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:
- The importance of relative bodhicitta
- Conduct
- The children of the buddhas
- Giving and taking
- Seeing clearly how deceiving the ways of the world are
- The best opportunity to put the teachings into practice
- Neither discouragement nor pride
- Powerful sources of help
- Two types of friends
- The reason you are wandering in samsara
- Phenomena adorn emptiness
- Nothing to be grasped
- A practice based on your mind
- Opportunity
- Phenomena adorn emptiness, but never corrupt it
- Impermanence dawning in your mind
- The only thing that is really worth doing
- The three aspects of diligence
- The magnifying glass of your faith and devotion