Fundamental optimism ~ Chögyam Trungpa
The courage to work with ourselves comes as basic trust in ourselves, as a sort of fundamental optimism. In the beginning, you act like a warrior, and then you actually become brave. Chögyam Trungpa
Quote Archives: Chögyam Trungpa
Look ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Look. This is your world! You can’t not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don’t hesitate – look! Open your eyes. Don’t blink, and look, […]
Continuous dissatisfaction ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Whether we eat, sleep, work, play, whatever we do life contains dissatisfaction, pain. If we enjoy pleasure, we are afraid to lose it; we strive for more and more pleasure or try to contain it. If we suffer pain we want to escape it. We experience dissatisfaction all the time. All activities contain dissatisfaction or […]
The ambition to improve ourselves ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Many people make the mistake of thinking that since ego is the root of suffering, the goal of spirituality must be to conquer and destroy ego. They struggle to eliminate ego’s heavy hand but that struggle is merely another expression of ego. We go around and around trying to improve ourselves through struggle, until we […]
Our buddha genes ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Our buddha heart contains certain qualities, which we could call our true buddha genes. We all possess these particular buddha genes. Isn’t it strange to say that the mind has genes? But it turns out to be true. These buddha genes have two characteristics: They are able to see through and not be afraid of […]
Giving the giver ~ Chögyam Trungpa
When one gives completely, there is no one left to watch what is being given, and no one to appreciate how generous one is being. This is called “giving the giver.” The more one surrenders in this way, the more richness develops. There is never a problem of running out of things to offer. One’s […]
Inquisitiveness ~ Chögyam Trungpa
When you were very young, three years old, you didn’t want to look into the possibility of escape, particularly, because you were so interested in how things were done. You used to ask your father and your mother all sorts of questions: “Why is this so, Mommy? Why is this so, Daddy? Why do we […]
Whatever shakes you ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Whatever shakes you should without delay, right away, be incorporated into the path. Chögyam Trungpa
Boredom ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Boredom is important in meditation practice. It increases the psychological sophistication of the practitioners. They begin to appreciate boredom and they develop their sophistication until the boredom begins to become cool boredom, like a mountain river. It flows and flows and flows, methodically and repetitiously, but it is very cooling, very refreshing. Chögyam Trungpa
You can relax and let go wherever you are ~ Chögyam Trungpa
You can appreciate your life, even if it is an imperfect situation. Perhaps your apartment is run down and your furniture is old and inexpensive. You do not have to live in a palace. You can relax and let go wherever you are. Wherever you are, it is a palace. Chögyam Trungpa
Effort ~ Chögyam Trungpa
It has been said in the Buddhist teachings that without exertion, you cannot journey on the path at all. When you are taking a holiday or a vacation, you are very inspired to wake up in the morning, because you are expecting to have a tremendous experience. Exertion is like the minute before you wake […]
Giving up goal, aim, and object ~ Chögyam Trungpa
In our approach to spirituality, jumping or leaping is a very dignified thing to do. It is being willing to be an explorer on the biggest scale, willing to be a samurai in the widest sense, willing to break through, to be a warrior. The leap consists of giving up goal, aim, and object at […]
All your polarities are valid ~ Chögyam Trungpa
A critical attitude towards oneself doesn’t mean that you have to be hateful of yourself. The critical attitude can be accompanied by compassion and warmth. All your polarities are equally valid, whether weakness or strength. There’s no point in splitting your basic being into several parts and trying to suppress certain parts and cultivate others. […]
The beauty of totality ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Ultimate goodness is connected with the notion of ultimate joy without comparison to suffering. Out of that joy, we begin to experience, visually, the beauty of the blue sky; the beauty of a red rose; the beauty of a white chrysanthemum; the beauty of chattering brooks; the beauty of the openness of the ocean, where […]
A taste of enlightenment ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Enlightened heart is expansive and awake. It is not territorial, and it does not demand that we gather our own flock of egotistic companions. When we look into that quality of basic wakefulness beyond our own territoriality, we find ourselves having a taste of enlightenment for the very first time. Chögyam Trungpa
The artist is an inspired human being ~ Chögyam Trungpa
In the experience of awareness, you do not just get hold of one chunk of mindfulness and stick with it, but you experience the mindfulness and its shadow, the environment around it. There is a tremendous appreciation of life and of how to conduct one’s life. So awareness practice is not just formal sitting practice […]
The end of ambition ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Salvation, if we can talk about it at all, is the end of ambition, which is when you become completely one with your experience. Knowledge becomes one with wisdom, which is called buddhahood or the awakened state of mind. You realize that you never needed to make the journey at all, because the journey and […]
Who is speaking ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Basically speaking, when you say “I am,” you begin to ask yourself the question, “Who said that?” You might say, “I said that.” But then you ask, “Who are you?” And when you look, you find it is very difficult to find out who that actually is. You might timidly come back to saying your […]
The origin of suffering ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Having become actually aware of our dissatisfaction, we begin to search for a reason for it. By examining our thoughts and actions, we discover that we are continually struggling to maintain and enhance ourselves. We realize that this struggle is the root of suffering. So we seek an understanding of the process of struggle. This […]
Compassion and egolessness go hand in hand ~ Chögyam Trungpa
The connection between compassion and egolessness goes both ways. When we let go of the self, we are more inspired to work with others; and when we are generous to others, we realize that the self is lost. We begin to lose our ego fixation. So when we are generous to that, we begin to […]