While practising or performing dharma activities, we must remain constantly aware that everything we do is illusory—or at least try to bring that thought to mind. If we prick our flesh, our logical mind tells us we will feel pain. The pain itself will feel real because the idea that phenomena are both solid and truly existing has an almost unbreakably strong hold on us. We must therefore try to get used to the notion that everything we see, do and think is an interpretation created by our mind, which itself is an important stepping-stone towards the practice of nonduality. And “getting used” to it means reminding ourselves about it over and over again. For example, when your knees start to hurt as you accumulate prostrations, remind yourself that the “I” in “I am doing prostrations” and the “my” in “my knees hurt” are both mind-made illusions.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book Not for Happiness: A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practices

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Further quotes from the book Not for Happiness:

• Filtered perception
• Being able to start practicing right away
• Sources of our inspiration
• Rip that ego apart
• Relative and absolute truth
• It’s all a matter of motivation
• The decision to follow a spiritual path
• Three higher trainings
• Opposite direction to dharma
• No substitute for being guided by a guru
• Maintaining a strong grip on the habits
• Merely the product of your own perception
• Dharma is not a therapy
• Our fundamental problem
• Sadness
• Mara’s five arrows
• Nothing genuinely works in samsara
• It cannot be fixed
• Very little time left for practice