Just as every single thing is always moving inexorably closer to its ultimate dissolution, so also your own life, like a burning butter-lamp, will soon be consumed. It would be foolish to think that you can first finish all your work and then retire to spend the later stages of your life practicing the Dharma. Can you be certain that you will live that long? Does death not strike the young as well as the old? No matter what you are doing, therefore, remember death and keep your mind focused on the Dharma.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones

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Further quotes from the book The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones:

• Following the view
• Seeing the truth of the teaching
• The intention to benefit others
• The gift of the Dharma
• Stillness and movement
• Ordinary worldly goals
• No greater virtue
• Three turnings of the wheel of Dharma
• Don’t be like that
• Mind filled with faith
• The spear of mindfulness
• This is very shortsighted
• The shadow of our actions
• Cause and effect
• The only way to obtain lasting happiness
• At the time of death
• Two ways to meditate
• Mastery of the mind
• A lump of earth