Mind, like a crystal, is colored by its surroundings. You are bound to reflect the qualities and shortcomings of the good or bad friends whose company you keep. If you associate with the malevolent, the selfish, the rancorous, the intolerant, and the arrogant, their faults will affect you. You would do better to keep your distance.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most
translated by Padmakara Translation Group
Read a random quote or see all quotes by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
Further quotes from the book The Hundred Verses of Advice:
- Don’t go on following the past
- You will have to go
- The faults within
- The choice is clear
- When you reach the threshold of death
- Have you prepared yourselves a boat
- Putting down the heavy burden once and for all
- The freedom to practice the Dharma
- Free of being caught by anything at all
- Abandon negative friendships
- Being near a spiritual teacher
- Three essential points
- Flying off into the bardo
- Happiness and suffering
- Rather than being trapped by your perceptions
- Contemplating the defects of samsara
- Dwell in the simplicity of the present moment
- Love and compassion for all
- Nothing to be gained or lost
- How illness can teach us compassion