Tsem Rinpoche Quotes

If you can live with the sadness of human life (what Rinpoche often called the tender heart or the genuine heart of sadness), if you can be willing to feel fully and acknowledge continually your own sadness and the sadness of life, but at the same time not be drowned in it, because you also remember the vision and power of the Great Eastern Sun, you experience balance and completeness, joining heaven and earth, joining vision and practicality. ~ Pema Chodron

Within our perceived weaknesses and imperfections lies the key to realizing our true strength. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

It is compassion, then, that is the best protection; it is also, as the great masters of the past have always known, the source of all healing. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

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

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

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

The whole of meditation practice can be essentialized into these 3 crucial points: Bring your mind home. Release. And relax! ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

True spirituality is to be aware that if we are interdependent with everything and everyone else, even our smallest, least significant thought, word and action have real consequences throughout the universe. ~ 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

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

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

Love is the only cause of happiness. Its nature is all-pervasive like space. Love is the sunlight of the mind ~ Garchen 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

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

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

We need to make a very clear distinction between what is in our ego's self-interest and what is in our ultimate interest; it is from mistaking one for the other that all our suffering comes. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

I remember how people would often come to see my master Jamyang Khyentse simply to ask for his guidance for the moment of death. He was so loved and revered throughout Tibet, especially in the eastern province of Kham, that some would travel for months on end to meet him and get his blessing just once before they died. All my masters would give this as their advice, for this is the essence of what is needed as you come to die: "Be free of attachment and aversion. Keep your mind pure. And unite your mind with Buddha." ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Eating animals is not our God-given right, but being kind to them is. ~ Tsem Tulku

The essence of meditation practice in Dzogchen is encapsulated by these four points:
▪When one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen, in that gap, in between, isn't there a consciousness of the present moment; fresh, virgin, unaltered by even a hair's breadth of a concept, a luminous, naked awareness?
Well, that is what Rigpa is!
▪Yet it doesn't stay in that state forever, because another thought suddenly arises, doesn't it?
This is the self-radiance of that Rigpa.
▪However, if you do not recognize this thought for what it really is, the very instant it arises, then it will turn into just another ordinary thought, as before. This is called the "chain of delusion," and is the root of samsara.
▪If you are able to recognize the true nature of the thought as soon as it arises, and leave it alone without any follow-up, then whatever thoughts arise all automatically dissolve back into the vast expanse of Rigpa and are liberated.
Clearly this takes a lifetime of practice to understand and realize the full richness and majesty of these four profound yet simple points, and here I can only give you a taste of the vastness of what is meditation in Dzogchen.
…
Dzogchen meditation is subtly powerful in dealing with the arisings of the mind, and has a unique perspective on them. All the risings are seen in their true nature, not as separate from Rigpa, and not as antagonistic to it, but actually as none other–and this is ~ Sogyal 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

Be kind to yourself as you proceed along this journey. This kindness, in itself, is a means of awakening the spark of love within you and helping others to discover that spark within themselves. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

How many of us are swept away by what I have come to call an 'active laziness'?
It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues. ~ Sogyal 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

Ultimately one must abandon the path to enlightenment. If you still define yourself as a Buddhist, you are not a buddha yet. ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

Fear appears from a false vision of reality. ~ Bokar Rinpoche

Perfectly stay in the natural flow,
There is no other concentration.
Perfectly realize the natural state,
There is no other wisdom. ~ Patrul Rinpoche

Meditation could be said to be the Art of Simplicity: simply sitting, simply breathing and simply being. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

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

Those who seek happiness in pleasure, wealth, glory, power, and heroics are as naive as the child who tries to catch a rainbow and wear it as a coat. DILGO KHYENTSE RINPOCHE ~ Matthieu Ricard

We're all buddhas. We just don't recognize it. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

In meditation take care not to impose anything on the mind, or to tax it. When you meditate there should be no effort to control, and no attempt to be peaceful. Don't be overly solemn or feel that you are taking part in some special ritual; let go even of the idea that you are meditating. Let your body remain as it is, your breath as you find it, and remain in your natural condition of unchanging pure awareness. ~ Sogyal 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