What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones.
More Quotes from Sogyal Rinpoche:
There is only one way of attaining liberation and of obtaining the omniscience of enlightenment following an authentic spiritual master.Sogyal Rinpoche
Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow.
Sogyal Rinpoche
It is important to remember always that the principle of egolessness does not mean that there was an ego in the first place, and the Buddhists did away with it. On the contrary, it means there was never any ego at all to begin with. To realize that is called 'egolessness.'
Sogyal Rinpoche
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.
Sogyal Rinpoche
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.
Sogyal Rinpoche
So ego, then, is the absence of true knowledge of who we really are, together with its result a doomed clutching on, at all costs, to a cobbled together and makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitably chameleon charlatan self that keeps changing and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existence. Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of 'I' and 'mine,' self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activity that will sustain that false construction. The fact that we need to grasp at all and go on and on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self does not inherently exist. The ego's greatest triumph is to inveigle us into believing its best interests are our best interests, and even into identifying our very survival with its own. This is a savage irony, considering that ego and its grasping are at the root of all our suffering. Yet ego is so convincing, and we have been its dupe for so long, that the thought that we might ever become egoless terrifies us.
Sogyal Rinpoche
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