Chögyam TrungpaWe have to work with what resources we have. We have to begin small, in an ordinary and simple way. Our actual present situation of what we are is our stepping stone. And we start from a simple technique such as walking or breathing. This is by no means expensive. It is a natural thing. We can breathe and walk — we have to breathe anyway; we have to walk anyway. That seems to be the starting point of meditation.
Fear And Bravery ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaThe situations of fear that exist in our lives provide us with stepping stones to step over fear. On the other side of cowardice is bravery. If we step over properly, we can cross the boundary from being cowardly to being brave. We may not discover bravery right away. Instead, we may find a shaky tenderness beyond our fear. We are still quivering and shaking, but there is tenderness, rather than bewilderment.
Opening the door of faith and devotion ~ 17th Karmapa
17th KarmapaThe student needs to have faith and longing, and if this faith and longing come together then I don’t think that sort of a student will have any difficulty finding a genuine, authentic Lama. The reason is that all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are ready at all six times of day and night to do things to benefit sentient beings. They’re all ready and waiting. If you have both faith and longing then they’ll all come rushing towards you to help you. You just have to open that door of faith and devotion.
Authentic Discovery ~ 17th Karmapa
17th KarmapaIf I were asked the question, “What religion are you?” it would seem very odd if I did not say, “I’m a Buddhist.” After all, people look to me as a Buddhist leader! To keep things simple, it is easier for me to say, “I am a Buddhist.” Yet that is not how I see myself. Rather, I see myself as a follower of the Buddha. I aspire to follow in the Buddha’s footsteps. To hold on to the label of “Buddhist” and wave it like a banner is something else altogether.
When I say I wish to follow in the Buddha’s footsteps, the key point for me is that the Buddha used his own intelligence to discover the meaning of life within himself. He did not discover it from texts written by someone else, or from any formalized set of rules. He found it within himself, within his own noble heart. We all have the potential to do this.
Detachment ~ 14th Dalai Lama
14th Dalai LamaCompassion and generosity must be accompanied by detachment. Expecting something in return for them is like doing business. If the owner of a restaurant is all smiles with his customers, it is not because he loves them but because he wants to increase his turnover. When we love and help others, it should not be because we find a particular individual likable but because we see that all beings, whether we think of them as friends or enemies, want to be happy and have the right to happiness.
Positive Attachment ~ 14th Dalai Lama
14th Dalai LamaIf your engagement with others is tainted by strong attachment, craving, aversion, anger, and so forth, then that form of grasping is undesirable. But on the other hand, when you are interacting with other living beings and become aware of their needs or suffering or pain, then you need to fully engage with that and be compassionate. So there can be positive attachment in this sense of active engagement.
Buddhist masters have long used the term attachment to describe the quality of compassion for others. For example, a verse from Haribhadra’s Clear Meaning Commentary refers to compassion that is attached to other living beings. And as we have seen, Nagarjuna teaches that attachment for other living beings will arise spontaneously in the person who realizes emptiness.
Questioning ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaBuddha nature is not regarded as a peaceful state of mind or, for that matter, as a disturbed one either. It is a state of intelligence that questions our life and the meaning of life. It is the foundation of a search. A lot of things haven’t been answered in our life—and we are still searching for the questions. The questioning is buddha nature. It is a state of potential. The more dissatisfaction, the more questions and more doubts there are, the healthier it is, for we are no longer sucked into ego-oriented situations, but we are constantly woken up.
Look Behind the Mask of Your Confusion ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaAll of your schemes and thoughts and ideas are empty! If you look behind their backs, it is like looking at a mask. If you look behind a mask, you see that it is hollow. There may be a few holes for the nostrils and the mouth—but if you look behind it, it doesn’t look like a face anymore. It is just junk with holes in it. You realize that you are just authoring absurd, nonexistent things. That is the best protection for cutting confusion.
Widening the sphere of love ~ 14th Dalai Lama
14th Dalai LamaLove, compassion and concern for others are real sources of happiness. If you have these in abundance, you will not be disturbed even by the most uncomfortable circumstances. If you nurse hatred, however, you will not be happy even in the lap of luxury. Thus, if we really want happiness, we must widen the sphere of love. This is both religious thinking and basic common sense.
The primordial dot ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaWe call it a dot because it occurs very abruptly in the situation, on the spot. It cannot be traced by scientific examination or by an alpha machine. It is just a dot, which always occurs. The dot occurs when we are uncertain. If you are driving quite fast and you see an intersection up ahead and you are uncertain which way to turn, at that point, there is a gap and the dot occurs. Then there is an afterthought: “Turn right,”, or “Turn left,” or “I’ll have to take a guess.” The dot occurs when you feel sad and you wonder, “Will I burst into tears, or can I hold back my tears?” The dot occurs when you see a person. “Should I frown or smile?” There is indecision, and the dot occurs. That is the human condition. It does not tell you exactly what to do.
At the junction of that and this, the human condition is expressed as a challenge. Therefore, it has been said that this primordial dot is the source of fearlessness and also the source of fear or terror. Sometimes you find the dot petrifying, without any reason. Sometimes you find it makes you quite heroic. One never knows where the fear or the courage comes from. It’s almost at the level of an infant’s experience rather than anything metaphysical or conditional. It’s as simple as jumping into the shower and finding that the water is cold or hot. The water temperature is not your state of mind. A cold shower is a cold shower. A hot shower is a hot shower. Where did it come from? It’s very direct. Unconditional goodness, the primordial dot, is free from any neurosis. It’s 200 percent truth. That’s it! It’s hot or cold, which is not particularly a product of neurosis at all.
Graduated path ~ 17th Karmapa
17th KarmapaThe Buddhist teachings move along a graduated path: first the stages of calm abiding and then the stages of deep insight. Through such gradual practices, lamas of the past gave birth to realization in their mental continuum and discovered primordial wisdom. All the qualities that the great masters found, we can attain as well. It all depends on our own efforts, our diligence, our deeper knowing, and our correct motivation.
Stages of the Path ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaThe pattern of the practitioner’s progress on the path is as follows: First, one develops extreme exertion in uncovering one’s own neurosis. This one-pointed mindfulness brings the sense of one’s actual human quality. The second stage is marked by gentleness, allowing one’s energies to expand and be shared with the rest of sentient beings. Finally, one develops fearlessness and a sense of joy and penetrating insight, filled with immense devotion to the lineage and one’s root teacher.
Source of all possible faults ~ Dharmakirti
DharmakirtiWhen there is an “I”, there is a perception of other,
And from the ideas of self and other come attachment and aversion,
As a result of getting wrapped up in these,
All possible faults come into being.
The totally demonic state of complete “Egohood” ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaEgo is able to convert everything to its own use, even spirituality. For example, if you have learned of a particularly beneficial meditation technique of spiritual practice, then ego’s attitude is, first to regard it as an object of fascination and, second to examine it. Finally, since ego is seeming solid and cannot really absorb anything, it can only mimic. Thus ego tries to examine and imitate the practice of meditation and the meditative way of life. When we have learned all the tricks and answers of the spiritual game, we automatically try to imitate spirituality, since real involvement would require the complete elimination of ego, and actually the last thing we want to do is to give up the ego completely. However, we cannot experience that which we are trying to imitate; we can only find some area within the bounds of ego that seems to be the same thing. Ego translates everything in terms of its own state of health, its own inherent qualities. It feels a sense of great accomplishment and excitement at have been able to create such a pattern. At last it has created a tangible accomplishment, a confirmation of its own individuality.
If we become successful at maintaining our self-consciousness through spiritual techniques, then genuine spiritual development is highly unlikely. Our mental habits become so strong as to be hard to penetrate. We may even go so far as to achieve the totally demonic state of complete “Egohood.”
Somebody has to do it ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaWhen you are trying to help someone, you have to have humor, self-existing humor, and you have to hold the moth in your hand, but not let it go into the flame. That’s what helping others means. Ladies and gentlemen, we have so much responsibility. A long time ago, people helped one another in this way. Now people just talk, talk talk. They read books, they listen to music, but they never actually help anyone. They never use their bare hands to save a person from going crazy. We have that responsibility. Somebody has to do it. It turns out to be us. We’ve got to do it, and we can do it with a smile, not with a long face.
Simply a fabrication of our own minds ~ Mingyur Rinpoche
Mingyur RinpocheFortunately, the more familiar we become with examining our minds, the closer we come to finding a solution to whatever problem we might be facing, and the more easily we recognize that whatever we experience – attachment, aversion, stress, anxiety, fear, or longing – is simply a fabrication of our own minds.
Objects of distraction ~ 17th Karmapa
17th KarmapaLiving in the present world of technology, illusions have become amplified and multiplied. In the present world that we live in, the causes for all kinds of thoughts, confusions and illusions of reality have increased many times over. For instance, when different companies produce new technologies or gadgets, obviously their main strategies are to cater to that confusion that we have, to be able to lure our already-confused minds and manipulate or deceive even further. This is the purpose of all kinds of advertisements, to create all kinds of thoughts. More than ever, for unguarded, vulnerable and confused minds there are all kinds of objects of distraction. Therefore, what is important more than ever is to begin to recognize one’s surroundings in that way, and instead of getting totally carried away by the external circumstances around us, we learn to turn a little bit more inward. We start to get in touch with our own basic ground, and then begin to look inwardly and find the possibility of peace within ourselves. Looking inwardly, we begin to move towards getting a sense of who we are, of finding ourselves within. This approach is helpful.
Awareness of the teacher ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaAs a dharmic person, a practitioner, you also have awareness of the teacher and of other realized people whom you are studying with. The idea is to be without shyness and to be able to relate with your teacher, who in the hinayana tradition is an elder. You relate to the teacher as somebody who has accomplished the path already. Because you are without shyness, you can relate with the teacher and emulate him or her properly and fully. You have a sense of appreciation that you are and will be part of a certain tradition, a certain discipline. You have as an example a teacher who is behaving in a way that you should behave, and you have some sense of sacredness in studying and listening to the teacher.
Demanding journey ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam TrungpaThe spiritual journey is not a very easy one, absolutely not easy at all. It demands a lot from us. And we may not find what we want, absolutely not. Our questions may not be answered one by one. But something else is taking place. Maybe the question mark itself is beginning to rot, become disheveled, and turn into a period, full stop. Maybe that is happening. It’s a possibility. And that seems to be the process of the whole journey: dissolving the question mark into a full stop. The question mark becomes a statement or an exclamation, rather than a hollow line longing to be filled by answers.
The quintessential teaching of the Buddha ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
Dzongsar Khyentse RinpocheAwareness is the quintessential teaching of the Buddha – from the awareness of cool air as you breath in and then out, to the profound awareness of natural perfection. And with boundless compassion and courage, the sole purpose and activity of all the buddhas it is to ring the alarm bell that brings us to this awareness.