When you begin to notice the damage that emotions can do, awareness develops. When you have awareness — for example, if you know that you are on the edge of a cliff — you understand the dangers before you. You can still go ahead and do as you were doing; walking on a cliff with awareness is not so frightening anymore, in fact it is thrilling. The real source of fear is not knowing. Awareness doesn’t prevent you from living, it makes living that much fuller.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book What Makes You Not a Buddhist

Read a random quote or see all quotes by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.

Further quotes from the book What Makes You Not a Buddhist:

• Emotionally not possible
• Change is inevitable
• Beyond nonviolence and meditation
• Eventually we are disappointed
• Like a child at the cinema
• Four seals
• Enjoying the bliss of ignorance
• The impossible is possible
• Happily ever after
• Like moths to the flame
• Shielding ourselves and others from the truth
• Fearlessness
• Driven by ambitions
• Understanding the nature of enlightenment
• Corrosion begins as soon as creation begins
• Nonviolence
• The primordial absence of defilements
• Products and parts
• Emptiness