Emotions come from frustration. The meaning of emotion is frustration in the sense that we are or might be unable to fulfill what we want. We discover our possible failure as something pathetic, and so we develop our tentacles or sharpen our claws to the extreme. The emotion is a way of competing with the […]
Nowness is the sense that we are attuned to what is happening. The past is fiction and the future is a dream, and we are just living on the edge of a razor blade. Chögyam Trungpa
Through the practice of meditation, we gradually begin to relate with our world, our friends, and other situations. And slowly we begin to trust the world as well. We begin to feel that the world is not as bad as we thought— there might be something worth learning. However, we cannot just go out and […]
“Egolessness” does not mean that nothing exists, as some have thought, a kind of nihilism. Instead, it means that you can let go of your habitual patterns and then when you let do, you genuinely let go. You do not re-create or rebuild another shell immediately afterward. Once you let go, you do not just […]
The softness in the situation has to come from you rather than someone else adding it in. If someone falls in love with you, it doesn’t help if you aren’t in love with that person. Nothing can be manufactured from the outside. You have to be in a state of softness or openness to the […]
It is necessary to work patiently with others, all the time. If you have patience with people, they slowly change. You do have some effect on them if you are radiating your sanity. They will begin to take notice, although of course they don’t want to let anybody know. They say, “Nothing has changed. I […]
There is such a thing as unconditional expression that does not come from self or other. It manifests out of nowhere like mushrooms in a meadow, like hailstones, like thundershowers. Chögyam Trungpa
Any confusion you experience has within it the essence of wisdom automatically. So as soon as you detect confusion, it is the beginning of some kind of message. At least you are able to see your confusion, which is very hard. Ordinarily people do not see their confusion at all, so by recognizing your confusion, […]
Every moment we might be doing the same things — brushing our teeth every day, combing our hair every day, cooking our dinner every day. But that seeming repetitiveness becomes unique every day. A kind of intimacy takes place with the daily habits that you go through and the art involved in it. That is […]
For a dharmic person, good conduct is a sense of mindfulness and awareness: whatever you are doing, you should try to see it as an extension of your sitting practice, your general sense of awareness and refraining from too much, unnecessary activity…. You could look at yourself and smile. You could be awake and aware […]
The absence of grasping and fixation is like flying in an airplane. When we rise above the clouds, we begin to realize that upstairs there is a blue sky all the time. We realize that the sun is always shining, even when it is cloudy and rainy down below. There is blue sky all the […]
What a work of art is all about is a sense of delight. Touch here, touch there, delight. It is an appreciation of things as they are and of what one is – which produces an enormous spark. Something happens – clicks – and the poet writes poems, the painter paints pictures, the musician composes […]
The only way to relate with the present situation of spirituality or the neurotic state of the moment is by meditation. I don’t mean sitting meditation only, but relating with the emotional situations of daily life in a meditative way, by working with them, being aware of them as they come up. Every situation then […]
Anytime meditation depends on even the faintest quality of dwelling on something, then something is still not quite free. However, somehow freedom arises from or depends on imprisonment. First you have to recognize your fundamental imprisonment. Then, if you cease to imprison yourself, you are truly free. Whenever there is an experience of faint imprisonment, […]
It’s a question of removing the clouds, rather than recreating the sun. Chögyam Trungpa
If you open your mind, if you are willing to meet, then the teacher opens his mind as well. It is not a question of magic; the condition of openness is a mutual creation. Chögyam Trungpa
Usually when panic arises, we try to brush it off and occupy ourselves with something else. There is somebody very reasonable in us, who says, “This is your imagination. Everything is going to be okay. Don’t worry. Take a rest. Have a glass of milk.” But if instead you go along with the panic and […]
The dictators of the world are egomaniacal people, obviously. But more ordinary people also function in that way, including ourselves. We would like to possess our world, and so we act in such a way that whatever we see around us is completely in order, according to our desire to maintain the security of “me,” […]
There’s no need to philosophize your work in order to make it spiritual. It has spiritual bearing anyway. If you regard yourself as a person on the spiritual path, then whatever you do is part of the path, an expression of the path. Decentralization, the absence of ego, the lack of searching for happiness, and […]
There are second thoughts happening each time you act. There is hesitation, and from that hesitation or gap, you can go backward or forward. Changing the flow of karma happens in that gap. So the gap is very useful. It is in the gap that you give birth to a new life. Chögyam Trungpa
