Chogyam Trungpa Quotes
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Just fully being skillful involves total lack of inhibition. We are not afraid to be. We are not afraid to live. We must accept ourselves as being warriors. If we acknowledge ourselves as warriors, then there is a way in, because a warrior dares to be, like a tiger in the jungle.
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For the very reason that we expect things to be good and beautiful, they won't be. In genuine spirituality, we don't look for bliss.
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Too often, people think that solving the world's problems is based on conquering the earth, rather than touching the earth, touching ground.
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When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment or how to rule their world - which is saying the same thing. Human beings destroy their ecology at the same time that they destroy one another. From that perspective, healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world.
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We can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spirituality when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.
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We must be willing to be completely ordinary people, which means accepting ourselves as we are without trying to become greater, purer, more spiritual, more insightful. If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path. But if we try to get rid of our imperfections, then they will be enemies, obstacles on the road to our ‘self-improvement’.
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The ideal of warriorship is that the warrior should be sad and tender, and because of that, the warrior can be very brave as well.
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When you put relative and absolute truth together and they become one unit, it becomes possible to make things workable. You are not too much on the side of absolute truth, or you would become too theoretical. You are not too much on the side of relative truth, or you would become too precise. When you put them together, you realize that there is no problem.
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The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.
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Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.
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Sit and do nothing. Every once in a while a golden fish swims by and lays her golden eggs. You'll know.
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The sun has a sense of all-pervasive brilliance, which does not discriminate in the slightest. It is the goodness that exists in a situation, in oneself, and in one's world, which is expressed without doubt, hesitation, or regret. The sun principle also includes the notion of blessings descending upon us and creating sacred world. It also represents clarity, without doubt.
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In your cocoon, occasionally you shout complaints, such as, "Leave me alone!" "Bug off!" "I want to be who I am!"... which comes from fighting against your environment... You can raise your head and just take a little peek out of the cocoon... The environment is friendly. It is called "Planet Earth.
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The charnel ground is that great graveyard in which the complexities of samsara and nirvana lie buried.
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Mindfulness is like a microscope; it is neither an offensive nor defensive weapon in relation to the germs we observe through it. The function of the microscope is just to clearly present what is there.
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We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.
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Take a friendly attitude toward your thoughts.
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We could say that compassion is the ultimate attitude of wealth: an anti-poverty attitude, a war on want. It contains all sorts of heroic, juicy, positive, visionary, expansive qualities. And it implies larger scale thinking, a freer and more expansive way of relating to yourself and the world.
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Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other 'undesirable' side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. 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.
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The basic wisdom of Shambhala is that in this world, as it is, we can find a good and meaningful human life that will also serve others. That is our true richness.
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Nowness or the magic of the present moment is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present.
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When there is no desire to satisfy yourself, there is no aggression or speed... Because there is no rush to achieve, you can afford to relax. Because you can afford to relax, you can afford to keep company with yourself, you can afford to make love with yourself, to be friends with yourself.
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If there is some profound method that offers a quick way, we would rather follow that than undertake arduous journeys and difficult practices. But some manual work and physical effort is necessary.
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Very beautiful situations have developed using chaos as part of the enlightened approach. There is chaos of all kinds developing all the time... If you are trying to stop those situations, you are looking for external means of liberating yourself, another answer. But if we are able to look into the basic situation, then chaos is the inspiration, confusion is the inspiration.