When you have truly attained the realization of this emptiness, you will be like the venerable Milarepa or Guru Rinpoche, who were unaffected by the heat of summer or the cold of winter, and who could not be burned by fire or drowned in water. In emptiness there is neither pain nor suffering. We, on the other hand, have not understood the empty nature of the mind and so, when bitten by even a small insect, we think, ‘Ouch! I’ve been bitten. It hurts!’ or, when someone says something unkind, we get angry. That is a sign that we have not realized the mind’s empty nature.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the Seven-Point Mind Training
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Further quotes from the book Enlightened Courage:
- Always be sustained by cheerfulness
- Delusion
- Antidote to our ego-clinging
- Anger is an illusion
- Well rewarded
- Forsaking all self-centeredness
- The degree of self-clinging
- Failing to use the instructions as an antidote
- Morning pledge
- Bodhicitta practice
- Taking advantage of suffering
- Honest examination
- The vows of the Mind Training
- Give up hoping for results
- All Dharma has a single goal
- The three essential factors on which the accomplishment of the Dharma depends
- Begin the training sequence with yourself
- Using illness on the path
- The impurity of our perception