Worldly activities and effortless unconcern ~ Hui Neng

You do not have to abandon worldly activities in order to attain effortless unconcern. You should know that worldly activities and effortless unconcern are not two different things, but if you keep thinking about rejection and grasping, you make them two.

Hui Neng

You can touch nirvana right now ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Nirvana means extinction, the extinction of all notions and concepts, including the concepts of birth, death, being, nonbeing, coming, and going. Nirvana is the ultimate dimension of life, a state of coolness, peace, and joy. It is not a state to be attained after death. You can touch nirvana right now by breathing, walking, and drinking your tea in mindfulness.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Viewing others through the lens of interdependence ~ 17th Karmapa

Viewing others through the lens of interdependence helps us see that we are not separate from people on the other side of these seeming gaps. We are capable of seeing causal connections that link us to others who appears to be remote from us, even if such links are not visible to the naked eye. For example, we can review the ample evidence and arguments that show that those who have less economic power provide the labor that keeps down the cost of living and fuels the material prosperity of those who have more. This means we can identify ties between our meal and the field workers who harvested our vegetables and factory workers who manufactured our dishes. Yet having this intellectual knowledge of our connection to them does not automatically make us feel personally close to them, especially when the outer conditions of their lives seem so different from our own.
We are in many ways creatures of habit. If we live within certain conditions long enough, they come to seem natural to us. But if we had lived in different conditions, they would seem equally natural. Looking at the cultural, religious, or material conditions that others have become habituated to may make us feel that they must be totally different from us, but we are just mistaking something circumstantial for something essential. It is largely an accident of our birth and our life circumstances that we have come to find certain conditions familiar and others alien or distant. It is not an indication of anything essentially other or different about us.

17th Karmapa

Empty phenomena ~ Nagarjuna

All beings consist of causes and effects,
In which there is no ‘sentient being’ at all.
From phenomena which are exclusively empty,
There arise only empty phenomena.
All things are devoid of any ‘I’ or ‘mine’.
Like a recitation, a candle, a mirror, a seal,
A magnifying glass, a seed, sourness, or a sound,
So also with the continuation of the aggregates —
The wise should know they are not transferred.

Nagarjuna

No real happiness ~ Chatral Rinpoche

There’s no real happiness among any of the six classes of beings.
If we consider the sufferings of the three lower realms,
When you feel upset just by hearing about them,
How will you possibly cope when you experience them directly?
Even the happiness and pleasures of the three upper realms,
Are just like fine food that’s been laced with poison,
Enjoyable at first, but in the long run a cause of ruin.

Chatral Rinpoche

Who feels angry ~ Thrangu Rinpoche

Who feels angry? Where does this anger rise from? Is there a place where this anger is now? Is there someone who is angry, since we feel so strongly, “I am angry”? Is there a real substance, a force? Questioning in this way, it’s absolutely impossible to find such a thing. There is neither a place to find, nor a substance, nor any entity. It’s simply a seeming presence, a mere movement of the attention which has no reality to it whatsoever. It is like a bubble on the surface of water.

Thrangu Rinpoche

Lasting peace ~ 14th Dalai Lama

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

14th Dalai Lama

Interdependence always works both ways ~ 17th Karmapa

All parties are changed by being in relationship. Just being connected to someone or something means we are each forming part of the other. This is true in all forms of interdependence, from those that form planetary systems to our most intimate and personal relationships. For example, in the case of parents and children, although in the more obvious sense parents produce children, yet it is only by having children that people become parents. We could even say that parents are born in the moment that their first child comes into their life. Before they had children, a woman and a man were not a mother or father. In that sense, children also make their parents “parents”. Interdependence connects us on many levels and always works both ways.”

17th Karmapa

Judging others ~ Tulku Thondup Rinpoche

Unless one is omniscient or at least enjoys some degree of clairvoyance, no one can judge others. One can see how others appear and how they are behaving, but not who they are or why they are behaving in a particular manner. For example, enlightened ones such as buddhas, bodhisattvas, and sages appear in peaceful forms and wrathful forms, but all their activities will be for serving others with love. This is why the fully enlightened Buddha said, “Apart from myself and those like me, no one can judge another person.”

Tulku Thondup Rinpoche

The importance of relative bodhicitta ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Some people may have the idea that these teachings on compassion and exchanging self and others are part of the ‘gradual path’ teachings of the sutras, and are not nearly as effective as the more advanced ‘direct path’ teachings of the Great Perfection or the Great Seal. That is a complete misunderstanding. Only if you have developed the love and compassion of relative bodhichitta can absolute bodhichitta – the very essence of the Great Perfection and the Great Seal – ever take birth in your being.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The wheels of merit and wisdom ~ Tilopa

My son Naropa, for phenomena that come from interdependence,
Until you realize all these are unborn,
You must not separate
From the wheels of merit and wisdom.

Tilopa

When there is no more ego ~ Machig Labdrön

As long as there is an ego, there are demons.
When there is no more ego, there are no more demons either!
If there is no ego, there is no more object to cut through,
Nor is there any more fear or terror.
Free from all extremes, co-emergent wisdom
Gives birth to the understanding of [the nature of] all phenomena.
This is referred to as the fruit of liberation from the four demons.

Machig Labdrön

Clear light ~ Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

At the time of the meditation of tranquil stillness and true seeing, although this meditation is not the basic nature of clarity and emptiness just as it is, it is the arising of an aspect of experience that is similar, like the way the form of the sky appears in water. This is called an example demonstrating clear light. The essential nature of wisdom is free from the coverings of experience, like stainless sky. When this is realized, it is called absolute clear light.
By realizing the basic nature of the great bliss of the clear light of empty awareness and by continuously sustaining it, when one actually accomplishes the stages of the path, the consciousness of the five senses will dissolve into mind. Mind will dissolve into the consciousness of alaya. When alaya dissolves into the dharmata of empty clear light, even though there is no consciousness, because consciousness is purified from the root, self-awareness wisdom light will arise like stainless sky. Thus it is also said. For example, when gold mixed with earth, stone, sand, and so on is melted down and refined, the power of the ordinary stain or nature of the elements of earth and stone is reduced more and more, like the gross energy of obscurations, and the quality of the element gold is purified more and more. Eventually the time will come when even the object of purification, the gold itself, will be purified and there will be nothing left.

Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

Mingle the practice with your own being ~ Padmasambhava

Don’t mistake mere words to be the meaning of the teachings. Mingle the practice with your own being and attain liberation from samsara right now.

Padmasambhava

Always Maintain Only a Joyful Mind ~ Pema Chödron

Constantly apply cheerfulness, if for no other reason than because you are on this spiritual path. Have a sense of gratitude to everything, even difficult emotions, because of their potential to wake you up.

Pema Chödron

Always watch over mind and speech ~ Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye

Atisha, the protector of the snowland, said:
“Among many, examine your speech;
When you stay alone, examine your mind.”
Briefly he taught these two points.
The mind is the root of faults
And the mouth is the gateway for these faults to emerge.
Thus, always watch over both.

Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye

At the time of death ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

So if you waste your life now on endless minor tasks, you can be sure that at the time of death you will weep with regret and be stricken with intense anxiety, like a thief who has just been thrown into jail and anxiously anticipates his punishment. A person might find himself with nothing to eat, no clothes to wear, and no house to live in; but if his mind is filled with faith in his teacher and the Three Jewels, that person will both live and die with his heart always joyful and confident.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Thinking while resting in the natural state ~ Thrangu Rinpoche

Resting in the natural state does not mean that you cannot think about things or work. The idea is to rest in the natural state and think at the same time. If you can do that, you can think things through and work but there are no painful or sharp feelings.