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.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Loving ourselves ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

If we cannot understand and love ourselves, how will we have the energy to love and understand others?

Thich Nhat Hanh

Fully alive ~ Pema Chödron

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

Pema Chödron

Refusing to open up ~ Ajahn Chah

Whenever we feel that we are definitely right, so much so that we refuse to open up to anything or anybody else, right there we are wrong. It becomes wrong view. When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view it wouldn’t cause suffering.

Ajahn Chah

Meditation on absolute bodhicitta ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Recognizing the empty, nonexistent, insubstantial nature of the ego is meditation on absolute bodhicitta.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Living the daily life with bodhicitta motivation ~ Lama Zopa

The whole thing, so many practices, all come down to live the daily life with bodhicitta motivation to put all the effort in that whatever you do. This way your life doesn’t get wasted and it becomes full of joy and happiness, with no regrets later, especially when you die and you can die with a smile outside and a smile in the heart.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

The essence of retreat ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

The essence of retreat is setting up a boundary – and we are not actually talking about a physical boundary, but we are talking about a boundary of time, setting up a boundary between past and future, which ideally means we remain in presentness.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Humorously going on doing things ~ Dudjom Rinpoche

In a sense everything is dreamlike and illusory, but even so, humorously you go on doing things. For example, if you are walking, without unnecessary solemnity or self-consciousness, lightheartedly walk toward the open space of truth. When you sit, be the stronghold of truth. As you eat, feed your negativities and illusions into the belly of emptiness, dissolving them into all-pervading space. And when you go to the toilet, consider all your obscurations and blockages are being cleansed and washed away.

Dudjom Rinpoche

Meditate with perseverance ~ Milarepa

Realization does not arise out of words.
Understanding does not come from mere suggestions.
I urge all those who work for enlightenment
To meditate with perseverance and effort.
Endurance and effort overcome the greatest of difficulties.
May there be no obstacles for those who seek enlightenment.

Milarepa

Lamp in the darkness ~ 17th Karmapa

However much fighting there is in the world, however much darkness there is, we must be able to serve as small lamps in that darkness.

17th Karmapa

A person free from remorse ~ Buddha Shakyamuni

It is in the nature of things that joy arises in a person free from remorse.

Buddha Shakyamuni

No more questions ~ Naropa

One need ask no more when the true nature is seen.

Naropa

Be free of meditating ~ Tsele Natsok Rangdrol

Focusing with effort just increases further thinking.
A training full of judgements brings no progress.
Keep undistracted and be free of meditating:
This I found to be the greatest key advice.

Tsele Natsok Rangdrol

Restless mind ~ Chögyam Trungpa

This restless mind is buddha nature. Because it is so intelligent, therefore it is restless. It is so transparent that we can’t put any patch on it to mask over the irritation—if we do, the irritation still comes through. We can’t hold the irritation back or maintain ego-style comfort anymore. In tantric literature, buddha mind is referred to as a lamp in a vase. If a vase is cracked, the imperfections of the vase can be seen because of the light shining through from inside. In Mahayana literature, a popular analogy refers to enlightened mind as the sun and ego’s security as the clouds that prevent the sun from shining through.