Quotes from Sogyal Rinpoche

Anyone looking honestly at life will see that we live in a constant state of suspense and ambiguity.

Wrong views and wrong convictions can be the most devastating of all our delusions. Surely both Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot must have been convinced that they were right? And yet each and every one of us has that same dangerous tendency as they had: to form convictions, believe them without question and act on them, so bringing down suffering not only on ourselves, but also on all those around us. On

Sometimes even when the cell door is flung open, the prisoner chooses not to escape.

Always recognize the dreamlike qualities of life and reduce attachment and aversion. Practice good-heartedness toward all beings. Be loving and compassionate, no matter what others do to you. What they will do will not matter so much when you see it as a dream. The trick is to have positive intention during the dream. This is the essential point. This is true spirituality.10

Because the dying also are unable to help themselves, we should relieve them of discomfort and anxiety, and assist them, as far as we can, to die with composure.

Para la persona que se ha preparado y ha practicado, la muerte llega no como una derrota, sino como un triunfo, el momento más glorioso que corona toda la vida.

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.

Do not make the mistake of imagining that the nature of mind is exclusive to our mind only. It is in fact the nature of everything. It can never be said too often that to realize the nature of mind is to realize the nature of all things.

Don't get too excited. In the end, it's neither good nor bad.

The purpose of reflecting on death is to make a real change in the depths of your heart, and to come to learn how to avoid the "hole in the sidewalk," and how to "walk down another street.

Now when the bardo of this life is dawning upon me, I will abandon laziness for which life has no time, Enter, undistracted, the path of listening and hearing, reflection and contemplation, and meditation, Making perceptions and mind the path, and realize the "three kayas": the enlightened mind;4 Now that I have once attained a human body, There is no time on the path for the mind to wander.

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can layabout it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide-and-seek and think that no one can see them.

I shall never forget when Dudjom Rinpoche, in a moment of intimacy, leaned toward me and said in his soft, hoarse, slightly high-pitched voice: "You know, don't you, that actually all these things around us go away, just go away . . ." With

When your amnesia over your identity begins to be cured, you will realize finally that dak dzin, grasping at self, is the root cause of all your suffering. You will understand at last how much harm it has done both to yourself and to others, and you will realize that both the noblest and the wisest thing to do is to cherish others instead of cherishing yourself. This will bring healing to your heart, healing to your mind, and healing to your spirit. It

Life and death are in the mind, and nowhere else.

I often think of the words of the great Buddhist master Padmasambhava: "Those who believe they have plenty of time get ready only at the time of death. Then they are ravaged by regret. But isn't it far too late?" What more chilling commentary on the modern world could there be than most people die unprepared for death, as they have lived, unprepared for life?

Taking impermanence truly to heart is to be slowly freed from the idea of grasping, from our flawed and destructive view of permanence, from the false passion for security on which we have built everything.

Every subatomic interaction consists of the annihilation of the original particles and the creation of new subatomic particles. The subatomic world is a continual dance of creation and annihilation, of mass changing into energy and energy changing to mass. Transient forms sparkle in and out of existence, creating a never-ending, forever newly created reality.

the realm we are in—samsara—is an ocean of unbearable suffering. There is one way, and one way only, out of samsara's ceaseless round of birth and death, which is the path to liberation.

Milarepa wrote: In horror of death, I took to the mountains— Again and again I meditated on the uncertainty of the hour of death, Capturing the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind. Now all fear of death is over and done.

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.

life is inherently sacred and must be lived with sacred intensity and purpose

You see, we are all dying. It's only a matter of time.

You must constantly nourish openness, breadth of vision, willingness, enthusiasm, and reverence, that will change the whole atmosphere of your mind.