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:
- Our fundamental problem
- We must also practice it
- Altruism bolsters self-confidence
- Nothing genuinely works in samsara
- Our most important companion
- Self Trapped
- Relative and absolute truth
- Being able to start practicing right away
- Obstacles Create Fertile Ground for Practice
- It cannot be fixed
- Just space
- Life is a stream of sensory illusions
- Rip that ego apart
- Sign of a mature practitioner
- Not designed to cheer you up
- Three higher trainings
- Avoid being distracted
- Without the personal advice of Buddha
- Mara’s five arrows