Chogyam Trungpa Quotes
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Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of extreme impulse, but the area in-between is very fuzzy.
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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.
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Generosity is self-existing openness, complete openness. You are no longer subject to cultivating your own scheme or project. And the best way to open yourself up is to make friends with yourself and with others.
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Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit.
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I would like to say, ladies and gentlemen, that you shouldn't be afraid of who you are. That's the first key idea. You shouldn't be afraid of who you are. You should NOT be afraid of who you are. It's very important for you to realize that.
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Meditation should not be regarded as a learning process. It should be regarded as an experiencing process. You should not try to learn from meditation but try to feel it. Meditation is an act of nonduality. The technique you are using should not be separate from you; it is you, you are the technique. Meditator and meditation are one. There is no relationship involved.
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If you look into the mirror, you see that [every part of you] belongs there and you belong there, as you are. You begin to realize that you have a perfect right to be in this universe, to be this way, and you see that there is a basic hospitality that this world provides to you. You have looked and you have seen, and you don't have to apologize for being born on this earth.
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The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.
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Because there is something difficult and destructive involved, there must be something creative involved as well. Relating to that creative aspect is the point.
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There is something suspect about our inability to enjoy anything.
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Becoming "awake" involves seeing our confusion more clearly.
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You don't know how to take off your suit of armor. You have no idea how to conduct yourself without the reference point of your own security... You can expose your wounds and flesh, your sore points. You can be completely raw and exposed.
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Look. This is your world! You can't not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don't hesitate - look! Open your eyes. Don't blink, and look, look - look further.
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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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In the garden of gentle sanity, May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.
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Our path is sometimes rough and sometimes smooth; nonetheless, life is a constant journey... whatever we do is regarded as our journey, our path. That path consists of opening oneself to the road, opening oneself to the steps we are about to take.
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Fearlessness is extending ourselves beyond our limited view.
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The meditator develops new depths of insight through direct communication with the reality of the phenomenal world... He or she is able to see not only the absence of complexity, the absence of duality, but the stoneness of stone and the waterness of water. One sees things precisely as they are, not merely in the physical sense, but with awareness of their spiritual significance.
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Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.
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Spirituality doesn’t exist on another level different from ordinary life.
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...We leave our homeland, our property and our friends. We give up the familiar ground that supports our ego, admit the helplessness of ego to control its world and secure itself. We give up our clingings to superiority and self-preservation...It means giving up searching for a home, becoming a refugee, a lonely person who must depend on himself...Fundamentally, no one can help us. If we seek to relieve our loneliness, we will be distracted from the path. Instead, we must make a relationship with loneliness until it becomes aloneness.
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The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego.
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The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.
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Faith is the readiness to reveal whatever is concealed. You don't have to conceal doubts by putting on patches of self-confirmation. The readiness to be exposed seems to make the difference between ego's approach to spirituality and an enlightened one.