Tag Archives: nirvana

Like two expressions on the same face ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Samsara and nirvana are like two expressions on the same face, one dark and sullen, the other light and smiling. But, whatever the expression, we are not talking about a different face. It is not degraded when smeared with the dirt of samsara, neither is it improved when the dirt of samsara is washed off. Samsara and nirvana remain within the expanse of the absolute nature in the same way that the universe with its different continents all appear in space.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Mahamudra Vision ~ Nagarjuna

Homage to Manjusrikumarabhuta!
1. I bow down to the all-powerful Buddha
Whose mind is free of attachment,
Who in his compassion and wisdom
Has taught the inexpressible.
2. In truth there is no birth –
Then surely no cessation or liberation;
The Buddha is like the sky
And all beings have that nature.
3. Neither Samsara nor Nirvana exist,
But all is a complex continuum
With an intrinsic face of void,
The object of ultimate awareness.
4. The nature of all things
Appears like a reflection,
Pure and naturally quiescent,
With a non-dual identity of suchness.
5. The common mind imagines a self
Where there is nothing at all,
And it conceives of emotional states –
Happiness, suffering, and equanimity.
6. The six states of being in Samsara,
The happiness of heaven,
The suffering of hell,
Are all false creations, figments of mind.
7. Likewise the ideas of bad action causing suffering,
Old age, disease and death,
And the idea that virtue leads to happiness,
Are mere ideas, unreal notions.
8. Like an artist frightened
By the devil he paints,
The sufferer in Samsara
Is terrified by his own imagination.
9. Like a man caught in quicksands
Thrashing and struggling about,
So beings drown
In the mess of their own thoughts.
10. Mistaking fantasy for reality
Causes an experience of suffering;
Mind is poisoned by interpretation
Of consciousness of form.
11. Dissolving figment and fantasy
With a mind of compassionate insight,
Remain in perfect awareness
In order to help all beings.
12. So acquiring conventional virtue
Freed from the web of interpretive thought,
Insurpassable understanding is gained
As Buddha, friend to the world.
13. Knowing the relativity of all,
The ultimate truth is always seen;
Dismissing the idea of beginning, middle and end
The flow is seen as Emptiness.
14. So all samsara and nirvana is seen as it is –
Empty and insubstantial,
Naked and changeless,
Eternally quiescent and illumined.
15. As the figments of a dream
Dissolve upon waking,
So the confusion of Samsara
Fades away in enlightenment.
16. Idealising things of no substance
As eternal, substantial and satisfying,
Shrouding them in a fog of desire
The round of existence arises.
17. The nature of beings is unborn
Yet commonly beings are conceived to exist;
Both beings and their ideas
Are false beliefs.
18. It is nothing but an artifice of mind
This birth into an illusory becoming,
Into a world of good and evil action
With good or bad rebirth to follow.
19. When the wheel of mind ceases to turn
All things come to an end.
So there is nothing inherently substantial
And all things are utterly pure.
20. This great ocean of samsara,
Full of delusive thought,
Can be crossed in the boat Universal Approach.
Who can reach the other side without it?

Nagarjuna

All perceptions are similar to a dream ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

At present we perceive samsara as something we have to reject and nirvana as something we have to attain. Now while this is correct according to relative truth, according to absolute truth the nature of the afflictive emotions and actions that we are supposed to reject is nothing other than emptiness. When we realize the dharmakaya, which is free from true existence, we will know that all perceptions are similar to a dream or an illusion and we will no longer crave these phenomena. As it is said, ‘While there is attachment, there is no view.’ And the absence of attachment is the supreme view.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Timeless spontaneity ~ Longchenpa

Timeless spontaneity, forever present, is created by no-one; it is the pure mind that like a wish-fulfilling gem is the origin of all our samsara and nirvana.

Longchenpa

Samsara and Nirvana ~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Samsara is mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections.
Nirvana is mind turned inwardly, recognizing its nature.

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

No words can describe it ~ Dudjom Rinpoche

No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category

Dudjom Rinpoche

Neither this nor that ~ Saraha

The root of the whole of samsara and nirvana is the nature of mind. To realise it, rest in unstructured ease without meditating on anything. When all that needs to be done is to rest in yourself, it is amazing that you are deluded by seeking elsewhere! Everything is of the primordial nature, without its being this and not that.

Saraha

An enlightened essence is present in everyone ~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Foremost I would like to tell you that an enlightened essence is present in everyone. It is present in every state, both samsara and nirvana, and in all sentient beings; there is no exception. Experience your buddha nature, make it your constant practice, and you will reach enlightenment. In my lifetime I have known many, many people who attained such and enlightened state, both male and female. Awakening to enlightenment is not an ancient fable. It is not mythology. It actually does happen. Bring the oral instructions into your own practical experience and enlightenment is indeed possible; it is not just a fairy tale.

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

The mind is like an artist ~ Thrangu Rinpoche

The Buddha taught that the mind is responsible for us attaining Buddhahood and mind is also responsible for us wandering in samsara. The Buddha has said that the mind is like an artist who paints whatever they want. The mind uses the five mental aggregates of form, feeling, identification, formation, and consciousness to create whatever is perceived in the world.

Thrangu Rinpoche

The path delighting all the buddhas ~ Lama Tsongkhapa

The one who sees that cause and effect operate infallibly
For all the phenomena of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa,
And for whom any objects of conceptual focus have subsided,
Has set out upon the path delighting all the buddhas.

Lama Tsongkhapa

Remaining in the nakedness of ultimate reality ~ Dudjom Rinpoche

Take your stand on the ultimate practice of the heart essence — samsara and nirvana are the display of awareness. Without distraction, without meditation, in a state of natural relaxation, constantly remain in the pure, all-penetrating nakedness of ultimate reality.

Dudjom Rinpoche

Time to think more wisely ~ 14th Dalai Lama

The seed of nirvana exists in all of us. The time has come to think more wisely, hasn’t it?

14th Dalai Lama

Samsara is an expression of nirvana ~ Mingyur Rinpoche

Samsara is an expression of nirvana, just as relative reality is an expression of absolute reality.

Mingyur Rinpoche

Song of Zazen ~ Hakuin

All beings by nature are Buddha,
As ice by nature is water.
Apart from water there is no ice;
Apart from beings, no Buddha.
How sad that people ignore the near
And search for truth afar:
Like someone in the midst of water
Crying out in thirst,
Like a child of a wealthy home
Wandering among the poor.
Lost on dark paths of ignorance,
We wander through the Six Worlds,
From dark path to dark path–
When shall we be freed from birth and death?
Oh, the zazen of the Mahayana!
To this the highest praise!
Devotion, repentance, training,
The many paramitas–
All have their source in zazen.
Those who try zazen even once
Wipe away beginning-less crimes.
Where are all the dark paths then?
The Pure Land itself is near.
Those who hear this truth even once
And listen with a grateful heart,
Treasuring it, revering it,
Gain blessings without end.
Much more, those who turn about
And bear witness to self-nature,
Self-nature that is no-nature,
Go far beyond mere doctrine.
Here effect and cause are the same,
The Way is neither two nor three.
With form that is no-form,
Going and coming, we are never astray,
With thought that is no-thought,
Singing and dancing are the voice of the Law.
Boundless and free is the sky of Samádhi!
Bright the full moon of wisdom!
Truly, is anything missing now?
Nirvana is right here, before our eyes,
This very place is the Lotus Land,
This very body, the Buddha.

Hakuin

Not a buddha yet ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

As Buddha said in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, all phenomena are like a dream and an illusion, even enlightenment is like a dream and an illusion. And if there is anything greater or grander than enlightenment, that, too, is like a dream and an illusion. His disciple, the great Nagarjuna, wrote that the Lord Buddha has not stated that after abandoning samsara there exists nirvana. The nonexistence of samsara is nirvana. A knife becomes sharp as the result of two exhaustions — the exhaustion of the whetstone and the exhaustion of the metal. In the same way, enlightenment is the result of the exhaustion of defilements and the exhaustion of the antidote of the defilements. Ultimately one must abandon the path to enlightenment. If you still define yourself as a Buddhist, you are not a buddha yet.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

All-encompassing nature of mind ~ Dudjom Lingpa

Consider the fact that no matter how many planets and stars are reflected in a lake, these reflections are encompassed within the water itself; that no matter how many universes there are, they are encompassed within a single space; and that no matter how vast and how numerous the sensory appearances of samsara and nirvana may be, they are encompassed within the single nature of mind.

Dudjom Lingpa

The union of samsara and nirvana ~ Padmasambhava

When samsaric existence is freed in itself, there is no awakened state to accomplish apart form that. Once you realize this, samsara and nirvana are not two.

Padmasambhava

The whole point of the dharma ~ Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche

When the root of duality – dualistic clinging, dualistic perceptions, deluded perceptions – is severed, all the leaves, the branches, and even the tree trunk of samsara and nirvana naturally wither on their own and topple in their own time. Then this great spreading tree of samsara and nirvana, of duality, of worldliness, of conditioned being, does not need to be chopped down: it is already as if dead. We can relax; done is what had to be done, as the Buddha sang.
This is the whole point of the dharma, of spiritual awakening, of buddhahood; this is its ultimate evolution or unfolding. If we aspire to experience such an awakening, there is nothing else to do except recognize the true nature of our primordial awareness, our own essential being, our own birthright, which is within. This is the intrinsic nature of our own heart-mind, also known as bodhicitta or bodhi-mind. It is our own being, our own nature, this renowned buddha-nature. It is not a buddha anywhere else.

Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche

Different points of view ~ Mingyur Rinpoche

Samsara and nirvana are simply different points of view based on the choices we make.