Humbleness comes from working with others. When you work with others, you realize the need to be patient, to give space and time to others to develop their own understanding of goodness and bravery. If you are frantic and try to push your understanding onto others, then nothing happens except further chaos. Knowing that, you […]
The Buddhist path begins with taming the mind. Taming the mind is very straightforward: you just relate with things as they are. You don’t try to stock up. You don’t collect more weapons in case you might need to defend yourself, or more food so that if you run out, you would have something to […]
You can’t get stuck in space. Chögyam Trungpa
Looking for security and failing to find it is a glimpse of egolessness. Everyone begins the journey on the path by experiencing dissatisfaction. Something is missing somewhere, and we are frantically looking for it. But even though we run faster and faster, we do not discover anything at all. There is the constant sense that […]
There can be too much emphasis on the heroism of sitting practice and on the idea that there is nothing to do but meditate. There is a greater world than your little meditation world, your little meditation hall, and your little meditation cushion. There are other seats — there are saddles and chairs and green […]
It takes a long time to take our fences down. The first step is to learn to love ourselves, make friends with ourselves, not torture ourselves anymore. And the second step is to communicate to people, to establish a relationship and gradually help them. It takes a long time and a long process of disciplined […]
Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of extreme impulse, but the area in-between is very fuzzy. The bodhisattva delights in the play between hesitation and extreme impulsiveness – it is beautiful to look at – so delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Chögyam Trungpa
If we see things as they are, then we do not have to interpret or analyze them further; we do not need to try to understand things by imposing spiritual experience or philosophical ideas upon them. As a famous Zen master said ‘When I eat, I eat; when I sleep, I sleep.’ Just do what […]
One can define meditation as a process of letting go, of giving up conflict, not in a passive, spineless sense, but in the sense of being present yet not manipulative. So we are faced with the moment-to-moment alternative of either opening to space, of being in harmony with it, or of solidifying and fixating it […]
When you drop your unnecessary things, you finally can swoop and fly in vast space. It is so blue, so bright, and so nice, so airy and fresh. You can stretch your wings and breathe the air. You can do anything you want. You have experienced cheerfulness and joy, and finally the bliss of freedom […]
The terms enlightenment or buddha or awakened imply tremendous sharpness and precision along with a sense of spaciousness. We can experience this; it is not a myth. We experience a glimpse of it. The point is to start from the glimpse and gradually, as you become more familiar with that glimpse and the possibilities of […]
Relative truth, or kundzop in Tibetan, is the phenomenal world, which is an outfit, a self-existing show. The phenomenal world is a performance, living theater. Relative truth is a show-off, a bluff. There is no substance, but there are still a lot of things going on. The relative world should not be looked down upon, […]
In the case of ordinary craziness, we are constantly trying to win the game. We might even try to turn craziness into a credential of some kind so we can come out ahead. We might try to magnetize people with passion or destroy them with aggression or whatever. There’s a constant game going on in […]
In fact the word freedom itself is a relative term: freedom from something [eg. impatience], otherwise there is no freedom. And since it is freedom from something, one must first create the right situation, which is patience. This kind of freedom cannot be created by an outsider or some superior authority. One must develop the […]
The open path is a matter of working purely with what is, of giving up altogether the fear that something may not work, that something may end in failure. One has to give up the paranoia that one might not fit into situations, that one might be rejected. One purely deals with life as it […]
It is possible for us to discover our own innocence and childlike beauty. Discovering the innocent childlike quality in us does not mean being reduced to a child. Rather, we become fresh, inquisitive, sparkling. We want to know more about the world, more about life. When our preconceptions are stripped away, we begin to realize […]
Action without compassion is like planting a dead tree. It will never grow. But any action that contains compassion is planting a living tree that grows endlessly and never dies. Or even if the tree dies, it always leaves a seed behind, which will grow into another tree. That organic quality of compassion goes on […]
We should realize that there is some discrepancy, that everything is not clear cut and black and white. Feeling confused is the starting point. When you are confused, you don’t believe in your confusion as being the answer. Because you are confused, you feel that the answer must be something else more clear. That invites […]
In order to make yourself a person of the world, you have had to fight for every inch. Even when you are pressing your clothes or busy organizing a cocktail party, there is always an undercurrent of trying to prove something, trying to achieve something. Whatever you do involves some kind of chauvinism, which in […]
It is impossible to overcome passion, aggression, and ignorance with a long face. We have to cheer up. When you begin to see yourself fully and thoroughly, then you discover your sense of humor. It is not the same as telling bad jokes. Humor here is natural joy, the joy of reality. Chögyam Trungpa
