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