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Our problems, all come from nothing; they are all based on a misunderstanding that does not even exist.

Sogyal Rinpoche

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

Death Dying Forever
Our bodies can suddenly break down and go out of order, just like our cars. We can be quite well one day, then fall sick and die the next.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Break Die Down Next Sick Suddenly
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
Let the sky outside awake a sky inside your mind.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Awake Mind Sky
Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Compassion Heart Spontaneous
Just because we go through a difficult situation, it doesn’t mean that the future is predetermined. The future is very much in our hands, in our actions.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Difficult Hands Mean Situations
Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat,
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Heartbeat Mountain Shore Stream
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
The act of meditation is being spacious.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Act Meditation Spacious
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 RINPOCHE

Buddhism Forever Struggle
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
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
What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Attachment Learning Life
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
Tomorrow or the next life – which comes first, we never know.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Firsts Next Tomorrow
At every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Compassion Death Karma

Our problems, all come from nothing; they are all based on a misunderstanding that does not even exist.

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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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