When you are able to calm down your mind and your five senses, you become conscious of your always-present inner Self. ~ Remez Sasson
Fearlessness is generated when you can appreciate uncertainty, when you have faith in the impossibility of these interconnected components remaining static and permanent. You will find yourself, in a very true sense, preparing for the worst while allowing for the best. You become dignified and majestic. These qualities enhance your ability to work, wage war, make peace, create a family, and enjoy love and personal relationships. By knowing that something is lying in wait for you just around the bend, by accepting that countless potentialities exist from this moment forward, you acquire the skill of pervasive awareness and foresight like that of a gifted general, not paranoid but prepared. ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
Sometimes people find that being tender and raw is threatening and seemingly exhausting. Openness seems demanding and energy consuming, so they prefer to cover up their tender heart. Vulnerability can sometimes make you nervous. It is uncomfortable to feel so real, so you want to numb yourself. You look for some kind of anaesthetic, anything that will provide you with entertainment. Then you can forget the discomfort of reality. People don’t want to live with their basic rawness for even fifteen minutes…For the warrior, fearlessness is the opposite of that approach. Fearlessness is a question of learning how to be. Be there all along: that is the message. That is quite challenging in what we call the setting-sun world, the world of neurotic comfort where we use everything to fill up the space. ~ Chögyam Trungpa
Unless we limit our desires from within by adopting an attitude of not needing anything at all, then even mastery over a thousand worlds will bring no real satisfaction. ~ Longchenpa
Kind words produce their own image in men’s souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used. ~ Blaise Pascal
Many problems are created in our world today because people do not engage in what will actually lead them onto a path that benefits them and brings happiness. From the time we open our eyes in the morning until we sleep at night, if we can pass the whole day with a kind-hearted mind and cheerful face, on good terms with people and talking pleasantly to them, our mind will be relaxed when we go to sleep at night. On the other hand, if we spend the day making others upset, if we fight, and even if we win, when we are going off to sleep at night we will have regrets and our mind will not be at ease. ~ 17th Karmapa
To use our human lives to accomplish the Buddha dharma, is like crossing the ocean in search of costly jewels and afterwards returning home with every kind of precious thing; the difficulties of the trip will have been well rewarded. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
The quintessential teaching of the Buddha — the nature of mind — is difficult to understand, not because it is complicated but because of its unbearably naked quality. One common method for deciphering the truth is through commentaries, analysis, arguments, and research. But the more we try to decipher this simplicity through academic studies and intellectual analysis, the more we get sidetracked, deterred, or worse, we end up constructing very convincing concepts that we mistake for the simplicity itself. Therefore, one must work hard to accumulate merit. Accumulating merit is the one and only way to cultivate trust in simplicity. But many of us have to first convince ourselves that accumulation of merit works. ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
What is delusion? How shall we define it? It is just as when a madman runs outside on a cold winter’s day and jumps into the water to wash himself, too deranged to realize that his body is being frozen. We think that such a man is insane, but in exactly the same way, when a Bodhisattva, clear-minded and undeceived, looks at us, our activities seem to him as demented as those of the lunatic! We should be quite convinced that we are thoroughly deluded and that when things appear to us the way they do, separate from our minds, they do not possess the slightest degree of reality in themselves. But what is it that creates this illusion? It is the mind, and it does so when it takes as real that which is illusory and non-existent. Nevertheless, we should clearly understand that such delusion is actually quite distinct from the mind in itself, the Buddha-nature or Sugatagarbha; it is not something, therefore, which it is impossible for us to remove. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Passionlessness is what enables you to practice the Dharma and to quiet your body, speech, and mind. It is related to the development of fearlessness and fearlessness. The idea of self-existence, or ego, creates tremendous self-hatred, which automatically projects out to others. In contrast, when there is kindness to oneself and others, this automatically creates a quality of workability. It creates immense space or emptiness.~Chögyam Trungpa
