The only reason we have to feel confident that we will reach the top of the stairs or that our airplane will take off and land safely at our destination is that we are enjoying the bliss of ignorance.

But this bliss doesn’t last long, for the bliss of ignorance is nothing more than constant overestimation that the odds of probability will work in our favor, and an underestimation of the obstacles.

Of course, causes and conditions do come together and things do happen as we anticipated, but we take this kind of success for granted. We use it as proof that it should not be otherwise, that our assumptions are well-founded. But such assumptions are just food for misunderstanding.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book What Makes You Not a Buddhist

Read a random quote or see all quotes by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.

Further quotes from the book What Makes You Not a Buddhist:

• Living fully
• Not paranoid but prepared
• Primordial purity
• Buddhist renunciation
• The impossible is possible
• The real source of fear is not knowing
• Driven by ambitions
• Shielding ourselves and others from the truth
• Pride and pity
• Not a buddha yet
• Bound by practicality
• Understanding the nature of enlightenment
• Corrosion begins as soon as creation begins
• What is life?
• Like a child at the cinema
• Fearlessness
• Change is inevitable
• Where will they scatter my ashes
• Being a Buddhist
• Pride and pity