A beautiful object has no intrinsic quality that is good for the mind, nor an ugly object any intrinsic power to harm it. Beautiful and ugly are just projections of the mind. The ability to cause happiness or suffering is not a property of the outer object itself. For example, the sight of a particular individual can cause happiness to one person and suffering to another. It is the mind that attributes such qualities to the perceived object.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva
source: http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/thoughts/40
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Further quotes from the book The Heart of Compassion:
- Powerful sources of help
- The importance of relative bodhicitta
- Accepting short-term sufferings
- Phenomena adorn emptiness
- Practice day and night
- Two types of friends
- Seeing clearly how deceiving the ways of the world are
- Cutting through subtler misconceptions
- Protecting ourselves from future suffering
- Impermanence dawning in your mind
- A practice based on your mind
- The three aspects of diligence
- The children of the buddhas
- Opportunity
- The magnifying glass of your faith and devotion
- I like suffering
- The best opportunity to put the teachings into practice
- Meaningless activities without end
- Nothing to be grasped