we never know.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Firsts Next Tomorrow
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
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Meditation Self Spiritual

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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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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