Chogyam Trungpa Quotes
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Luxury is experiencing reality.
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Why don't we just expand ourselves into our perfect form, our perfect being?
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Right mindfulness does not simply mean being aware; it is like creating a work of art. You can therefore trust what you are doing; you are not threatened by anything. You have room to dance in the space, and this makes it a creative situation. The space is open to you.
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Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious, and direct. If we can open, then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing.
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Becoming awarrior and facing yourself is a question of honesty rather than condemning yourself. By looking at yourself, you may find that you've been a bad boy or girl, and you may feel terrible about yourself. Your existence may feel wretched, completely pitch-black, like the black hole of Calcutta. Or you may see something good about yourself. The idea is simply to face the facts. Honesty plays a very important part. Just see the simple, straightforward truth about yourself.
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The discovery of magic can happen only when we transcend our embarrassment about being alive, when we have the bravery to proclaim the goodness and dignity of human life, without either hesitation or arrogance. Then magic can descend onto our existence.
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We should see money in terms of the expenditure of energy and how we are going to transmute that energy into a proper use.
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We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you'll have no problem.
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When we speak of God or achieving union with God, we are often merely trying to put that great thing into a small container. One cannot drive a camel through the eye of a needle.
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Enlightenment is like witnessing the brilliant sun for the first time in the morning. It is like seeing the beautiful flowers that grow in the woods , the frolicking deer, a bird flying proudly, or fish swimming. Life is not all that grim. In the morning when you brush your teeth, you can see how shiny they are. Reality has its own gallantry, spark, and arrogance. You can study life while you are alive. You can study how you can achieve the brilliance of life.
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Watchfulness is experiencing a sudden glimpse of something without any qualifications - just the sudden glimpse itself.
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Sanity is permanent, neurosis is temporary.
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Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which leades to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental distortion may be referred to as spiritual materialism.
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Disappointment results from the removal of illusion.
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Mindfulness does not mean pushing oneself toward something or hanging on to something. It means allowing oneself to be there in the very moment of what is happening in the living process - and then letting go.
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In fact, a person always finds when he begins to practice meditation that all sorts of problems are brought out. Any hidden aspects of your personality are brought out into the open, for the simple reason that for the first time you are allowing yourself to see your state of mind as it is.
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Our life is an endless journey; it is like a broad highway that extends infinitely into the distance. The practice of meditation provides a vehicle to travel on that road. Our journey consists of constant ups and downs.
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We say that the sun is behind the clouds, but actually it is not the sun but the city from which we view it that is behind the clouds. If we realized that the sun is never behind the clouds we might have a different attitude toward the whole thing.
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Habit is formed out of memory... We often shape our present situation according to those habitual memories. Instead of starting fresh, we go back to what we've done in the past... easier for us than fighting our way through foreign territory.
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Meditation practice begins by sitting down and assuming your seat cross-legged on the ground. You begin to feel that by simply being on the spot, your life can become workable and even wonderful. You realize that you are capable of sitting like a king or queen on a throne. The regalness of that situation shows you the... dignity that comes from being still and simple.
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Magic is the power within oneself. You have enough strength and exertion and energy to view things as they are, personally, properly, and directly. You have the chance to experience the brightness of life and the haziness of life, which is also a source of power. The fantastically sharp-edged quality of life can be experienced personally and directly. There is a powerful sense of perception available to you.
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Meditation is a way of developing clarity, which allows us to see the precision of daily life situations as well as our thought process so that we can relate with both of them fully and completely.
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The basics teachings of Buddha are about understanding what we are, who we are, why we are. When we begin to realize what we are, who we are, why we are, then we begin to realize what we are not, who we are not, why we are not. We begin to realize that we don't have basic, substantial, solid, fundamental ground that we can exert anymore. We begin to realize that our ideas of security and our concept of freedom have been purely phantom experiences.
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The warrior is not afraid of space.