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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

The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Giving Journey Meditation
Tomorrow or the next life – which comes first, we never know.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Firsts Next Tomorrow
All my masters would give this as their advice, for this is the essence of what is needed as you come to die: “Be free of attachment and aversion. Keep your mind pure. And unite your mind with Buddha.”
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Attachment Buddha Essence Master Mind Needed
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
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
A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

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

Misunderstanding Our Problem
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
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
A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to bother it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Mind Mountain Nature Thick
Don’t you notice that there are particular moments when you are naturally inspired to introspection? Work with them gently, for these are the moments when you can go through a powerful experience, and your whole worldview can change quickly.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Inspired Moments Powerful
Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Compassion Heart Spontaneous
…we and all sentient beings fundamentally have the buddha nature as our innermost essence. . . .
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Awareness Essence Nature
Normally we do not like to think about death. We would rather think about life. Why reflect on death?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Mirror Thinking
Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer “yes” to both of these, then you really understand impermanence.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Answer Both Impermanence Pursuit Urgent
In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Buddhist Death Mirrors
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 you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Discipline Meditation Reality
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?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Desire Living Truly Trying
All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Extraordinary Hope Light Meditation Often Real
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 most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Communication Heartfelt Life Things
. . . when the nature of mind is introduced by a master, it is just too simple for us to believe.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Angel Believe Drama
We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don’t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Believe Buddhist Home

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.

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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.

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