When the mind is positive, body and speech, the servants of the mind, will of course be positive also. But how are we to make the mind positive? At the moment, we cling to the notion that our minds are real entities. When someone helps us, we think, ‘That person has been so good to me. I must be kind to him in return and make him my friend for lives and lives to come.’ This only goes to show that we do not know about the empty nature of the mind. As for our enemies, we think of how to harm them as much as possible… We think like that simply because we think our anger is a true and permanent reality – while in fact it is nothing at all. We should therefore rest in the empty nature of the mind beyond all mental elaborations, in that state which is free from clinging, a clarity beyond concepts.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the Seven-Point Mind Training

translated by Padmakara Translation Group


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Further quotes from the book Enlightened Courage:

• Always be sustained by cheerfulness
• Signs of realization
• Failing to use the instructions as an antidote
• Anger is an illusion
• The three essential factors on which the accomplishment of the Dharma depends
• The vows of the Mind Training
• Well rewarded
• Begin the training sequence with yourself
• Bodhicitta practice
• Give up hoping for results
• Delusion
• Forsaking all self-centeredness
• Honest examination
• The degree of self-clinging
• Morning pledge
• The impurity of our perception
• Using illness on the path
• Antidote to our ego-clinging
• Taking advantage of suffering
• All Dharma has a single goal