Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Quotes

Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. We all wish for world peace, but world peace will never be acheived unless we first establish peace within our own minds. We can send so-called 'peacekeeping forces' into areas of conflict, but peace cannot be oppossed from the outside with guns. Only by creating peace within our own mind and helping others to do the same can we hope to achieve peace in this world.

Normally we divide the external world into that which we consider to be good or valuable, bad or worthless, or neither. Most of the time these discriminations are incorrect or have little meaning. For example, our habitual way of categorizing people as friends, enemies, and strangers depending on how they make us feel is both incorrect and a great obstacle to developing impartial love for all living beings. Rather than holding so tightly to our discriminations of the external world, it would be much more beneficial if we learned to discriminate between valuable and worthless states of mind.

Happiness and suffering are states of mind and so their main causes are not to be found outside the mind.

The path to enlightenment is really very simple - all we need to do is stop cherishing ourself and learn to cherish others. All other spiritual realisations will naturally follow from this.

if we wish to protect ourself from suffering we can either try to change the whole world to make it conform to our wishes, or we can change our mind.

Buddha is sometimes called the ‘Awakened One’ because he has awakened from the ‘sleep’ of ignorance.

we are continually chasing mirages, only to be disappointed when they do not give us the satisfaction for which we had hoped.

Self-cherishing and self-grasping are different aspects of one mind. Self-grasping grasps at an inherently existent ‘I’, and self-cherishing believes that such an ‘I’ is precious and that its happiness and freedom are supremely important.

We may think that our suffering is caused by other people, by poor material conditions or by society, but in reality it all comes from our own deluded states of mind. The essence of spiritual practice is to reduce and eventually completely eradicate our delusions, and replace them with permanent inner peace. This is the real meaning of our human life.

In reality, all the problems we experience day to day come from our self-cherishing and self-grasping – misconceptions that exaggerate our own importance. However, because we do not understand this, we usually blame others for our problems, and this just makes them worse. From these two basic misconceptions arise all our other delusions, such as anger and attachment, causing us to experience endless problems.

Un ser tan descontrolado no debe ser objeto de nuestro odio, sino de nuestra compasión.

With Dharma wisdom we can find a teaching in everything, and all things increase our faith, our wisdom and our experience of Dharma.

Since I myself never wish to suffer and always want to be happy, I must abandon and purify my non-virtuous actions and sincerely perform virtuous actions.

Buddha’s teachings are scientific methods to solve the problems of all living beings permanently. ... For Buddhists, faith in Buddha Shakyamuni is their spiritual life; it is the root of all Dharma realizations. If we have deep faith in Buddha we shall naturally develop the strong wish to practise his teachings. With this wish we shall definitely apply effort in our Dharma practice, and with strong effort we shall accomplish permanent liberation from the suffering of this life and countless future lives.

In this modern age, people find it difficult to believe that human beings are able to fly, but such things were very common in ancient times when people had strong potentialities for spiritual attainments. Milarepa, who was a great practitioner of Heruka and Vajrayogini, at one time – as explained in his life story – told a large assembly of his disciples how he had gained the ability to fly. Through various methods, including his tummo meditation, he had released the central channel knots at his heart, navel and below the navel, and because of this he developed a very special physical suppleness that pervaded his body. This made his body extremely light, like a soft feather. At first he could only levitate but gradually he was able to move through space until finally he was able to fly like an eagle.

subsolo mais inferior é o inferno.

Consideration prevents others from losing faith in us, and is the basis for developing a mind of rejoicing.

I want to protect and liberate myself permanently from the sufferings of this life and countless future lives. I can accomplish this only by receiving Buddha’s blessings, putting Dharma into practice and receiving help from Sangha – the supreme spiritual friends.

Everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to suffer, but very few people understand the real causes of happiness and suffering.

Even though our delusions are deeply ingrained, they are not an intrinsic part of our mind

Delusions are just bad mental habits, and like all habits they can be broken.

confusing worldly pleasure with real happiness only binds us more tightly to samsara.

he saw clearly that there is no true happiness in samsara,

It is very difficult to find people who hold pure and correct views;

Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, a contemporary Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhist) scholar, states that the “great seal [mahamudra] refers to emptiness,” and quotes the statement of the Buddha in the King of Concentrations Sutra: “The nature of all phenomena is the great seal.”⁴³ Gyatso explains, “Here, ‘nature’ refers to the ulti- mate nature of all things: their emptiness, or lack of inherent existence. Such emptiness is called the great seal because phenomena never move or change from the state of lacking inherent existence.

someone places a toy rubber snake in our room, the first time we see it we may believe that it is a real snake and be quite startled by it. Even though there is no actual snake in our room, a snake appears vividly to our mind. For a short time, we may cling to this appearance as real and develop fear as a result. However, if we look more carefully we will discover that the snake does not exist in the way that it appears. Clearly there is no real snake existing from its own side; we have merely imputed a snake with our conceptual mind.

The only thing that will never deceive us is the attainment of full enlightenment.

The main cause of enlightenment is bodhichitta, and the root of bodhichitta is compassion.