The teachings of the Dharma have great power, but unless you practice them properly that power will remain merely as a potential which is never expressed. If one has a tool and does not use it, not much will be accomplished. An unused tool is not particularly beneficial in itself. But if you truly put the teachings into practice, as the Dharma takes birth in and grows in your mindstream, all your faults will naturally diminish and all your positive qualities will spontaneously blossom, just as the sun, as it rises higher in the morning, gradually spreads increasing light throughout the world.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva
translated by Padmakara Translation Group
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Further quotes from the book The Heart of Compassion:
- Before it is too late
- Never stop thinking about how to gain liberation
- Sealing your merit with authentic dedication
- No more than an empty echo
- Phenomena adorn emptiness, but never corrupt it
- Giving and taking
- Conduct
- The only thing that is really worth doing
- The reason you are wandering in samsara
- Neither discouragement nor pride
- Powerful sources of help
- The importance of relative bodhicitta
- Accepting short-term sufferings
- Phenomena adorn emptiness
- Practice day and night
- Two types of friends
- Seeing clearly how deceiving the ways of the world are
- Cutting through subtler misconceptions
- Just projections of the mind
- Protecting ourselves from future suffering