Rinpoche Quotes

To feel overflowing love and almost unbearable compassion for all living creatures is the best way to fulfil the wishes of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Even if for the moment you cannot actually help a sentient being in an external way, meditate on love and compassion constantly over the months and years until compassion is knit inseparably into the very fabric of your mind. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Our buddha nature is as good as any buddha's buddha nature. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

The nature of mind is the nature of everything" – Dudjom Rinpoche (1904 – 1987) ~ Loron-Jon Stokes

Any daily activity can be used as an opportunity for meditation. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

What the world needs more than anything are Bodhisattvas of peace, lawyers, politicians, teachers working tirelessly for the enlightenment of themselves and others. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Never sit under a tree waiting for the apple to fall. Climb the tree, grab that apple!
When it comes, never be inert and take your time, TIME TO MOVE! ~ Tsem Tulku Rinpoche

According to this system, if one understands the mechanism through which all things are merely posited on the strength of conceptual thought, then one will easily recognize that any apprehension of an intrinsically existent reality is made in contradiction with this mechanism." This is actually very correct. If you memorize and repeat it, others will think you are very intelligent! They ~ Domo Geshe Rinpoche

The Buddha said that all conscious beings possess an enlightened nature.
Because of that, we have this natural purity, peacefulness and power.
We can rest the mind naturally because we are already in possession of these qualities.
If one can rest the mind naturally, that's the best meditation. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

What most of us need, almost more than anything, is the courage and humility really to ask for help, from the depths of our hearts: to ask for the compassion of the enlightened beings, to ask for purification and healing, to ask for the power to understand the meaning of our suffering and transform it; at a relative level to ask for the growth in our lives of clarity, peace, and discernment, and to ask for the realization of the absolute nature of mind that comes from merging with the deathless wisdom mind of the master. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Although hundreds or thousands of explanations are given,
There is only one thing to be understood -
Know the one thing that liberates everything -
Awareness itself, your true nature. ~ Dudjom Rinpoche

Practicing discipline involves continually working to find space in our patterns, to find the gaps in the images we hold about ourselves. It also means finding the gaps in our ideas about others, releasing images that we hold about a manager, a coworker, a friend, or a partner. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

People will die as they have lived, as themselves. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

The way to accomplish oneself as Guru Rinpoche Is all rooted in the Seven-Line Prayer. The seven consciousnesses of the basis,215 While on the path, become the seven branches of enlightenment.216 The result is perfected in the seven absolute treasures.217 In this way, with the sound of this vajra melody, The moment you invoke me, I, Padmasambhava, Have no choice but to come to bless you. ~ Thinley Norbu

Meditation is not supposed to be the fabrication or the reinforcement of some particular state, but simply the cultivation of the awareness of whatever is arising in the mind. ~ Thrangu Rinpoche

Even if you have a lot of work to do, if you think of it as wonderful, and if you feel it as wonderful, it will transform into the energy of joy and fire, instead of becoming a burden. ~ Tulku Thondup Rinpoche

This world can seem marvellously convincing until death collapses the illusion and evicts us from our hiding place. What will happen to us then if we have no clue of any deeper reality? ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

When you first start out don't set yourself a lofty goal of sitting down to meditate for twenty minutes. Aim instead for ten minutes or even five minutes - utilizing those few moments when you find yourself willing or even desiring just to take a break from the daily grind to observe your mind rather than drifting off into daydreams. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

If we start worrying whether our nose is too big or too small, we should think, "What if I had no head? - now that would be a problem!" As long as we have life, we should rejoice. If everything doesn't go exactly as we'd like, we can accept it. If we contemplate impermanence deeply, patience and compassion will arise. We will hold less to the apparent truth of our experience, and the mind will become more flexible. Realizing that one day this body will be buried or burned, we will rejoice in every moment we have rather than make ourselves or others unhappy. ~ Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

You don't want to block your thoughts, emotions, and so on; nor do you want to chase after them. If you chase after them, if you let them lead you, they begin to define you, and you lose your ability to respond openly and spontaneously in the present moment. On the other hand, if you attempt to block your thoughts, your mind can become quite tight and small. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

If one does not remember death, one does not remember Dharma. ~ Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

Tomorrow or the next life - which comes first, we never know. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

By renouncing samsara, we renounce our habitual grasping, unhappy minds. And by renouncing samsara, we embrace our potential for enlightenment. ~ Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

There's no difference between what is seen and the mind that sees it. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Death is a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Being aggressive, you can accomplish some things, but with gentleness, you can accomplish all things. ~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

An important characteristic of calm abiding meditation is to let go of any goal and simply sit for the sake of sitting. We breathe in and out, and we just watch that. Nothing else. ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

You meet someone and you're sure you were lovers in a past life. After two weeks with them, you realize why you haven't kept in touch for the last two thousand years. ~ Al Cleathen

Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to bother it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

We are acting as if we were the last generation on the planet. Without a radical change in heart, in mind, in vision, the earth will end up like Venus, charred and dead. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

You cannot simply take a mala from someone else and start using it. When you buy a mala you have to make sure that it accords with the advice we have just discussed, and then before you use a mala - whether it is old or new - you should bless it. How do we bless the mala? There are different methods for blessing a mala, and some are more elaborate than others. In Buddhism there are two types of conduct: elaborate and simple. Elaborate conduct, for example, involves having many thangkas, statues, and lots of offerings, such as flowers and so forth. However, Buddhism is also very practical, and so there are more simple forms of practice where you utilize visualization. However, you should not use unelaborated versions of practice simply out of laziness. Making offerings are an important part of practice since these actions accumulate merit, and it is merit that brings about our happiness. People often refer to luck and fortune, but really ~ Zurmang Gharwang Rinpoche

How should we manage our mind, which is inherently just like the open sky? It's actually very simple. Let it do as it wishes, just as you would let go of a naughty child struggling to get free from your arms. As long as you know you can keep your eye on him at all times, you certainly shouldn't try to tie him up or confine him. You also shouldn't try to get his attention with candy, biscuits, or toys because, as with all naughty children, it's only natural that he will eventually return to his mother's embrace. When mother and child are united, that is similar to when your mind has returned again to its proper place. ~ Shang Rinpoche

Meditation is actually a very simple exercise in resting in the natural state of your present mind, and allowing yourself to be simply and clearly present to whatever thoughts, sensations, or emotions occur. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Why exactly are we so frightened of death that we avoid looking at it altogether? Somewhere, deep down, we know we cannot avoid facing death forever. We know, in Milarepa's words: "This thing called 'corpse' we dread so much is living with us here and now." ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

The towns and countryside that the traveller sees through a train window do not slow down the train, nor does the train affect them. Neither disturbs the other. This is how you should see the thoughts that pass through your mind when you meditate. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion. More ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

we are all each other's teacher. ~ Arjia Rinpoche

There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

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. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

In meditation which is a continuous flow of staying in the state at all times and in every circumstance there is neither suppression nor production of dwelling and proliferation; if there is dwelling, that is the dharmakaya's own face and if there is proliferation, that is preserved as the self-liveliness of wisdom, so,

"Then, whether there is proliferation or dwelling,"

Whatever comes from mind's liveliness as discursive thoughts, be it the truth of the source - afflictions of anger, attachment, and so on - or the truth of unsatisfactoriness - the flavours of experience which are the feelings of happiness, sadness, and so on - if the nature of the discursive thoughts is known as dharmata, they become the shifting events of the dharmakaya, so,

"Anger, attachment, happiness, or sadness,"

That does not finish it though; generally speaking if they are met with through the view but not finished with by bringing them to the state with meditation, they fall into ordinary wandering in confusion and if that happens, you are bound into cyclic existence by the discursive thoughts of your own mindstream and, dharma and your own mindstream having remained separate, you become an ordinary person who has nothing special about them. Not to be separated from a great non-meditated self-resting is what is needed . . .

Additionally, whatever discursive thought or affliction arises, it is not something apart from dharmakaya wisdom, rather, t ~ Patrul Rinpoche

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." ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

If we can allow some space within our awareness and rest there, we can respect our troubling thoughts and emotions, allow them to come, and let them go. Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

You as a salt-being, made of salt, go to fathom the depth of the ocean, and in the process you yourself dissolve. A great maharishi once said that true meditation is like this. ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Yet is our deepest desire is truly to live and go on living, why do we blindly insist that death is the end? Why not at least try and explore the possibility that there may be a life after? ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

When we recognize that the seemingly object nature of reality is nothing different than the subject nature of mind, which is rigpa, it is called enlightenment. ~ Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Whenever you hear that someone else has been successful, rejoice. Always practice rejoicing for others-whether your friend or your enemy. If you cannot practice rejoicing, no matter how long you live, you will not be happy. ~ Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

Anyen Rinpoche is a compassionate embodiment of wisdom. The skillful teachings in The Tibetan Yoga of Breath will be a source of peace and happiness for many in these troubled times, for which I am very grateful. ~ Garchen Rinpoche

If everything were permanent, singular, or independent, nothing would change. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Train in compassion is to know that all beings are the same and suffer in similar ways, to honor all those who suffer, and to know that you are neither separate from nor superior to anyone. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

To realize Mahamudra we really need to have accumulated vast meritorious energy at some time in the past. That karma needs to be awakened in this life through intense and persistent aspiration and devotion to the holy guru as well as timely reliance upon the holy guru. This is what is necessary for Mahamudra realization. Any proliferation and collection ~ Sangyes Nyenpa Rinpoche

MY teacher Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged us to lead our lives as an experiment, a suggestion that has been very important to me. ~ Pema Chodron

With the power of compassion there is nothing that cannot be accomplished. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

It's so easy to think that we're the only ones who suffer, while other people are somehow immune to pain, as though they'd been born with some kind of special knowledge about being happy, that, through some cosmic accident, we never received. Thinking in this way, we make our own problems seem much bigger than they really are. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

If we don't take advantage of the opportunity that's in front of us in any moment - to awaken, to se, to know, to break free- then we may be giving up our very last chance. ~ Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Stupas protect beings from 5 major disasters: war, epidemic diseases, famine, pollution, n poverty. ~ Akong Rinpoche

Ultimately we want to use dream to liberate ourselves from all relative conditions, not simply to improve them.. ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Any attempt to capture the direct experience of the nature of mind in words is impossible. The best that can be said is that it is immeasurably peaceful and, once stabilized through repeated experience, virtually unshakable. It's an experience of absolute well-being that radiates through all physical, emotional and mental states-even those that might ordinarily be labeled as unpleasant. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Chogyam is spinning, watching the spinning / samsara; If there is no samsara / spinning, there is no Chogyam.
- from the poem Cynical Letter by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche ~ Trungpa Chogyam

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. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Look to your experience in dreams to know how you will fare in death. Look to your experience of sleep to discover whether or not you are truly awake. ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Again and again we need to appreciate the subtle workings of the teachings and the practice, and even when there is no extraordinary, dramatic change, to persevere with calm and patience. How important it is to be skillful and gentle with ourselves, without becoming disheartened or giving up, but trusting the spiritual path and knowing that it has its own laws and its own dynamics. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Whether a Buddha comes into the world or not, the nature of things is still the nature of things. The Buddha is someone who realizes what is true, what actually exists. If we want to become enlightened, we simply have to acknowledge or recognize what is. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

At the beginning of meditation training thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually, as you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea; finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Just calling one's practice "approach and accomplishment" and staying in retreat for years will produce nothing but hardship. Completing hundreds of millions of mantras will not even bring the warmth of the ordinary qualities that mark one's progress on the path! In other words, if the essential points of the path are not taken into account, perseverance will amount to nothing more than chasing a mirage. ~ Patrul Rinpoche

As long as we are mindful and aware, no one practice is better than another. ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

Don't let any emotional thought concerning success or failure, fame or gain, overtake you, and don't dwell upon them. Give up your personal shortcomings, such as foolish talk, distracting activities, and absentmindedness. Train in being totally gentle in all physical, verbal, or mental activities. Don't ponder the flaws of others; think instead of their good sides. ~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. MONTAIGNE ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Ideally the ultimate retreat is to retreat from the past and the future to always remain in the present. ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

Life and death are in the mind, and nowhere else. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

May the suffering of all beings be pacified. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

What a beautiful and what a healing mystery it is that from
contemplating, continually and fearlessly, the truth of change
and impermanence, we come slowly to find ourselves face to
face, in gratitude and joy, with the truth of the changeless,
with the truth of the deathless, unending nature of mind! ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Once I had an opportunity to talk with Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, about the fact that I was not able to do my practice properly. I had just started the vajrayana practices and I was supposed to be visualizing. I couldn't visualize anything. I tried and tried but there was just nothing at all; I felt like a fraud doing the practice because it didn't feel natural to me. ( ... ). So he encouraged me by saying that as long as you have these kinds of doubts, your practice will be good. ~ Pema Chodron

Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

The basic nature of all conscious beings is 'self-existing wakefulness'.
Self-existing meaning spontaneous or without effort and wakefulness meaning natural awareness.
To ignore our basic nature, is to wander in fear and confusion,
to directly realise our essential nature is to be Enlightened. ~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

We actually need intelligent doubt and skepticism; they protect us against mistaken views and propaganda. ~ Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Our problems, all come from nothing; they are all based on a misunderstanding that does not even exist. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn. And in the all-revealing clarity of its sunlight, this insight can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own mind and the nature of reality. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

He past is only an unreliable memory held in the present. The future is only a projection of our present conceptions. The present itself vanishes as soon as we try to grasp it. So why bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?.. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The nature of mind is just too close to be recognized. Just as we are unable to see our own face, mind finds it difficult to look into its own nature. 2. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

It is not about how much you give, it is about how much you can let go with your mind. ~ Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. [ ... ] Learning to live is learning to let go. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

In parting, I would like to give you one small piece of advice to keep in your heart. You may have heard me say this before, but it is the key point of the entire path, so it bears repeating: All that we are looking for in life - all the happiness, contentment, and peace of mind - is right here in the present moment. Our very own awareness is itself fundamentally pure and good. The only problem is that we get so caught up in the ups and downs of life that we don't take the time to pause and notice what we already have. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

how hollow and futile life can be when it's founded on a false belief in continuity and permanence. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Seeing that nothing is solid or permanent you begin to make yourself at home in the unknown. ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Our top priority is to relieve suffering of human beings. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

The outer world in all its variety and our inner world of thoughts and emotions are not as they seem. All phenomena appear to exist objectively, but their true mode of existence is like a dream: apparent yet insubstantial. ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

There is no emptiness without appearance, and there is no appearance without emptiness. That is what we call the interdependent nature. ~ Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Instead of allowing ourselves to be led and trapped by our feelings, we should let them disappear as soon as they form, like letters drawn on water with a finger. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

On the day that you were born, you began to die. Do not waste a single moment more! ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

If you vanquish ego-clinging today, tonight you will be enlightened. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Let yourself become that space that welcomes any experience without judgement. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

More important than finding the teacher is finding and following the truth of the teaching ... ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

When you transform your mind, everything you experience is transformed. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Looking at the world today, we might easily forget that the main purpose of our life - you could call it the heart of being human - is to be happy. All of us share the same wish, and the same right, to seek happiness and avoid suffering. Even following a spiritual path, or the religious life, is a quest for happiness. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Look at your life. Look at the ways in which you define who you are and what you're capable of achieving. Look at your goals. Look at the pressures applied by the people around you and the culture in which you were raised. Look again. And again. Keep looking until you realize, within your own experience, that you're so much more than who you believe you are. Keep looking until you discover the wondrous heart, the marvelous mind, that is the very basis of your being. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Only the impossible is worth doing. ~ Akong Rinpoche

Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

So overall, though my life is far from perfect, I'm contented with it. And in a peculiar way, I'm grateful for the troubling emotions I experienced. The obstacles we face in life can provide powerful incentives for change. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche