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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.

Sogyal Rinpoche

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
At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Karma Powerful
Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Buddhist Lost Mind
When I came to the West, I realized there was much hunger for spiritual teachings, but no environment for spirituality.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

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

Giving Journey Meditation
{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don’t question or doubt whether I am in the “correct” state or not.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Doubt Effort Understanding
When the view is there, thoughts are seen for what they truly are: fleeting and transparent, and only relative. . . . You do not cling to thoughts and emotions or reject them, but welcome them all within the vast embrace of Rigpa.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Emotion Relative Transparent Welcome
As you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea; finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Become Gorge Meditate Narrow The Occasion
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
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
The act of meditation is being spacious.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Act Meditation Spacious
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
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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Believe Letting Go Real
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
For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Karma Real
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
Devotion {to the spiritual master} becomes the purest, quickest, and simplest way to realize the nature of our mind and all things.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Life Nature Spiritual
If all we know of mind is the aspect of mind that dissolves when we die, we will be left with no idea of what continues, no knowledge of the new dimension of the deeper reality of the nature of mind.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Mother Running
Perhaps the deepest reason we are afraid of death is that we do not know who we are.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Believe Jobs Spiritual
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
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
Modern society seems to be a celebration of all the things that lead away from the Truth, make Truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Block Celebration Discourage Real Spring

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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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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