Balanced relationships ~ Lama Yeshe

You can see that some people’s relationships are reasonable. Therefore, they last a long time. If people’s relationships start off extreme, how can they last? You know from the beginning they cannot last. Balance is so important.

Lama Yeshe

Like Crystal ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

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

Meditate on renunciation ~ Longchenpa

Were we to offer a hundred valuable things accumulated through wrong livelihood,
Based on conducting business, taking interest, deception and so on.
We might attempt to be virtuous, but instead give rise to the eight worldly dharmas.
‘To meditate on renunciation’ is my heart advice.

Longchenpa

The second reliance ~ Mipham Rinpoche

Whenever you study or contemplate the Dharma,
Rely not on the words, but on the meaning.
If the meaning is understood, then regardless of the speaker’s style,
There will be no conflict.
When you have understood what it was
The speaker intended to communicate,
If you then continue to think about each word and expression,
It is as if you’ve found your elephant but now go in search of its footprints.
If you misinterpret what is said and then think of more words,
You’ll never stop till you run out of thoughts,
But all the while you’re only straying further and further from the meaning.
Like children playing, you’ll only end up exhausted.
Even for a single word like “and” or “but”,
When taken out of context, there’s no end to what it might mean.
Yet if you understand what is meant,
Then with that the need for the word is finished.
When the finger points to the moon,
The childish will look at the finger itself.
And fools attached to mere language,
May think they’ve understood, but they will find it difficult.
[Second reliance: Do not rely on the words, but on the meaning.]

Mipham Rinpoche

Awakening the spark of love within you ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Be kind to yourself as you proceed along this journey. This kindness, in itself, is a means of awakening the spark of love within you and helping others to discover that spark within themselves.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Stepping out of the cocoon ~ Chögyam Trungpa

You don’t know how to take off your suit of armor. You have no idea how to conduct yourself without the reference point of your own security. The challenge of warriorship is to step out of the cocoon, to step out into space, by being brave and at the same time gentle. You can expose your wounds and flesh, your sore points. You can be completely raw and exposed with your husband or your wife, your banker, your landlord, anyone you meet.

Chögyam Trungpa

The only way to become buddha ~ 4th Shechen Gyaltsab

It is not enough to intellectually understand the nature of mind. We have to get rid of the veils that obscure it, and the best way to do so is to generate the bodhichitta, the ‟mind of enlightenment,” which is the supreme intention to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. That is the only way to discover true enlightenment or, in other words, to become buddha.

4th Shechen Gyaltsab

What is in the mind of a Buddhist ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

So, what makes you a Buddhist? You may not have been born in a Buddhist country or to a Buddhist family, you may not wear robes or shave your head, you may eat meat and idolize Eminem and Paris Hilton. That doesn’t mean you cannot be a Buddhist. In order to be a Buddhist, you must accept that all compounded phenomena are impermanent, all emotions are pain, all things have no inherent existence, and enlightenment is beyond concepts.
It’s not necessary to be constantly and endlessly mindful of these four truths. But they must reside in your mind. You don’t walk around persistently remembering your own name, but when someone asks your name, you remember it instantly. There is no doubt. Anyone who accepts these four seals, even independently of Buddha’s teachings, even never having heard the name Shakyamuni Buddha, can be considered to be on the same path as he.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Possibility ~ 17th Karmapa

When Buddhism talks about emptiness, it’s not talking about a type of nonexistence whatsoever. Rather, the teachings on emptiness point to the notion of possibility: that anything can happen.

17th Karmapa

Taste the dhamma ~ Ajahn Chah

If you listen to the dhamma teachings but don’t practice you’re like a ladle in a soup pot. The ladle is in the soup pot every day, but it doesn’t know the taste of the soup. You must reflect and meditate.

Ajahn Chah

The real point of meditation ~ Mingyur Rinpoche

The real point of meditation is to rest in bare awareness whether anything occurs or not. Whatever comes up for you, just be open and present to it, and let it go. And if nothing occurs, or if thoughts and so on vanish before you can notice them, just rest in that natural clarity.

Mingyur Rinpoche

Improvement of our entire human community ~ 14th Dalai Lama

Individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire human community.

14th Dalai Lama

Each moment is full of possibilities ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Complete acceptance of ourselves as we are ~ Pema Chödron

Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is a simple, direct relationship with our being. We call this maitri, loving-kindness toward ourselves and others.

Pema Chödron

Seeing the nature of the kleshas ~ Thrangu Rinpoche

The only way to actually abandon or eradicate the kleshas is to see their nature. Therefore, in order to abandon the kleshas, we must cultivate the prajna or discernment which is able to see the nature of those kleshas. If their nature is seen, they will disappear by themselves without having to be chased away or destroyed by any other means.
So in order to cultivate this prajna, the Buddha taught emptiness. He taught that there is no truly existent person who generates kleshas, that there is no truly existent object that stimulates kleshas, that the kleshas themselves have no solid or substantial existence, and so forth. He taught that what we experience exists as relative truth, but that the emptiness of what we experience is absolute truth.

Thrangu Rinpoche

Incredible, limitless mind ~ Lama Yeshe

Our problem is that inside us there’s a mind going, “Impossible, impossible, impossible. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” We have to banish that mind from this solar system. Anything is possible; everything is possible. Sometimes you feel that your dreams are impossible, but they’re not. Human beings have great potential; they can do anything. The power of the mind is incredible, limitless.

Lama Yeshe

How illness can teach us compassion ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Keep in mind the many beings who are suffering in the same way as you are, and pray that your suffering may absorb theirs and that they may be liberated from all suffering. In this way, illness can teach us compassion.