View, meditation,conduct and fruit ~ Longchenpa

As your true view, look into the changeless, empty cognizance.
As your true meditation, let your mind nature be as it is.
As your true conduct, let the delusion of dualistic fixation collapse.
As your true fruition, don’t seek the result that is spontaneously present.

Longchenpa

Like a dew-drop on the morning grass ~ Dogen Zenji

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment.

Dogen Zenji

Bodhicitta ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

To do something virtuous with a commonplace motive will certainly bring us some happiness, but only temporarily. Such happiness will soon be gone, and our helpless roaming in samsara will continue. If, on the other hand, everything we do, say, and think is transformed by bodhichitta, our happiness will go on and on increasing and never be exhausted. The fruit of actions motivated by bodhichitta, unlike that of positive actions done with less noble motives, can never be destroyed by anger or other negative emotions.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The nature of the mind has never changed ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Thoughts manifest themselves within emptiness and are reabsorbed into it like a face appears and disappears in a mirror; the face has never been in the mirror, and when it ceases to be reflected in it, it has not really ceased to exist. The mirror itself has never changed. So, before departing on the spiritual path, we remain in the so-called “impure” state of samsara, which is, in appearance, governed by ignorance. When we commit ourselves to that path, we cross a state where ignorance and wisdom are mixed. At the end, at the moment of Enlightenment, only pure wisdom exists. But all the way along this spiritual journey, although there is an appearance of transformation, the nature of the mind has never changed: it was not corrupted on entry onto the path, and it was not improved at the time of realization.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

It is all change and impermanence ~ Khenpo Tsultrim Rinpoche

Clearly, in order to end one’s own suffering, there is nothing more important than to realize that when one acts as if the body and mind constituted a lasting, separate, independent self, one unthinkingly attributes to them qualities which they simply do not have. Nothing in the whole stream of mental and physical phenomena that constitute one’s experience of body and mind has the quality of separate, independent, lasting existence. It is all change and impermanence, moment by moment and so none of it can be ‘self and it is one’s persistent effort to treat it as if it were, that makes it a constant stream of suffering (duhkha).

Khenpo Tsultrim Rinpoche

Not Bound ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

The notion of enlightenment means, “not bound”. Not bound to what? Not bound to one’s own mind in ordinary ways; not bound in confusion to all the suffering that one’s mind has produced and is experiencing. So the notion of enlightenment is not something outside of one’s own mind.
We cannot imagine achieving enlightenment, let alone perfecting any of the qualities of buddhahood, if we hold to ourselves as who we think we are right now — with the way we think and the validity that we give to our own mind and its existence.

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

The practice of open and genuine compassion ~ Ponlop Rinpoche

Compassion must start with seeing our own suffering. If it does not, then seeing the suffering of others will be merely conceptual. It will merely be a matter of having learned about suffering from a book or philosophy. We may intellectually know about the different types of suffering and so forth, but without inward reflection, our understanding will always be a theoretical knowledge that is directed toward the outside. Starting from our own experience of suffering becomes most important for the practice of open and genuine compassion.

Ponlop Rinpoche

For the sake of all other beings ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

It’s vital always to bear in mind that we practise for the sake of all other beings, and that the enormity of this aspiration is what makes dharma practice both extremely powerful and inexhaustible, virtually guaranteeing that the result will be infinitely beneficial.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Our pain is self-inflicted ~ Shantideva

We who are like senseless children shrink from suffering, but love its causes. We hurt ourselves; our pain is self-inflicted! Why should others be the object of our anger?

Shantideva

Science and Religion ~ 17th Karmapa

Some people think science should take the place of religion in the modern world, but many others, even great scientists, disagree. Albert Einstein once said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” We need science. But we need religion, too. Scientific advancement brings consequences. Because of science, we have terrible nuclear weapons to deal with. Further, material progress has increased the disparity between rich and poor, to a point that seems almost unbridgeable. Without conscious thought and heartfelt direction, technology and science can potentially cause as much harm as good, and possibly more.
I think that science can be seen as our limbs – our hands and feet – while spirituality can serve as our eyes. Our hands and feet alone cannot tell us which direction to go. In fact, it can be dangerous to be efficient at moving ahead rapidly if we cannot see what lies ahead. We need to be able to foresee the consequences of scientific developments. We cannot think of science just as progress. We need to ask: Progress toward what?

17th Karmapa

Genuine compassion ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

True compassion is undirected and holds no conceptual focus. That kind of genuine, true compassion is only possible after realizing emptiness.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche

In the monastery of your heart ~ Milarepa

In the monastery of your heart and body,
you have a temple where all buddhas unite.

Milarepa

See if you can bear sufferings ~ Khenpo Gangshar

Measure yourself against the various stages of the path; see if you can bear sufferings such as illness, being undermined, and despised. To be unable to do so is to be ordinary, a sign you have not completed the path.

Khenpo Gangshar

Beginning to recognize your experiences as your own projections ~ Mingyur Rinpoche

What happens when you begin to recognize your experiences as your own projections? What happens when you begin to lose your fear of the people around you and conditions you used to dread? Well, from one point of view – nothing. From another point of view – everything.

Mingyur Rinpoche

Kindness and compassion ~ 14th Dalai Lama

Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion.

14th Dalai Lama

Pleasure and Pain ~ Chögyam Trungpa

I think pleasure and pain are born out of the same kind of background. Generally, people regard pain as bad and pleasure as good, so much so that pleasure is regarded as joy and spiritual bliss, and is connected with heaven, while pain is associated with hell. So if one is able to see the absurdity and irony of trying to achieve pleasure by rejecting pain, fearing extreme pain and so striving toward pleasure, it is all very funny. There is some lacking of sense of humor in people’s attitudes toward pleasure and pain.

Chögyam Trungpa

Your little pond ~ Rumi

Swim out of your little pond.

Rumi

Self-liberation ~ Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche

In the mahamudra tradition, the notion of self-liberation is paramount. Through self-liberating our conflicting emotions and discursive thoughts by allowing them to simply arise and dissipate without any grasping or fixation, we transcend any spiritual requirement to renounce, purify, or transform them. This is the unique skillful means of path mahamudra that inexorably leads to spiritual realization.

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche

Very little time left for practice ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

In this dangerous and unhealthy world, it would be quite an achievement for someone who is fifty years old today to live to be eighty. The lives of most fifty-year-olds are already more than half over, and the older we get, the quicker time seems to pass. The thirty years we imagine we have left will pass in the blink of an eye. For a start, we sleep for about eight hours a night, which accounts for ten of those thirty years.
Let’s assume that watching one movie a day and eating three times takes about four hours. We also gossip and catch up with friends, check the football results, do housework, pay bills, keep in touch with family and exercise, all of which probably eats up about two hours a day. And of course, most of us work for seven or eight hours a day.
Therefore, if we fifty-year-olds are lucky, we have less than two hours a day, or about two and a half years, left to live. And a great deal of that will be taken up with paranoia, anxiety, self-doubt and so on. So the bottom line here is there is very little time left for practice.