Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes (20 Quotes)

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.

Learning to live is learning to let go.

When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don't actually 'become' a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.

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.'

More and more, I have come to realize how thoughts and concepts are all that block us from always being ... in the absolute.... When the view is there, thoughts are seen for what they truly are fleeting and transparent, and only relative.... You do not cling to thoughts and emotions or reject them, but welcome them all within the vast embrace of Rigpa.

The definition of mantra is 'that which protects the mind.' That which protects the mind from negativity, or that which protects you from your own mind, is called mantra.

There is only one way of attaining liberation and of obtaining the omniscience of enlightenment following an authentic spiritual master.

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.

All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle. When no such thing occurs, they feel extremely disappointed. But the real miracle of meditation is more ordinary and much more useful....

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.

We are what we think. With our thoughts we make the world. All that we are will rise with our thoughts.

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.

Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life.

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.

Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow.

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.

... when the nature of mind is introduced by a master, it is just too simple for us to believe. Our ordinary mind tells us this cannot be, there must be something more to it than this. It must surely be more 'glorious', with light blazing in space around us, angels with flowing golden hair swooping down to meet us, and a deep Wizard of Oz voice announcing, 'Now you have been introduced to the nature of your mind.' There is no such drama.

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.

... we and all sentient beings fundamentally have the buddha nature as our innermost essence....

Quoting Dudjom Rinpoche on the buddha-nature 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.