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

Sogyal Rinpoche

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
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
We start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Compassion Fragility Preciousness
Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Death Dying Mirror
The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification. When you know this, you become humble.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Humble Journey Spiritual
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
What more wonderful and consoling gift could you give to dying people than the knowledge that they are being prayed for, and that you are taking on their suffering and purifying their negative karma through your practice for them?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Being Consulting Karma Knowledge Negative
The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Communication Heartfelt Life Things
The other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to – you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Attendedm Rarely Other Uncovered
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
The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Goodness Life Teaching Uncover Whole World
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
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
What will happen to us then if we have no clue of any deeper reality?
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Any Clue Happen 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
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
The act of meditation is being spacious.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE

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

Firsts Next Tomorrow

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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