To “know” the emotion is to understand that, as it has no root, there is and never has been an emotion. Some people talk about emotion, particularly the negative emotions, as if they were some kind of hideous, demonic force that willfully invades your being, but they are not like that at all.
When you feel angry, just watch your anger. Not the cause of the anger or its result, just the emotion of anger. As you stare at your anger, you will discover there is nothing you can point to and say, “That is my anger.” And the understanding that there is absolutely nothing there is what is called the “dawn of wisdom.”
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book Not for Happiness: A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practices
Read a random quote or see all quotes by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.
Further quotes from the book Not for Happiness:
- Maintaining a strong grip on the habits
- Merely the product of your own perception
- Dharma is not a therapy
- Our fundamental problem
- Sadness
- Mara’s five arrows
- Nothing genuinely works in samsara
- Mind-made illusions
- It cannot be fixed
- Very little time left for practice
- We must also practice it
- What Is Bodhichitta
- Without the personal advice of Buddha
- Everything we experience is a product of mind
- For the sake of all other beings
- Spiritual practice is like riding a bicycle
- Practise whichever method works for you
- Our most important companion
- The merit of maintaining mindfulness