My training had introduced me to the spacious awareness of my natural mind. We compare this awareness to open skies and oceans — references meant to invoke immeasurable vastness, even though awareness is more immeasurable than skies and oceans combined. Once we learn to recognize the ever-present quality of awareness, to let go of the conditioned and contingent mind and recognize that we are this spacious awareness, then our thoughts and emotions manifest as waves or clouds inseparable from awareness. With recognition, we no longer get carried away by the stories that keep our minds spinning in repetitive cycles, or jumping around like a crazy monkey.

Mingyur Rinpoche

from the book In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

Read a random quote or see all quotes by Mingyur Rinpoche.

Further quotes from the book In Love with the World:

• The chattering voice in our heads
• Great news
• Replace longing with love
• Within each one of us
• Boundless reality
• Stretching a bit further
• Fundamentally pure and good
• Dying is rebirth
• Anywhere, anytime
• Vast and intimate
• Stay with what is
• Nothing endures but change
• The masks that hide our true selves
• Short moments, many times
• Ego-grasping death comes before life
• Only with recognition
• Upholding the lineage
• Accepting whatever happens
• Change yourself