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Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light.

Sogyal Rinpoche

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

Compassion Heart Spontaneous
To be a spiritual warrior means to develop a special kind of courage, one that is innately intelligent, gentle, and fearless.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Mean Spiritual Warrior
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
There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Dying Go Letting
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
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
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
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

Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light.

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Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light.

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