Quotes from Sogyal Rinpoche

May I take on the suffering of everyone who has this terrible illness. May they be free from this affliction and from all their suffering.

Practice had given my master a complete knowledge of what death is, and a precise technology for guiding individuals through it.

The sky is our absolute nature, which has no barriers and is boundless, and the ground is our reality, our relative, ordinary condition.

Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments to the news that is always arriving out of silence.

Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer 'yes' to both of these, then you have really understood impermanence.

Meditation is the road to enlightenment.

death comes not as a defeat but as a triumph, the crowning and most glorious moment of life.

Learning to live is learning to let go.

If there were any way of sheltering from death's blows—I am not the man to recoil from it . . . But it is madness to think that you can succeed . .

pure awareness of nowness is the real buddha

For someone who has prepared and practiced, death comes not as a defeat but as a triumph, the crowning and most glorious moment of life.

And the great elements such as earth, May I always support the life Of all the boundless creatures. And until they pass away from pain May I also be the source of life For all the realms of varied beings That reach unto the ends of space.8

To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.

piece of advice from Patrul Rinpoche: Remember the example of an old cow, She's content to sleep in a barn. You have to eat, sleep, and shit— That's unavoidable— Beyond that is none of your business.

I ask myself often: "Why is it that everything changes?" And only one answer comes back to me: That is how life is. Nothing, nothing at all, has any lasting character. The Buddha said: This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

Knowing and realizing this, shouldn't we listen to Gyalsé Rinpoche when he says: Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch; Nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions. If you have got to think about something— Make it the uncertainty of the hour of your death . . .

Milarepa sang: When you are strong and healthy, You never think of sickness coming, But it descends with sudden force Like a stroke of lightning. When involved in worldly things, You never think of death's approach; Quick it comes like thunder Crashing round your head.

As a Tibetan saying goes: "Tomorrow or the next life—which comes first, we never know.

Sem is the discursive, dualistic, thinking mind, which can only function in relation to a projected and falsely perceived external reference point.

Meditation is not something that you can "do"; it is something that has to happen spontaneously, only when the practice has been perfected. However

contemporary master, Nyoshul Khenpo: The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, Like they who lick the honey from a razor's edge. How pitiful they who cling strongly to concrete reality: Turn your attention within, my heart friends.

Seen from one angle, sem is flickering, unstable, grasping, and endlessly minding others' business; its energy consumed by projecting outwards.

In Tibetan we call it Rigpa, a primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself.3