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The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.

Sogyal Rinpoche

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
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
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
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
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
And if you have the understanding that comes from spiritual practice, then falling is in no way a disaster, but the discovery of an inner refuge.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Disaster Inner Practice Refuge Spiritual Understanding
Let the sky outside awake a sky inside your mind.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Awake Mind Sky
And when you talk about realization, accomplishment for that matter enlightenment is that when you realize the fundamental essence of your mind.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Accomplishment Essence Mind
Saints and mystics throughout history have adorned their realisations with different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Different Faces Mind Names
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
There would be no chance to get to know death at all …if it happened only once.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Chance Death Happened
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
Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Buddhism Issues Real
Even though the meditator may leave the meditation, the meditation will not leave the meditator.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Leave May Meditation
Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Boring Civilization Moment Stranger
At the beginning of meditation training thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

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

Giving Journey Meditation
This 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.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Real Repeating Spiritual Tragedy Wisely
if we do not change. This is why it is so absolutely important to use this lifetime to purify our mindstream, and so our basic being and character, while we can.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Character Important Mindstream
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
{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
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
…we and all sentient beings fundamentally have the buddha nature as our innermost essence. . . .
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Awareness Essence Nature
The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Communication Heartfelt Life Things
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
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

The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.

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The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.

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