Tibetan Wisdom Quotes

before speaking, notice what motivates your words.

Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness. Let go. Let Be. See through everything and be free, complete, luminous, at home -- at ease.

Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it's about becoming more fully human. . . . It is the end of ignorance.

It is not the outer objects that entangle us. It is the inner clinging that entangles us." - Tilopa

You are in charge of your own karma, your own life, your own spiritual path, and your own liberation, just as I am in charge of mine.

The small flower is as total as the sun.

I've also learned that you don't always get to pick the people with whom you travel the journey. You sometimes may think you do, but don't be deceived. And the corollary of that - and this was my real lesson - is that you start to realize that you can love even the people you don't like and must love and help everyone.

Don't do things that everyone can do,Do things that everyone cannot do

Why should one be a Christian? It is ugly. Be a christ if you can be, but don’t be a Christian. Be a buddha if you have any respect for yourself, but don’t be a Buddhist. The Buddhist believes. Buddha knows.

I live in my own way, I don’t consider you. I don’t consider anybody at all—because if you start considering others you can’t live your life authentically. Consider and you will become phony.

Always rely on just a happy frame of mind. Let it become one of the fundamental rules of your life. Even if you come across a negative, find something positive in it. You will always be able to find something. And the day you become skillful at finding the positive in the negative, you will dance with joy.

There is no greater luxury than meditation. Meditation is the last luxury, because it is the ultimate love affair.

We should reflect on the idea that since the beginning of time sentient beings have been mentally unstable because they have been slaves of delusion, they lack the eye of wisdom to see the path leading to nirvana and enlightenment, and they lack the necessary guidance of a spiritual teacher. Moment by moment they are indulging in negative actions, which will eventually bring about their downfall.

There is no need to choose. Why not live choicelessly? Why not live all that life makes available to you? Don’t be a spiritualist and don’t be a materialist: be both. Don’t be a Zorba and don’t be a Buddha; be both: Zorba the Buddha. Enjoy all that God has showered on you. That’s

They asked a wise man: Why don’t we ever hear you backbiting and slandering? He said: I’m still not happy with myself to start with others.

Don’t become more knowledgeable, become more innocent. Drop all that you know, forget all that you know. Remain wondering, but don’t transform your wondering into questions, because once the wonder is changed into a question, sooner or later the question will bring knowledge. And knowledge is a false coin.

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.

The idea of a separate center is the root of the ego.

To just be--to be--amidst all doings, achievings, and becomings. This is the natural state of mind, or original, most fundamental state of being. This is unadulterated Buddha-nature. This is like finding our balance.

Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, 'You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind?' But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: 'Are you hurt? Can I help you up?' Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion.

Enlightenment, or Nirvana, is nothing other than the state beyond all obstacles, in the same way that from the peak of a very high mountain one always sees the sun. Nirvana is not a paradise or some special place of happiness, but is in fact the condition beyond all dualistic concepts, including those of happiness and suffering. When all our obstacles have been overcome, and we find ourselves in a state of total presence, the wisdom of enlightenment manifests spontaneously without limits, just like the infinite rays of the sun. The clouds have dissolved, and the sun is finally free to shine once again.

You can cheat a person—but in what can you cheat him? You can take some money or something else from him. But the man who knows the beauty of trust will not be distracted by these small things. He will still love you, he will still trust you. And then a miracle happens: if a man really trusts you, it is impossible to cheat him, almost impossible. It

if you don’t trust in yourself then no other trust is ever possible.

To live in the moment is innocence, to live without the past is innocence, to live without conclusions is innocence, to function out of the state of not knowing is innocence. And the moment you function out of such tremendous silence which is not burdened by any past, out of such tremendous stillness which knows nothing, the experience that happens is beauty. Whenever you feel beauty—in the rising sun, in the stars, in the flowers, or in the face of a woman or a man—wherever and whenever you feel beauty, watch. And one thing will always be found: you had functioned without mind, you had functioned without any conclusion, you had simply functioned spontaneously. The moment gripped you, and the moment gripped you so deeply that you were cut off from the past. And when you are cut off from the past you are cut off from the future automatically, because past and future are two aspects of the same coin; they are not separate, and they are not separable either. You can toss a coin: sometimes it is heads, sometimes it is tails, but the other part is always there, hiding behind. Past

Tibetan Buddhists say that a person should never get rid of their negative energy, that negative energy transformed is the energy of enlightenment, and that the only difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle. If we stop struggling and open up and accept what is, that neurotic energy naturally arises as wisdom, naturally informs us and becomes our teacher.

It is only cowards who reduce the tremendously valuable capacity of wondering to questions. The really brave, the courageous person, leaves it as it is. Rather than changing it into a question, he jumps into the mystery. Rather than trying to control it, he allows the mystery to possess him.

It is always beneficial to be near a spiritual teacher. These masters are like gardens or medicinal plants, sanctuaries of wisdom. In the presence of a realized master, you will rapidly attain enlightenment. In the presence of an erudite scholar, you will acquire great knowledge. In the presence of a great meditator, spiritual experience will dawn in your mind. In the presence of a bodhisattva, your compassion will expand, just as an ordinary log placed next to a log of sandalwood becomes saturated, little by little, with its fragrance.

Atisha says: Awareness inside, compassion on the outside. Compassion is the outer side of awareness, the exterior of awareness. Awareness is your interiority, subjectivity. Compassion is relating with others, sharing with others.

The simplicity of mindfulness belies its profundity. It is the gateway to immortality. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.

One Jewish lady was talking to the neighbor, and she said, “The psychoanalyst who is treating my son has said that my son suffers from an Oedipus complex.” And the neighbor lady said, “Oedipus schmoedipus! Doesn’t matter as long as he is a good boy and loves his mother!

Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence.

Live joyously, guiltlessly, live totally, live intensely. And then heaven is no more a metaphysical concept, it is your own experience.

The moment you know, you destroy all poetry. The moment you know, and think that you know, you have created a barrier between yourself and that which is. Then everything is distorted. Then you don’t hear with your ears, you translate. Then you don’t see with your eyes, you interpret. Then you don’t experience with your heart, you think that you experience. Then all possibility of meeting with existence in immediacy, in intimacy, is lost. You have fallen apart. This is the original sin. And this is the whole story, the biblical story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Once they have eaten the fruit of knowledge they are driven out of paradise. Not that somebody drove them out, not that God ordered them to get out of paradise, they themselves fell. Knowing they were no more innocent, knowing they were separate from existence, knowing they were egos…knowing created such a barrier, an iron barrier. You ask me, “What is innocence?” Vomit knowledge! The fruit of the tree of knowledge has to be vomited. That’s what meditation is all about. Throw it out of your system: it is poison, pure poison. Live without knowledge, knowing that “I don’t know.” Function out of this state of not knowing and you will know what beauty is. Socrates

Primordial wisdom [Skt. jñāna; Tib. ཡེ་ཤེས་, yeshé; Wyl. ye shes] has many names, but in truth it refers simply to the inseparability of the ground and fruit, the one and only essence-drop [thig le nyag gcig] of the dharmakaya. If it is assessed from the standpoint of its utterly pure nature, it is the actual dharmakaya, primordial Buddhahood. For, from its own side, it is free from every obscuration. We must understand that we are Buddha from the very beginning. Without this understanding, we will fail to recognize the spontaneously present mandala of the ground, and we will be obliged to assert, in accordance with the vehicle of the paramitas, that Buddhahood has a cause. We will fail to recognize the authentic view of the Secret Mantra.

In India we have two different systems. One we call history; history takes note of the facts. Another we call purana, mythology; it takes note of the truth. We have not written histories about Buddha, Mahavira or Krishna, no. That would have been dragging something immensely beautiful into the muddy unconsciousness of humanity. We have not written histories about these people, we have written myths. What is a myth? A myth is a parable, a parable that only points to the moon but says nothing about it—a finger pointing to the moon, an indication, an arrow, saying nothing.

And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder. They are dangerous because they give you the feeling that you know, although you know not. They give you this misconception about yourself that now questions have been solved. “I know what The Bible says, I know what the Koran says, I know what the Gita says. I have arrived.” You will become a parrot; you will repeat things but you will not know anything. This is not the way to know—knowledge is not the way to know. Then what is the way to know? Wonder. Let your heart dance with wonder. Be full of wonder: throb with it, breathe it in, breathe it out. Why be in such a hurry for the answer? Can’t you allow a mystery to remain a mystery? I know there is a great temptation not to allow it to remain a mystery, to reduce it to knowledge.

Unrecognized thought is the daytime equivalent of falling asleep. Each discursive thought is a mini-daydream. Drifting off into mindless thinking is how we end up sleepwalking through life—and therefore death.

For example, when practitioners transform into Shenlha Ökar (Shen Deity of White Light), they visualize their bodies as being adorned with the thirteen ornaments of peacefulness that in themselves evoke the enlightened quality of peacefulness.2 Shenlha Ökar himself embodies all six of the antidote qualities of love, generosity, wisdom, openness, peacefulness, and compassion; so as soon as you transform into Shenlha Ökar, you instantly embody these same qualities.

Past and future are two aspects of the same coin. The name of the coin is mind. When the whole coin is dropped, that dropping is innocence. Then you don’t know who you are, then you don’t know what is; there is no knowledge. But you are, existence is, and the meeting of these two is-nesses—the small is-ness of you, meeting with the infinite is-ness of existence—that meeting, that merger, is the experience of beauty. Innocence is the door; through innocence you enter into beauty. The more innocent you become, the more existence becomes beautiful. The more knowledgeable you are, the more and more existence is ugly, because you start functioning from conclusions, you start functioning from knowledge. The

The naked body of the female consort illustrates freedom from the obscuration of conceptual symbols. As an illustration of unchanging great bliss endowed with the sixteen joys, she appears in the form of a youthful, sixteen-year-old girl. Her hair hangs loose, showing the unlimited way that wisdom expands impartially out of basic space. She is adorned with five bone ornaments. Of these, the ring at the top of her head symbolizes the wisdom of the basic space of phenomena [dharmadhātu], while her bone necklace represents the wisdom of equality. Her earrings stand for discerning wisdom, her bracelets for mirrorlike wisdom, and her belt for all-accomplishing wisdom. Illustrating the unity of calm abiding and insight, her secret space is joined in union.

There is a deep urge in man to know things which are worthless, to know things which make you feel special—because only you know those things and nobody else does. Man wants to be special, and nothing makes you more special than so-called esoteric knowledge. That is why esoteric knowledge remains important. All kinds of rubbish go on in the name of esoteric knowledge—that the earth is hollow, that inside the earth there are great civilizations. And there are people who still believe in it, and in many more such stories.

It’s taught that wisdom means understanding the mind. This is what’s known as the realization of the nature of the mind. It is also called knowing the inseparability of self and others, or of appearance and emptiness, or of the ultimate and the relative, or of space and wisdom.

When you blow up a major life situation, as I did on two fronts before leaving Richmond, the explosion can leave a hole in your psyche. Nature abhors a vacuum, however, and over time the crater is almost certain to fill in with new wisdom -- or fresh folly. Sometimes it can be a challenge to tell the difference.

By helping you discover a deep source of knowledge and wisdom, meditation practice can bring you to the sense of connection, completion, and fulfillment that you yearn for. Ultimately, it can help you arrive at the more profound sense of peace and happiness that comes only from connecting with your deeper essence.

New karma is being made all the time. When one acts with a positive motivation, goodness is furthered. When one acts out of negative motivation, negativity is furthered. "We can recondition ourselves to act with wisdom. The important thing to understand here is that you are not a victim. You are your own master. 'As you sow, so shall you reap.

Buddhist scholar Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, states, “Believing fundamentally that this life is the only one, modern people have developed no long-term vision…. So there is nothing to restrain them from plundering the planet for their own immediate ends and from living in a selfish way that could prove fatal for the future.

Through the teachings, the introduction by the master, the practice, and the blessings, you can gradually deconstruct and dissolve the karmic conceptual body and be introduced to another type of body and identity called the illusory wisdom body (yeshé gyumé lü). This second body is characterized by wisdom—realization of the truth—and by a positive sense of the illusory.

The fact that each being has its own accordant suffering means that no matter who we are, whether we have a prominent place or the humblest place in society, we all experience suffering. Reflect on all of the ordinary suffering that each and every living being experiences. Many of us face the unbearable suffering of the death of a child. All of us will experience being separated from our parents, either by emotional estrangement or by death. If we are married or in a long-term relationship, that relationship will either break up or end with the death of one of the partners. Many of us have families that do not behave like families due to alcoholism or other kinds of addictions, and we grow up lacking stability and intimacy. Even if we do have a more stable family life, we will still experience the suffering of disagreements, arguing, and fighting.

The forms of the central and surrounding deities... should not be protruding like a clay statue or cast image, yet neither should they be flat like a painting. In contrast, they should be apparent, yet not truly existent, like a rainbow in the sky or the reflection of the moon in a lake. They should appear as though conjured up by a magician. Clear appearance involves fixing the mind one-pointedly on these forms with a sense of vividness, nakedness, lucidity, and clarity.

THE SANSKRIT WORD for meditation is dhyana; the Tibetan term is samten. Both refer to the same thing: steady mind. Mind is steady in the sense that you don’t go up when a thought goes up, and you don’t go down when it goes down, but you just watch things going either up or down. Whether good or bad, exciting, miserable, or blissful thoughts arise—whatever occurs in your state of mind, you don’t support it by having an extra commentator. The sitting practice of meditation is simple, direct, and very businesslike. You just sit and watch your thoughts go up and down. There is a physical technique in the background, which is working with the breath as it goes out and in. That provides an occupation during sitting practice. It is partly designed to occupy you so that you don’t evaluate thoughts. You just let them happen. In that environment, you can develop renunciation: you renounce extreme reactions to your thoughts. Warriors on the battlefield don’t react to success or failure. Success or failure is just regarded as another breath coming in and going out, another discursive thought coming in and going out. So the warrior is very steady. Because of that, the warrior is victorious—because victory is not particularly the aim or the goal. But the warrior can just be—as he or she is.

What lies at the root of our unenlightened existence is our fundamental misconception of the ultimate nature of reality. Therefore, by cultivating correct insight into true nature of reality, we begin the process of undoing unenlightened existence and set in motion the process of liberation. Samsara and nirvana are distinguished on the basis of whether we’re in a state of ignorance or wisdom. As the Tibetan masters say, when we’re ignorant, we’re in samsara; when we develop wisdom, we’re liberated. The ultimate antidote for eliminating fundamental ignorance is the wisdom realizing emptiness. It is this emptiness of mind that is the final nirvana.

The book speaks for itself, leaps up at one from every page, brilliant and loving. But notice the characters: in the lama Kipling’s daimon ran away with him to create an immortal, wise, old holy man. He is really the decisive creation in Kim, even more important than Kim himself. And that is revealing: it means that Kipling’s creative genius was more powerful and compelling than his cerebral intentions. For the character of the lama flowered into a creation of unforgettable moral beauty: the holy man incarnates the patience, the wisdom of the East, the subjugation of self, the fully achieved human spirit. Though the lama is an old Tibetan monk, he is really India, he speaks for the East.

The wisdom eye cuts the root of samsara and allows you to see the truth of the conceptual body. If there is no wisdom eye, you will not understand the truth, enter on the right path, attain the illusory wisdom body, or ultimately achieve liberation. For someone who already has the illusory wisdom body, the eye of bön (bön gyi chenma) is needed in order to attain the changeless precious body. The eye of bön is essentially a capacity for remembering or awakening to the teachings when the need arises. If you have the eye of bön and something disturbing happens, instead of awakening to anger and a memory of what some hateful person has done to you, you will spontaneously remember the master, the teaching, or the practices.

That you have to ask Krishnamurti, not me. That is not my business. He loves it, that’s how he has grown. For centuries, for many, many lives, he has been moving towards a tunnel vision. And the tunnel vision has its own beauties, because whatsoever you see, you see very clearly because your eyes are focused. Hence the clarity of Krishnamurti. Nobody has ever been so clear, so crystal clear. Nobody has ever been so logical, so rational; nobody has ever been so analytical. His profundity in going into things and their details is simply unbelievable. But that is part of his tunnel vision. You cannot have everything, remember. If you want clarity you will need tunnel vision; you will have to become more and more focused on less and less.

Psychologists working with the Tibetan community in exile have noted the remarkable resiliency and joyfulness among the people, even though many are survivors of great trauma and loss. Most surprising are the responses of nuns and monks who have been imprisoned and tortured. According to a study by Harvard psychologists, many show few or none of the ordinary signs of trauma, but instead have deepened in compassion and joyful appreciation of life. Their trainings in loving-kindness, compassion, and wisdom led them to pray for their enemies. One old lama recounted that over the twenty years of prison and torture, his only true fear was that he would lose his compassion and close his heart. If we want to understand optimal mental health, these monks and nuns are a striking example.

Alan Wallace illustrates this truth from the Tibetan teachings: Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, “You idiot! What’s wrong with you? Are you blind?” But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you actually is blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: “Are you hurt? Can I help you up?” Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion.

The general kind and soft customs of Mustang were soon to strike me as exceptional. Apart from occasional disputes between husband and wife, which like family rows all around the world bring raised voices, I never heard a person scream or shout; Even the children had very civilised manners. In fact the only person I knew to consistently angry in Lo Mantang was myself, and Tibetans consider bd temper a Western characteristic. Take for example the reactions of European to missing his train; he will invariably swear under his breath. Who in our can stand frustration without giving vent to anger? I soon had to master my own temper, having raised my voice against one of the innumerable people who stopped to stare at me and my smal party, I was told by a peasant: ‘’I cannot understand; you are a great man, how is it that small things like myself deserve your wrath?’’ After that I learned to be tolerant, realising that by getting mad I was only debasing myself, and that it was stupid to be bothered by trivialities.

Initially, we should practice Chöd alone in our rooms at night, quietly, with less fear. It is by gradually developing bodhicitta and wisdom realizing emptiness—not by just becoming braver—that we can confidently realize that whatever appears or happens can be transformed into the path. At that point, we should become more determined in our place of practice, Do not, under any circumstances, endanger your life in the choice of a place. Unless we have great experience, we should never do this practice in any place that is threatened by falling rocks or trees, possible floods, or the threat of a collapsing house. Eventually, when we achieve full confidence in Chöd, there is no need to go to violent places at all. This is because terrifying visions will appear wherever we are. That is important because we need terrifying visions of spirits if we are to practice Chöd sincerely. People have different mental capacities for fear. Some are too brave, some are too afraid. Both of these types of people will find Chöd difficult. We must have some fear for this practice to be successful. A desperate search for the "I" causes fear to develop. The best method for overcoming this fear is bodhicitta and wisdom realizing emptiness. It is because of the need for fear that practice should be done alone. Any group retreat on Chöd lessens the fear involved. Engaging in the practice at night also increases the necessary fear.

Those who practice the Dharma of the Mahayana in accordance with the Buddha's intention are known as bodhisattvas. If you practice the teachings of the Mahayana, you can reach the level of the great bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri, in the best case, or become like the Buddha's two main disciples Shariputra and Maudgalyayana, who were gifted with insight and miraculous powers. Even if you are unable to practice to the full in this life, you will at least be reborn among the principal disciples of the future Buddha, Maitreya. The buddhas being those who have totally conquered the enemies of ignorance and the other emotions, they are often referred to by the synonym 'Victorious Ones,' while bodhisattvas, in many texts including the Tibetan original of the root verses of these teachings, are called 'children of the Victorious Ones'. Who, then, are the children of the buddhas? In the case of Buddha Shakyamuni, the child of his body was his physical son, Prince Rahula. The children of his speech were all those who heard him teach and attained the level of arhart - the great beings such as Shariputra, Maudgalayana, the sixteen arhats and others, who became the holders of his teachings. Above all, the children of the buddha's mind are the great bodhisattvas like Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri, who carry out their noble intention to bring all beings to enlightenment. For, just as a great monarch with a thousand children would choose the one with the most perfect qualities to be his heir, so, too, a buddha regards as his authentic heirs the bodhisattvas who have perfected the union of wisdom and compassion.

One of the positive side-effects of maintaining a very high degree of awareness of death is that it will prepare the individual to such an extent that, when the individual actually faces death, he or she will be in a better position to maintain his or her presence of mind. Especially in Tantric Buddhism, it is considered that the state of mind which one experiences at the point of death is extremely subtle and, because of the subtlety of the level of that consciousness, it also has a great power and impact upon one’s mental continuum. In Tantric practices we find a lot of emphasis placed on reflections upon the process of death, so that the individual at the time of death not only retains his or her presence of mind, but also is in a position to utilize that subtle state of consciousness effectively towards the realization of the path. From the Tantric perspective, the entire process of existence is explained in terms of the three stages known as ‘death’, the ‘intermediate state’ and ‘rebirth’. All of these three stages of existence are seen as states or manifestations of the consciousness and the energies that accompany or propel the consciousness, so that the intermediate state and rebirth are nothing other than various levels of the subtle consciousness and energy. An example of such fluctuating states can be found in our daily existence, when during the 24-hour day we go through a cycle of deep sleep, the waking period and the dream state. Our daily existence is in fact characterized by these three stages. As death becomes something familiar to you, as you have some knowledge of its processes and can recognize its external and internal indications, you are prepared for it. According to my own experience, I still have no confidence that at the moment of death I will really implement all these practices for which I have prepared. I have no guarantee! Sometimes when I think about death I get some kind of excitement. Instead of fear, I have a feeling of curiosity and this makes it much easier for me to accept death. Of course, my only burden if I die today is, ‘Oh, what will happen to Tibet? What about Tibetan culture? What about the six million Tibetan people’s rights?’ This is my main concern. Otherwise, I feel almost no fear of death. In my daily practice of prayer I visualize eight different deity yogas and eight different deaths. Perhaps when death comes all my preparation may fail. I hope not! I think these practices are mentally very helpful in dealing with death. Even if there is no next life, there is some benefit if they relieve fear. And because there is less fear, one can be more fully prepared. If you are fully prepared then, at the moment of death, you can retain your peace of mind. I think at the time of death a peaceful mind is essential no matter what you believe in, whether it is Buddhism or some other religion. At the moment of death, the individual should not seek to develop anger, hatred and so on. I think even non-believers see that it is better to pass away in a peaceful manner, it is much happier. Also, for those who believe in heaven or some other concept, it is also best to pass away peacefully with the thought of one’s own God or belief in higher forces. For Buddhists and also other ancient Indian traditions, which accept the rebirth or karma theory, naturally at the time of death a virtuous state of mind is beneficial.

In this age of global interrelatedness and hunger for meaning, it is incumbent upon persons driven by a need to find and manifest peace, to find that which is universal and practical at the core of all spiritual teachings. A Tibetan Buddhist can be enriched by the wisdom of the Christ just as a Christian can develop a deeper inner practice through a study of Islamic Mysticism. Our epoch can no longer accept the artificial walls that have stood for centuries between peoples and cultures. This is a new century, and there is no going back.

It is essential that the most destitute girl should be able to access higher education and be granted an equal status with men. ‘When a woman is educated, a people is educated,’ such is a saying of traditional wisdom.

Introduced to Tibet in the eighth century, Shāntarakshita’s Yogacārā-Madhyamaka synthesis flourished untroubled for about four hundred years. It was, as we have said, highly receptive to the logico-epistemological tradition of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti; and the favor in which it was held at Sangpu could only have been strengthened by Loden Sherab’s translations of major logical texts in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, the supremacy of Shāntarakshita’s Madhyamaka tradition was challenged by the arrival in Tibet of Patsap Nyima Drak’s translations of Chandrakīrti. Having made so little impact in India, Chandrakīrti’s Madhyamaka teaching was completely new to most Tibetans, despite the fact that Atisha both knew and appreciated it. The novelty of Chandrakīrti, as compared with Shāntarakshita was, of course, illusory, in the sense that it depended on the date, not of the composition, but of the translation, of his works—Shāntarakshita’s synthesis being the more recent, indeed the last, major development in the history of Indian Buddhist thought. On the other hand, Chandrakīrti’s strong disapproval of the logico-epistemological tradition must have come as a shock in that it suddenly called into question what had come to be regarded as an integral component of the Madhyamaka tradition that was, by then, so well established. It was at this time that, as a means of conveniently labeling the two diverging approaches, the terms rang rgyud pa and thal ’gyur ba (back-translated into Sanskrit as “Svātantrika” and “Prāsaṅgika,” respectively) were coined.

Off and on, for several years, I’d been reading Zen, I’d flirted with Tantric Hinduism, I’d surfed the smaller swells of Sufism, and tried to get down with the Tao. It was all very eye-opening and inspirational, and while Asian mysticism is an easy target for the sneers of secular cynics and sectarian dogmatists alike, it’s far more compatible with modern science than the misinterpreted Levantine myths, ecclesiastical fairy tales, pious platitudes, and near-desperate wishful thinking I’d been fed in Southern Baptist Sunday School. The wisdom in those spiritual texts was obvious, yet I’d integrated it into my daily life with but minimal success. From a practical point of view, it was like trying to teach a monkey to play chess.

The way to discover the freedom of the wisdom of egolessness, the masters advise us, is through the process of listening and hearing, contemplation and reflection, and meditation.

but more importantly, I encountered the flesh-bound instrument of secret wisdom and cosmic love torture who was to animate my fantasies and billow the embers of my yearning for the rest of my life. Her name was Bobbi. She was eleven -- an “older woman.

Gegyen told us that the sound of the bell was the sounds of emptiness and represented feminine wisdom. Leaning back and squinting so that his eyes practically disappeared, he said, "All that appears as solid is merely appearing and has no essential nature. What we think of as real is like the places and people we see in dreams." Then he laughed, grinning toothlessly, and looked at us nodding, "Ok, let's do that again.

Apo Rinpoche had four children and a wonderful wife, and he had a wonderful sense of humor. When I told him I was having repeated dreams about a baby he laughed so hard he almost fell off his seat, and then he said, "All nuns should have babies." I didn't know quite how he meant this, and I continued to struggle with my decision until one day I told him I was having a lot sexual thoughts and feelings and that I really felt I could not continue as a nun. I asked him when he thought I should give back my vows. He said: "It depends how much longer you can wait!" Then he laughed so hard that tears were streaming down his face.

When the conceptual mind is free of grasping an aversion, it spontaneously relaxes into unfabricated rigpa. Then there is no longer an identification with the reflections in the mirror and we can effortlessly accommodate all that arises in experience, appreciating every moment. If hatred arises, the mirror is filled with hatred. When love arises the mirror is filled with love. For the mirror itself, neither love nor hatred is significant: both are equally a manifestation of its innate capacity to reflect. This is known as the mirror-like wisdom; when we recognize the nature of mind and develop the ability to abide in it, no emotional state distracts us.

•​Two verses on the Samadhi of Illusion, from the Jewel Ornament of Liberation. First verse: “Knowing the five skandhas are like an illusion / Don’t separate the illusion from the skandhas / Free of thinking that anything is real / This is perfect wisdom’s conduct at its best!”6 Second verse: “All the images conjured up by a magician / The horses, elephants, and chariots in his illusions / Whatever may appear there, know that none of it is real / And it’s just like that with everything there is!

Just like we don't take responsibility for how we actualize our confusion and its resulting view of duality, we don't take responsibility for actualizing wisdom and its view of nonduality.

All the images I have given and the metaphors I have tried to use you will discover to be fused in one all-comprehensive experience of truth. Devotion is in this state, and compassion is in this state, and all the wisdoms, and bliss, clarity, and absence of thoughts, but not separate from one another, all integrated and linked inextricably with each other in one taste. This moment is the moment of awakening. A profound sense of humor wells up from within, and you smile in amusement at how inadequate all your former concepts and ideas about the nature of mind were. What springs from this is a growing sense of tremendous and unshakable certainty and conviction that “this is it”: There is nothing further to seek, nothing more that could possibly be hoped for. This certainty of the View is what has to be deepened through glimpse after glimpse of the nature of mind, and stabilized through the continuous discipline of meditation.

Man lives such a dull and drab life that he wants some sensation. Those who are a little wiser, they read scientific fiction or detective stories. Those who are not so wise, they read spiritual fiction.

The Amoghapāśa Tantra states:             “Wisdom” refers to enlightenment, while “heroic being” indicates skillful means; with these two, the welfare of sentient beings will be achieved.468

Our ancient sources of wisdom call on human beings to rise to their highest capacity and behave in extraordinarily open and generous ways to one another, under difficult circumstances to transcend differences and create understanding across all barriers of convention and fear. This wisdom is fragile as our environment is fragile, threatened by an overwhelming material culture. I believe in a spiritual ecology. In today’s world, Judaism and Tibetan Buddhism and other wisdom traditions are endangered species.

If you die before you die, then when you die you will not die.” If you can “die,” or let go of your ego now, then when you physically die you will not die—because you’re already “dead.

The life of human beings is suspended between the poles of heaven and earth. Let us retain within us the width of heaven, but let us not forget the earth that bears us. Earth and heaven are the symbols of the finite and the infinite, in which we share equally. It is not our task to choose between these two poles of our existence or to give up the one for the sake of the other, but to recognize their mutual interdependence and to integrate them into our very being.

Sometimes things look good, sometimes they look bad. Sometimes they are happy and we wish things would go on forever, and then suddenly something happens—things fall apart. Life seems unbearable and painful. This is merely the impermanent nature of life. There is no controlling any of it. There is no controlling our physical body; there is no controlling the process of aging; there is no controlling the environment around us, the state of the world, the government, or the nature of politics. The only thing that we can control and master is our own spiritual path. After

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.

the nature of mind “the wisdom of ordinariness.

Tibet became a laboratory for the enlightenment movement to create its model society, to evolve into an actual manifestation of a buddha‘s pure universe, a „buddhaverse“. A social buddhaverse is a place where everything is geared toward enlightenment, where every lifetime is made meaningful by dedication to optimal evolutionary development. Because that nation embraced the enlightenment movement for more than a millennium, Tibet is the prime example of a sustained attempt by an entire people to create a society, culture, and civilization that cherish the individual‘s pursuit of enlightenment over the needs of society. Instead of believing that a strong central government can force a group of people into making a better place to live, the Tibetans, influenced by ancient India, saw that helping the individual is what transforms society. Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be; in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises out of their wisdom. Once an individual attains enlightenment, society at large automatically becomes enriched. This was the heart of the Buddha‘s social revolution. (p. 32-33)

According to Lama Je Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), the essence of the entire path to awakening can be distilled into three main realizations: renunciation, the mind that relinquishes distortions, afflictive emotions, and compulsions, as well as their unfavorable results; Bodhicitta, the mind set on awakening for the benefit of others; and wisdom, the mind that directly perceives the ultimate reality of emptiness and interdependence.

Whatever perceptions arise, you should be like a little child going into a beautifully decorated temple; he looks, but grasping does not enter into his perception at all. So you leave everything fresh, natural, vivid, and unspoiled. When you leave each thing in its own state, then its shape doesn’t change, its color doesn’t fade, and its glow does not disappear. Whatever appears is unstained by any grasping, so then all that you perceive arises as the naked wisdom of Rigpa, which is the indivisibility of luminosity and emptiness.

This is why Buddha reminded us in the “Four Reliances”: Rely on the message of the teacher, not on his personality; Rely on the meaning, not just on the words; Rely on the real meaning, not on the provisional one; Rely on your wisdom mind, not on your ordinary, judgmental mind.

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, of peace, of 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.

With mind far off, not thinking of death’s coming, Performing these meaningless activities, Returning empty-handed now would be complete confusion; The need is recognition, the spiritual teachings, So why not practice the path of wisdom at this very moment? From the mouths of the saints come these words: If you do not keep your master’s teaching in your heart Will you not become your own deceiver?

It means a person, any person, who has completely awakened from ignorance and opened to his or her vast potential of wisdom. A buddha is one who has brought a final end to suffering and frustration, and discovered a lasting and deathless happiness and peace.

One of the greatest Buddhist traditions calls the nature of mind “the wisdom of ordinariness.

Do the Guru Yoga practice, imagining with special intensity the rays of light streaming out from your master and purifying you, burning away all your impurities, your illness too, and healing you; your body melting into light; and merging your mind, in the end, with his wisdom mind, in complete confidence.

These reflections inspire a strong sense of “renunciation,” an urgent desire to emerge from samsara and follow the path to liberation, which forms the foundation for the specific practices of taking refuge in the Buddha, the truth of his teaching, and the example of its practitioners, and so awakening a confidence and trust in our own inner buddha nature giving birth to compassion (Bodhichitta—the heart of the enlightened mind, which I shall explain in detail in Chapter 12) and training the mind to work with ourself and others and the difficulties of life removing obscurations and “defilements” through the visualization and mantra practice of purification and healing accumulating merit and wisdom by developing universal generosity and creating auspicious circumstances.1

In Japan, there is no question of the existence of ishin-denshin, a mutual understanding that arises through unspoken communication.  The word itself means “what the mind knows, the heart transmits” and suggests the same esoteric heart transmission as is found in Tibetan Buddhism.  There, the true understanding of the nature of reality cannot be communicated in words, and the understanding must instead be transmitted from the heart of the master to the student.  In Original Wisdom, Robert Wolff described the uncanny knowledge of Malaysian aboriginal tribes.  But in these cultures, psychic ability is not a goal to be strived after.  Instead, it is merely a fact of living.

My experience in meditation is not unique; it’s common to meditators throughout history. A 14th-century Tibetan mystic, writing about his experience deep in meditation, described it as: . . . a state of bare, transparent awareness; Effortless and brilliantly vivid, a state of relaxed, rootless wisdom; Fixation free and crystal clear, a state without the slightest reference point; Spacious empty clarity, a state wide-open and unconfined; the senses unfettered . . . The mystical experience isn’t the property of Buddhists or Catholics or Taoists or Hindus. It’s the common root of all religions. The great spiritual teachers entered these experiential states, and when they “came back from the mountaintop,” described them to their followers in the idiom of their cultures.

My own beliefs should not concern you. What should concern you is that this prophecy of a coming enlightenment is echoed in virtually every faith and philosophical tradition on earth. Hindus call it the Krita Age, astrologers call it the Age of Aquarius, the Jews describe the coming of the Messiah, theosophists call it the New Age, cosmologists call it Harmonic Convergence and predict the actual date.” “December 21, 2012!” someone called. “Yes, unnervingly soon . . . if you’re a believer in Mayan math.” Langdon chuckled, recalling how Solomon, ten years ago, had correctly predicted the current spate of television specials predicting that the year 2012 would mark the End of the World. “Timing aside,” Solomon said, “I find it wondrous to note that throughout history, all of mankind’s disparate philosophies have all concurred on one thing—that a great enlightenment is coming. In every culture, in every era, in every corner of the world, the human dream has focused on the same exact concept—the coming apotheosis of man . . . the impending transformation of our human minds into their true potentiality.” He smiled. “What could possibly explain such a synchronicity of beliefs?” “Truth,” said a quiet voice in the crowd. Solomon wheeled. “Who said that?” The hand that went up belonged to a tiny Asian boy whose soft features suggested he might be Nepalese or Tibetan. “Maybe there is a universal truth embedded in everyone’s soul. Maybe we all have the same story hiding inside, like a shared constant in our DNA. Maybe this collective truth is responsible for the similarity in all of our stories.” Solomon was beaming as he pressed his hands together and bowed reverently to the boy. “Thank you.” Everyone was quiet. “Truth,” Solomon said, addressing the room. “Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas, maybe we do so because those ideas are true . . . written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don’t understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us . . . vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called . . . re-membered . . . re-cognized . . . as that which is already inside us.” The silence in the hall was complete. Solomon let it sit for a long moment, then quietly said, “In closing, I should warn you that unveiling the truth is never easy. Throughout history, every period of enlightenment has been accompanied by darkness, pushing in opposition. Such are the laws of nature and balance. And if we look at the darkness growing in the world today, we have to realize that this means there is equal light growing. We are on the verge of a truly great period of illumination, and all of us—all of you—are profoundly blessed to be living through this pivotal moment of history.

We are used to the idea of 'freedom from' and 'freedom to.' In the Tibetan language the word for Buddha is sangye, sang means pure and gye means spreading or increasing. Sang indicates free from all limitations: the pure state of wisdom. Gye means free to do whatever is necessary: the pure state of compassion. But there is another kind of freedom which is 'freedom with'. So, in the meditation when the thoughts, feelings and sensations arise, we are resting on the fine point between withdrawing and merging.

The Buddha said long ago that when anyone in the future met with his teachings, it would be the same as meeting him in person. Therefore we can “meet the Buddha” today in the form of teachers, teachings, or our own practice. Saying we want to meet the Buddha is like saying we want to meet the awakened state of our own mind. We don’t have to change who we are in order to meet the Buddha in this way. The purpose of our meeting is not to become a student of another culture or to discover someone else’s wisdom. We’re not practicing Indian culture to become Indian, or practicing Japanese or Tibetan culture to become Japanese or Tibetan. Our purpose is to discover who we truly are, to connect with our own wisdom.

Where the past has ceased and the future has not yet arisen, In the unimpeded state of present wakefulness, Rest in the manner of mind looking into mind. No matter what thoughts may arise at this time, They are all the display of the single mind essence. As the nature of space is unchanging, You will realize the all-pervasive mind essence to be changeless. This is the Great Perfection (dzogchen), the ultimate of all vehicles, The unexcelled meaning of the self-existing Mind Section.

Tibetan Kagyu foundation practices (ngöndro),

Nyoshul Lungtok, who later became one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of recent times, followed his teacher Patrul Rinpoche for about eighteen years. During all that time, they were almost inseparable. Nyoshul Lungtok studied and practiced extremely diligently, and accumulated a wealth of purification, merit, and practice; he was ready to recognize the Rigpa, but had not yet had the final introduction. Then, one famous evening, Patrul Rinpoche gave him the introduction. It happened when they were staying together in one of the hermitages high up in the mountains above Dzogchen Monastery. It was a very beautiful night. The dark blue sky was clear and the stars shone brilliantly. The sound of their solitude was heightened by the distant barking of a dog from the monastery below. Patrul Rinpoche was lying stretched out on the ground, doing a special Dzogchen practice. He called Nyoshul Lungtok over to him, saying: "Did you say you do not know the essence of Mind?" Nyoshul Lungtok guessed from his tone that this was a special moment and nodded expectantly. "There's nothing to it really," Patrul Rinpoche said casually, and added, "My son, come and lie down over here: be like your old father." Nyoshul Lungtok stretched out by his side. Then Patrul Rinpoche asked him, "Do you see the stars up there in the sky?" "Yes." "Do you hear the dogs barking in Dzogchen Monastery?" "Yes." "Do you hear what I'm saying to you?" "Yes." "Well, the nature of Dzogchen is this: simply this." Nyoshul Lungtok tells us what happened then: "At that instant, I arrived at a certainty of realization from within. I had been liberated from the fetters of 'it is' and 'it is not.' I had realized the primordial wisdom, the naked union of emptiness and intrinsic awareness. I was introduced to this realization by his blessing, as the great Indian master Saraha said: He in whose heart the words of the master have entered, Sees the truth like a treasure in his own palm.

Buddhism says yes, change is possible. It tell us that no matter what our background, each of us is the creator of his or her own destiny. It tells us that our thoughts, our words, and our deeds create the experience that is our future.

The world is full of wretchedness. Nobody can deny it. Our bodies are subject to decay, disease, pain and death. And there are the miseries of the world such as poverty, inequality, hatred. Every single person whether well-known or unknown, rich or poor, young or old, carries his own bundle of misery— his body—to which he is bound by karma. A sensible person should not only recognise the immense misery in the world but should also enquire into its cause. According to a Buddhist doctrine, misery is caused by karma which is conditioned by pleasure, the product of an impure mind. This impure mind is created by the illusion of the self, avidyā or ignorance. The illusion of self can only be eradicated by prajñā or wisdom or the understanding achieved through samādhi, the concentrated mind. And the concentrated mind can only be achieved if we have observed śīla, the moral or righteous way of living. Therefore, the entire Buddhist teaching is summarised in triśikshā, the three doctrines—śīla, samādhi and prajñā. It is clear from this that meditation becomes indispensable for anybody who tries to achieve right understanding of Truth, the realisation of Truth, the realisation of selflessness or of Self as it is. Thus, we should meditate in order to develop our mind and attain an insight into the inner