This true mindfulness is the single sufficient king. We can also call that equanimity, the meditation state. Equanimity literally means “placing evenly.” What is placed evenly? It is rigpa, awareness. Placing rigpa in evenness means leaving it alone. It’s not placing it as being aware of something other. Just leave your awareness as it is, […]
Every time you connect, a little bit more clarity stays around the love, a little bit more space opens up around it. your mind becomes clearer. you experience expanded possibilities. You become a little more confident, a little more willing to connect with others, a little more willing to open up to other people, whether […]
As we go through life, we accumulate layers of ideas about who we are and what we’re capable of achieving. As these layers accumulate, we tend to become increasingly rigid in our identification with certain views about ourselves and the world around us. Gradually, we lose our connection to the basic openness, clarity, and love […]
Be kind to yourself as you proceed along this journey. This kindness, in itself, is a means of awakening the spark of love within you and helping others to discover that spark within themselves.
Illusion immediately becomes more workable when we acknowledge it as simply an illusion. The Western habit is to work against the grain and to try and organize the illusory into something solid and structured … In the stressful attempt to nail down the illusory nature of things, our chance to be at ease, spacious, awake, […]
When you have achieved a state of calmness and readiness, then you are ready to know, ready to understand in a deep way the dance between emptiness and appearance. Once you catch a glimpse of that dance, don’t hang on to it. Just let it go, like your first glimpse of essence love. Tsoknyi Rinpoche
Without calmness of mind, it is very hard to have a sense of delight. Without this sense of delight, there is no genuine compassion. If we are totally preoccupied with our own experience — how I feel, what my problem is, and so forth — there is no chance at all for us to care […]
True compassion is undirected and holds no conceptual focus. That kind of genuine, true compassion is only possible after realizing emptiness. Tsoknyi Rinpoche
In truth, devotion, compassion and intelligence should come about naturally, but their natural arising is a bit difficult at the beginning. The Dzogchen texts mentions that on the ‘exterior,’ we should maintain a training in rigpa that is uncontrived, while on the ‘interior’ we sometimes start a session with a fabricated meditation. Whatever the case […]
Empty essence means very, very open And very spacious, like a totally open sky. Space has no center or edge. Nothing is prevented, it is completely unimpeded. Empty essence, like space, is not made out of anything whatsoever. At the same time there is a sense of knowing, An awake quality, a cognizant nature, Not […]
What is the difference between the real state of rigpa and the imitation? Check whether or not there is any clinging, any sense of keeping hold of something. With conceptual rigpa you notice a sense of trying to keep a state, trying to maintain a state, trying to nurture a state. There is a sense […]
Ego-clinging is very subtle. Everything we do seems to be another way to feed the ego. The ego bribes us into assuming a path that seems to be a genuine spiritual practice, but then our ego usurps it. Even chanting ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ can be appropriated by the ego. You sit down on your […]
There are many ways of grasping at the meditative state. Some of you might be so blissful that you feel, ‘Wow, it is so great to feel this. Even if I were to be pricked with a needle right now, it will probably also be a pleasant sensation. It won’t hurt at all.’ According to […]
Let yourself become that space that welcomes any experience without judgement. Tsoknyi Rinpoche
Illusion immediately becomes more workable when we acknowledge it as simply an illusion. The Western habit is to work against the grain and to try and organize the illusory into something solid and structured … In the stressful attempt to nail down the illusory nature of things, our chance to be at ease, spacious, awake, and […]
The true bodhisattva spirit grows out of this personal sense of freedom. You discover that you don’t feel so needy anymore. You don’t crave another refueling – with shamatha or with other people’s love and attention – because you know within yourself how to be free, how to be confident. With this sense of security […]
There is only one mind; it is not that there are two minds, one recognizing the other. In the very moment of recognizing, it is like a knot that is untied. We don’t have to do anything further than that, leave it untied. In the moment of looking, it is already seen. It is not […]
As a father myself, I am a bit sensitive to the needs of children, to their fears and nightmares, their longings, the pressures that their friends and the cultures within which they are raised exert upon them. After my daughters were born, each time I held their small bodies in my arms – listening to […]
True freedom comes about through confidence in liberating any and all thought states. Tsoknyi Rinpoche
If we can allow some space within our awareness and rest there, we can respect our troubling thoughts and emotions, allow them to come, and let them go. Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside. Tsoknyi Rinpoche
