Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes on Wisdom & Knowledge (5 Quotes)

While meditating I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind I don't question or doubt whether I am in the 'correct' state or not. There is no effort, only rich understanding, wakefulness, and unshakable certainty. When I am in the nature of mind, the ordinary mind is no longer there. There is no need to sustain or confirm a sense of being I simply am.

Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. You have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. Because he or she knows you through and through, since he or she is you, your guide can help you, with increasing clarity and humor, negotiate all the difficulties of your thoughts and emotions. The more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and ridiculous illusions that they are. The more you listen, the more guidance you will receive. If you follow the voice of your wise guide, and let the ego fall silent, you come to experience that presence of wisdom and joy and bliss that you really are.

Devotion to the spiritual master becomes the purest, quickest, and simplest way to realize the nature of our mind and all things. As we progress in it, the process reveals itself as wonderfully interdependent We, from our side, try continually to generate devotion the devotion we arouse itself generates glimpses of the nature of mind, and these glimpses only enhance and deepen our devotion to the master who is inspiring us. So in the end devotion springs out of wisdom devotion and the living experience of the nature of mind becomes inseparable, and inspire one another.

The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss, clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence of grasping. The diminishing of grasping in yourself is a sign that you are becoming freer of yourself. And the more you experience this freedom, the clearer the sign that the ego and the hopes and fears that keep it alive are dissolving, and the closer you will come to the infinitely generous 'wisdom of egolessness.' When you live in the wisdom home, you'll no longer find a barrier between 'I' and 'you,' 'this' and 'that,' 'inside' and 'outside' you'll have come, finally, to your true home, the state of non-duality.

Our buddha nature, then, has an active aspect, which is our 'inner teacher.' From the very moment we became obscured, this inner teacher has been working tirelessly for us, tirelessly trying to bring us back to the radiance and spaciousness of our true being. When we have prayed and aspired and hungered for the truth for a long time, for many, many lives, and when our karma has become sufficiently purified, a kind of miracle takes place. And this miracle, if we can understand and use it, can lead to the end of ignorance forever The inner teacher, who has been with us always, manifests in the form of the 'outer teacher,' whom, almost as if by magic, we actually encounter. He or she is nothing less than the human face of the absolute, the crystallization of the wisdom of all the buddhas, and the embodiment of their compassion directed always toward you. For me, my masters have been the embodiment of living truth, undeniable signs that enlightenment is possible in a body, in this life, in this world, even here and even now, the supreme inspirations in my practice, in my work, in my life, and in my journey toward liberation.