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“We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.”
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“We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty.”
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“You may be the most violent person in the world—that’s a fine place to start. That’s a very rich place to start—juicy, smelly. You might be the most depressed person in the world, the most addicted person in the world, the most jealous person in the world. You might think that there are no others on the planet who hate themselves as much as you do. All of that is a good place to start. Just where you are—that’s the place to start.”
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“Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity.”
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“When I first encountered Buddhism, I was extremely relieved that there were not only teachings, but also a technique I could use to explore and test these teachings.”
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“when you feel depressed, lonely, betrayed, or any unwanted feelings, this is an important moment on the spiritual path. This is when real transformation can take place.”
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“Our wisdom is always there”
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“Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.”
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“WHEN we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright—the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself. All that is necessary then is to rest undistractedly in the immediate present, in this very instant in time. And if we become drawn away by thoughts, by longings, by hopes and fears, again and again we can return to this present moment. We are here. We are carried off as if by the wind, and as if by the wind, we are brought back. When one thought has ended and another has not begun, we can rest in that space. We train in returning to the unchanging heart of this very “moment. All compassion and all inspiration come from that.”
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“The main point of the Buddhist teachings is to dissolve the dualistic struggle, our habitual tendency to struggle against what’s happening to us or in us.”
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“Maitri, or loving-kindness, means sticking with ourselves when we don’t have anything, when we feel like a loser. And it becomes the basis for extending the same unconditional friendliness with others.”
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“We might say “totally fed up.” It describes an experience of complete hopelessness, of completely giving up hope. This is an important point. This is the beginning of the beginning. Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.”
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“We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs—or we don’t.”
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“Have no expectations, just be kind”
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“One of the things that keeps us unhappy is this continual searching for pleasure or security, searching for a little more comfortable situation, either at the domestic level or at the spiritual level or at the level of mental peace.”
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“In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others. If this is the only training we ever remember to do, it will benefit us tremendously and everyone else as well.”
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“but that doesn’t mean that we play to lose; it means that we play to play. We could play together, even though we’re on opposite teams.”
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“When anger arises, remember to pause”
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“Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than trying to seek harmony.”
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“We have met the enemy—and the friend”
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“Bernard Glassman Roshi, who does a lot of work with the homeless “in New York, said that he doesn’t work with the homeless because he’s such a great guy but because going into the areas of society that he has rejected is the only way to make friends with the parts of himself that he’s rejected. It’s all interrelated.”
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“We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.”
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“We are like eagles, but we have on underwear and pants and shirt and socks and shoes and a hat and coat and boots and mittens and an iPod and dark glasses, and it occurs to us that we could experience that vast sky, but we’d better start taking off some of this stuff.”
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“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again.”
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“I read somewhere about a family who had only one son. They were very poor. This son was extremely precious to them, and the only thing that mattered to his family was that he bring them some financial support and prestige. Then he was thrown from a horse and crippled. It seemed like the end of their lives. Two “weeks after that, the army came into the village and took away all the healthy, strong men to fight in the war, and this young man was allowed to stay behind and take care of his family.
Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know.”
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“You relate with what begins to happen when you’re not protecting yourself so much. Then gradually, you become more curious than afraid. To be fearless isn’t really to overcome fear, it’s to come to know its nature.”
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“IN my own training, I’ve been taught to look for the gaps: the gap at the end of each out-breath; the space between thoughts; the naturally occurring, nonconceptual pause after a sudden shock, unexpected noise, or moment of awe. Trungpa Rinpoche advised intentionally creating these gaps by pausing to look at the sky or stopping to listen intently. He called this “poking holes in the clouds.
These fleeting moments of no-big-deal me, no internal conversations, no frozen opinions, are very simple yet powerful. The utter freshness of just being present introduces us to unshakable confidence: a lionlike pride that refuses to buy into any negative or limiting story lines.”
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“ON the night on which he was to attain enlightenment, the Buddha sat under a tree. While he was sitting there, he was attacked by the forces of Mara (the lord of destruction). The story goes that they shot swords and arrows at him, and that their weapons turned into flowers.
What does this story mean? My understanding of it is that what we habitually regard as obstacles are not really our enemies, but rather our friends. What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we’re stuck. What may appear to be an arrow or a sword we can actually experience as a flower. Whether we experience what happens to us as obstacle and enemy or as teacher and friend depends entirely on our perception of reality. It depends on our relationship with ourselves.”
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“We are killing the moment by controlling our experience.”
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“The essence of life is that it’s challenging.”
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“WE are given changes all the time. We can either cling to security, or we can let ourselves feel exposed, as if we had just been born, as if we had just popped out into the brightness of life and were completely naked. Maybe that sounds too uncomfortable or frightening, but on the other hand, it’s our chance to realize that this mundane world is all there is, and we could see it with new eyes and at long last wake up from our ancient sleep of preconceptions.”
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“The state of nowness is available in that moment of squeeze. In that awkward, ambiguous moment is our own wisdom mind. Right there in the uncertainty of everyday chaos is our own wisdom mind.”
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“THE word in Tibetan for hope is rewa; the word for fear is dokpa. More commonly, the word re-dok is used, which combines the two. Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other.”
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“You could even put “Abandon hope” on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”
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“spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything—not about winning or losing—but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is.”
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“We are stuck in patterns of grasping and fixating, which cause the same thoughts and reactions to occur again and again and again. In this way we project our world. When we see that, even if it’s only for one second every three weeks, then we’ll naturally discover the knack of reversing this process of making things solid, the knack of stopping the claustrophobic world as we know it, putting down our centuries of baggage, and stepping into new territory.”
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“Make the dharma personal, explore it wholeheartedly, and relax.”
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“We can’t see where we’re headed, only where we’ve been.
This is a very encouraging teaching, because it says that the source of wisdom is whatever is going to happen to us today. The source of wisdom is whatever is happening to us right at this very instant.”
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“WE’RE always in some kind of mood. It might be sadness, it might be anger, it might be not much of anything, just a kind of blur. It might be humor or contentment. In any case, whatever it is, that’s the path.”
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“If there’s any possibility for enlightenment, it’s right now, not at some future time.”
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“Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have.”
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“Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis.”
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“THERE is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs, and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.”
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“The renowned Zen master Suzuki Roshi gave the instructions, “Sit still. Don’t anticipate. Just be willing to die over and over again.”
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“Fear can make you start asking a lot of questions. If it doesn’t get you down, it’s going to start you wondering, “What is this fear? Where did it come from? What am I scared of?” Maybe you’re scared of the most exciting things you have yet to learn. Impermanence is a great reminder.”
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“WHEN bad feelings such as uneasiness, depression, and fear start coming up, notice how you always do the same thing.”
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“It’s up to you how to use your life.”
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“Enlightenment is just the beginning”
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“MY teacher Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged us to lead our lives as an experiment, a suggestion that has been very important to me. When we approach life as an experiment, we’re willing to try it this way and that way because, either way, we have nothing to lose.”
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“The trick is not getting caught in hope and fear. We can put our whole heart into whatever we do; but if we freeze our attitude into for or against, we’re setting ourselves up for stress. Instead, we could just “go forward with curiosity, wondering where this experiment will lead.”
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“WE all have the inborn wisdom to create a wholesome, uplifted existence for ourselves and others. We can think beyond our own little cocoon and try to help this troubled world. Not only will our friends and family benefit, but even our “enemies” will reap the blessings of peace.”
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“The vocabulary that Chögyam Trungpa shaped for Buddhism in America has already entered the mainstream in a number of cases. His use of the word ego as a translation for the Sanskrit atman, is quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary, for instance. Unique phrases he coined like spiritual materialism, meditation-in-action, and crazy wisdom are now routinely used in Buddhist parlance.”
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“In one of his writings, Chögyam Trungpa says that anyone who creates a work of art has to meditate, whether they call the activity meditation or not. Wherever one finds a gap or a sense of space in life, whatever it is that one does that provides a feeling of ground, earth, or being—fundamentally, that is meditation.”
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“WHAT IS A WARRIOR?
ANYONE WHO is interested in hearing the dharma, anyone who is interested in finding out about oneself, and anyone who is interested in practicing meditation is basically a warrior. The approach of cowardice is looking for some tremendous external help, whether it comes from the sky or from the earth.”
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“A lot of people turn to something that they hope will liberate them without their having to face themselves.”
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“We have to be honest with ourselves. We have to see our gut, our excrement, our most undesirable parts. We have to see them. That is the foundation of warriorship, basically speaking.”
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