Quotes by Tibetan Authors - Page 3

A good friend who points out mistakes and imperfections and rebukes evil is to be respected as if he reveals the secret of some hidden treasure.

Dalai Lama XIV

We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us, and make us kinder. You always have the choice.

Dalai Lama XIV

People should never sit alone for too long when they're crying.

Dalai Lama XIV

A beautiful country is a dream-like an illusion. It is senseless to cling to it. Unless the inner forces of negative emotions are conquered, strife with outer enemies will never end.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

If you are honest, truthful, and transparent, people trust you. If people trust you, you have no grounds for fear, suspicion or jealousy.

Dalai Lama XIV

CIf you are honest, truthful, and transparent, people trust you. If people trust you, you have no grounds for fear, suspicion or jealousy.

Dalai Lama XIV

Once I was running and there was someone on the treadmill next to me who stopped running to answer a question I asked and flew of the back of the treadmill. Being fully engaged has many benefits.

Sakyong Mipham

Many people experience a sense of rage and very strong anger toward their parents and others who hurt them. Ultimately that is also a thought. It doesn’t really exist in this very pure and present moment. It doesn’t really exist. So actually what we are really carrying is nothing but a bunch of thoughts. When we let go of those thoughts then nothing else is required. We are free......Whenever you suffer, whenever you struggle, don’t go outside trying to find out what is wrong with your life. Don’t treat your life like you treat your car. When something is wrong with the car we get out, open the hood, see what’s wrong with the engine, and fix it. But life is not like a car. Life is consciousness. Life is not something outside of us. Therefore whenever we feel that we are suffering, tormented, or challenged we should always look into our consciousness. Immediately we discover that we are having a very evil affair with an evil thought. That’s all there is. Just that thought.Such thoughts always come with a specific idea and with some kind of voice: “I am good. I am bad. I am poor. I don’t have this or that. I am not enlightened.” It is always associate with a concept and a belief system. Until we are awakened to the ultimate truth we are completely ruled by our thoughts. Thoughts are always dictating reality to us. So in that sense thought is the ultimate empire of propaganda. Thought is always coloring and defining reality.

Anam Thubten

By mental cultivation I mean a disciplined application of mind that involves deepening our familiarity with a chosen object or theme. Here I am thinking of the Sanskrit term bhavana, which connotes "cultivation," and whose Tibetan equivalent, gom, has the connotation of "familiarization." These two terms, often translated into English as meditation, refer to a whole range of mental practices and not just, as many suppose, to simple methods of relaxation. The original terms imply a process of cultivating familiarity with something, whether it is a habit, a way of seeing, or a way of being.

Dalai Lama XIV

If you meditate in perfect peace and then flash someone an irritable look because they make noise or their child cries, you are entirely missing the point.

Khandro Rinpoche

Heaven is the natural spaciousness of our mind before we make it small with self-protection.

Sakyong Mipham

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, the nature of those discursive thoughts is actual dharmakaya, the ground’s luminosity. If that, which is called ‘the mother luminosity resident in the ground’, is recognized, there is self-recognition of the view of self-knowing luminosity previously introduced by the guru and that is called ‘the luminosity of the practice path’. Abiding in one’s own face of the two luminosities of ground and path become inseparable is called ‘themeeting of mother and son luminosities’ so, “The previously-known mother luminosity joins with the son.

Patrul Rinpoche

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.

Sogyal Rinpoche

The act of meditation is being spacious.

Sogyal Rinpoche

I found, as every teacher does, that there is nothing like teaching to help one learn.

Dalai Lama XIV

I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend,that together we may succeed in building a better worldthrough human understanding and love,and that in doing so we may reducethe pain and suffering of all sentient beings.

Dalai Lama XIV

Your emotional understanding about the preciousness of your human birth comes through conscious, repetitive mind training.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche

The point is to be free, not to be crazy.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Many people today agree that we need to reduce violence in oursociety. If we are truly serious about this, we must deal with theroots of violence, particularly those that exist within each of us. Weneed to embrace 'inner disarmament,' reducing our own emotions ofsuspicion, hatred and hostility toward our brothers and sisters.

Dalai Lama XIV

All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself. Is there need for lengthy explanation?

Dalai Lama XIV

All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness through others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself. Is there need for lengthy explanation?

Dalai Lama XIV

The more time you spend thinking about yourself, the more suffering you will experience.

Dalai Lama XIV

To say 'I want to have sex with this person' is to express a desire which is not intellectually directed in the way that 'I want to eradicate poverty in the world' is an intellectually directed desire. Furthernore, the gratification of sexual desire can only ever give temporary satisfaction. Thus as Nagarjuna, the great Indian scholar said: 'When you have an itch, you scratch. But not to itch at all is better than any amount of scratching.

Dalai Lama XIV

Someone who begins to develop an interest in the teachings can tend to distance themselves from the reality of material things, as if the teachings were something completely apart from daily life. Often, at the bottom of all this, there is an attitude of giving up and running away from one's own problems, with the illusion that one will be able to find something that will miraculously help one to transcend all that. But the teachings are based on the principle of our actual human condition. We have a physical body with all its various limits: each day we have to eat, work, rest, and so on. This is our reality, and we can't ignore it.

Namkhai Norbu

The theory of emptiness…is the deep recognition that there is a fundamental disparity between the way we perceive the world, including our own existence in it, and the way things actually are.

Dalai Lama XIV

I don't think there is anything like the awareness of space to process emotion. That space is such an incredible processor. There is no analysis equal to the processing capacity of open awareness. When you are trying to analyze something, you don't realize that the analyzer itself is part of the problem. Both the problem and the analyzer are constructions of the mind. But direct, open, naked awareness is not a construction of the mind but the nature of the mind itself, and therefore the greatest processor ever.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

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.

Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

There is no need for temples, no need forcomplicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophie is kindness.

Dalai Lama

Violence can only breed more violence and suffering. Our struggle must remain non-violent and free of hatred.

Dalai Lama XIV

Each one of us is responsible for reducing the negative potential of every situation we have to face.

Dalai Lama XIV

From the Buddhist point of view, all living beings -- that is, beings with feelings, experiences, and sensations -- are considered equal. Human beings can live without eating meat. As human beings, I think that deep down our nature tends towards vegetarianism and leads us to do everything in our power to prevent harming other species.

Dalai Lama XIV

Weapons never stay in their boxes. Once a weapon has been manufactured, sooner or later someone will use it. If it were possible to bring about true and lasting peace by force of arms, then we should turn all our factories into weapons factories. But that is impossible. Even though it is difficult to try to bring about peace through inner transformation, it is the only way of establishing sustainable peace in the world.

Dalai Lama XIV

War is massacre. It is 100 per cent negative.

Dalai Lama XIV

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

Dalai Lama XIV

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.

Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.

Dalai Lama XIV

Meanwhile, spring came, and with it the outpourings of Nature. The hills were soon splashed with wild flowers; the grass became an altogether new and richer shade of green; and the air became scented with fresh and surprising smells -- of jasmine, honeysuckle, and lavender.

Dalai Lama XIV

Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness.

Dalai Lama XIV

You must not hate those who do wrong or harmful things; but with compassion, you must do what you can to stop them — for they are harming themselves, as well as those who suffer from their actions.

Dalai Lama XIV

When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.

Dalai Lama XIV

If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding.

Dalai Lama XIV

The problem is that our world and our education remain focused exclusively on external, materialistic values. We are not concerned enough with inner values. Those who grow up with this kind of education live in a materialistic life and eventually the whole society becomes materialistic. But this culture is not sufficient to tackle our human problems. The real problem is here," the Dalai Lama said, pointed to his head. The Archbishop tapped his chest with his fingers to emphasize the heart as well. "And here," the Dalai Lama echoed. "Mind and heart..

Dalai Lama XIV

Open your arms to CHANGEbut don’t let go of your VALUES.

Dalai Lama XIV

Politics devoid of ethics does not further human welfare, and life without morality reduces humans to the level of beasts.

Dalai Lama XIV

As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.

Chögyam Trungpa

The fundamental precept of Buddhism is Interdependence or the Law of Cause and Effect. This simply states that everything an individual experiences is derived from action through motivation. Motivation is thus the root of both action and experience.FREEDOM IN EXILE: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE DALAI LAMA

Dalai Lama XIV

Whether we eat, sleep, work, play, whatever we do life contains dissatisfaction, pain. If we enjoy pleasure, we are afraid to lose it; we strive for more and more pleasure or try to contain it. If we suffer pain we want to escape it. We experience dissatisfaction all the time. All activities contain dissatisfaction or pain, continuously.

Chögyam Trungpa

Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that, with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, our mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.

Sogyal Rinpoche

We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don´t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home.Meditation, then, is bringing the mind home.

Sogyal Rinpoche

It is our collective and individual responsibility to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live.

Dalai Lama XIV

It seems that scientific research reaches deeper and deeper. But it also seems that more and more people, at least scientists, are beginning to realize that the spiritual factor is important. I say 'spiritual' without meaning any particular religion or faith, just simple warmhearted compassion, human affection, and gentleness. It is as if such warmhearted people are a bit more humble, a little bit more content. I consider spiritual values primary, and religion secondary. As I see it, the various religions strengthen these basic human qualities. As a practitioner of Buddhism, my practice of compassion and my practice of Buddhism are actually one and the same. But the practice of compassion does not require religious devotion or religious faith; it can be independent from the practice of religion. Therefore, the ultimate source of happiness for human society very much depends on the human spirit, on spiritual values. If we do not combine science and these basic human values, then scientific knowledge may sometimes create troubles, even disaster....

Dalai Lama XIV

You do not need to fabricate at all. Once you utterly let be, involvement in thoughts of past, present and future subside. By letting be, you are no longer involved in the thoughts of the three times. When utterly letting be, wakefulness is vividly present.

Tulku Urgyen

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

Dalai Lama XIV

Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.

Dalai Lama XIV

Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.

Dalai Lama XIV

For a considerable portion of humanity today, it is possible and indeed likely that one's neighbor, one's colleague, or one's employer will have a different mother tongue, eat different food, and follow a different religion than oneself. It is a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect.In such a world, I feel, it is vital for us to find genuinely sustainable and universal approach to ethics, inner values, and personal integrity-an approach that can transcend religious, cultural, and racial differences and appeal to people at a sustainable, universal approach is what I call the project of secular ethics.All religions, therefore, to some extent, ground the cultivation of inner values and ethical awareness in some kind of metaphysical (that is, not empirically demonstrable) understanding of the world and of life after death. And just as the doctrine of divine judgment underlies ethical teachings in many theistic religions, so too does the doctrine of karma and future lives in non-theistic religions.As I see it, spirituality has two dimensions. The first dimension, that of basic spiritual well-being-by which I mean inner mental and emotional strength and balance-does not depend on religion but comes from our innate human nature as beings with a natural disposition toward compassion, kindness, and caring for others. The second dimension is what may be considered religion-based spirituality, which is acquired from our upbringing and culture and is tied to particular beliefs and practices. The difference between the two is something like the difference between water and tea.On this understanding, ethics consists less of rules to be obeyed than of principles for inner self-regulation to promote those aspects of our nature which we recognize as conducive to our own well-being and that of others.It is by moving beyond narrow self-interest that we find meaning, purpose, and satisfaction in life.

Dalai Lama XIV

I always tell my Western friends that it is best to keep your own tradition. Changing religion is not easy and sometimes causes confusion. You must value your tradition and honor your own religion.

Dalai Lama XIV

We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all receivedwisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion....This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no needfor temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicatedphilosophy, doctrine or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple.The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights anddignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need.So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we arelearned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow someother religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others andconduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there isno doubt we will be happy.

Dalai Lama XIV

The purpose of all the major religious traditions is not to construct big temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion inside, in our hearts.

Dalai Lama XIV

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