Top 100 Chogyam Trungpa Quotes
#3. The outbreath is like a whetstone, and the mind is like the knife or sword that is being sharpened on that stone. When you sharpen a knife, you draw the blade of the knife across the sharpening stone. Following your outbreath is like drawing the blade of mind across the breath. Then
Chogyam Trungpa
#4. Any perception can connect us to reality, properly and fully. What we see doesn't have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything.
Chogyam Trungpa
#5. There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom.
Chogyam Trungpa
#6. If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time.
Chogyam Trungpa
#7. If you are telling the truth, then you can speak gently, and your words will have power.
Chogyam Trungpa
#9. Then, we realize that the degraded cocoon we have been hiding in is revolting, and we want to turn up the lights as far as we can. In fact, we are not turning up the lights, but we are simply opening our eyes wider. We catch a certain kind of fever.
Chogyam Trungpa
#10. If we go somewhere on foot, we know the way perfectly, whereas if we go by car or airplane, we are hardly there at all. It becomes merely a dream.
Chogyam Trungpa
#11. 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 ...
Chogyam Trungpa
#12. Compassion is not having any hesitation to reflect your light on things
Chogyam Trungpa
#13. For the warrior, every moment is a challenge to be genuine, and each challenge is delightful. When you let go properly, you can relax and enjoy the challenge.
Chogyam Trungpa
#14. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#15. The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.
Chogyam Trungpa
#16. Meditation practice is a way of making friends with ourselves. Whether we are worthy or unworthy, that's not the point. It's developing a friendly attitude to ourselves, accepting the hidden neurosis coming through.
Chogyam Trungpa
#17. Gentle day's flower - The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air.
Chogyam Trungpa
#18. 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 ...
Chogyam Trungpa
#19. If we open our eyes, if we open our minds, if we open our hearts, we will find that this world is a magical place. It is magical not because it tricks us or changes unexpectedly into something else, but because it can be so vividly and brilliantly.
Chogyam Trungpa
#20. The ideal of helping is to make others independent of you. You help them to become more independent rather than making them addicted to you.
Chogyam Trungpa
#21. I am alone and my spiritual journey is my experience.' This is the real experience of freedom and independence. Then we begin to see that being alone is a very beautiful thing. Nobody is obstructing our vision. We have complete panoramic vision.
Chogyam Trungpa
#23. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#24. The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in a cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns. When we are constantly recreating our basic patterns of habits and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground.
Chogyam Trungpa
#25. The path of truth is profound - and so are the obstacles and possibilities for self-deception.
Chogyam Trungpa
#26. One has to taste an experience for oneself and find out if the thing is genuine or helpful. Then, before discarding something, one has to go further, so that one gets firsthand experience.
Chogyam Trungpa
#27. No matter what the practice or teaching, ego loves to wait in ambush to appropriate spirituality for its own survival and gain.
Chogyam Trungpa
#28. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#29. Fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart.
Chogyam Trungpa
#30. We cannot change the way the world is, but by opening ourselves to the world as it is, we may find that gentleness, decency and bravery are available - not only to us, but to all human beings.
Chogyam Trungpa
#31. It has been said that sleeping, dreaming, and meditating, or developing awareness, are the only states in which we do not sow further seeds of karma.
Chogyam Trungpa
#33. The visual impact of the stupa on the observer brings a direct experience of inherent wakefulness and dignity. Stupas continue to be built because of their ability to liberate one simply upon seeing their structure
Chogyam Trungpa
#35. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#36. When you have a brilliant sun, which is a source of vision, the light from the sun shines through every window of the house, and the brightness of its light inspires you to open all the curtains. In the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, no human being is a lost cause.
Chogyam Trungpa
#37. Someone who is seriously interested in meditation should not expect any feedback or promises from the practice. Most
Chogyam Trungpa
#38. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#39. If we really prefer basic sanity or enlightenment, it's irritatingly possible to get into it.
Chogyam Trungpa
#40. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit.
Chogyam Trungpa
#42. The charnel ground is that great graveyard in which the complexities of samsara and nirvana lie buried.
Chogyam Trungpa
#43. Helping others is a question of being genuine and projecting that genuineness to others. This way of being doesn't have to have a title or a name particularly. It is just being ultimately decent.
Chogyam Trungpa
#44. What is needed is the constant unmasking of ego's strategy.
Chogyam Trungpa
#45. We must see with our own eyes and not accept any laid-down tradition as if it had some magical power in it.
Chogyam Trungpa
#46. Elegance means appreciating things as they are. There is a sense of delight and of fearlessness. You are not fearful of dark corners ...
Chogyam Trungpa
#47. The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are. Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.
Chogyam Trungpa
#48. Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of the extreme impulse
Chogyam Trungpa
#50. It's easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.
Chogyam Trungpa
#51. One day passes and another day comes along, and everything happens the same. But basically, we are so afraid of the brilliance coming at us, and the sharp experience of our life, that we can't even focus our eyes.
Chogyam Trungpa
#52. There seems to be a hypnotic quality to ambition and speed, so that you feel that you are standing still just because you want to go so fast. You might actually be getting close to your goal.
Chogyam Trungpa
#53. Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy.
Chogyam Trungpa
#54. Watchfulness is experiencing a sudden glimpse of something without any qualifications - just the sudden glimpse itself.
Chogyam Trungpa
#55. Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle. You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin. You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone and marrow to the world.
Chogyam Trungpa
#56. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#57. The idea is not to regard the spiritual path as something very luxurious and pleasurable but to see it as just facing the facts of life.
Chogyam Trungpa
#58. We cannot avoid our lives. We have to face our lives, young or old, rich or poor. Whatever happens, we cannot save ourselves from our lives at all ... the more you understand, the more you will realize your own responsibility.
Chogyam Trungpa
#59. We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you'll have no problem.
Chogyam Trungpa
#60. Delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Delight is to open our eyes to the reality of the situation rather than siding with this or that point of view.
Chogyam Trungpa
#61. Our vast collections of knowledge and experience are just part of ego's display, part of the grandiose quality of ego. We display them to the world and, in so doing, reassure ourselves that we exist, safe and secure, as "spiritual" people.
Chogyam Trungpa
#62. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#63. But, if we regard knowledge as an antique, as "ancient wisdom" to be collected, then we are on the wrong path.
Chogyam Trungpa
#64. We are threatened by the now so we jump to the past or the future.
Chogyam Trungpa
#65. A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves.
Chogyam Trungpa
#66. People's creativity is very much alive, but when they get paid for their creativity, they often experience that as rather meaningless. Money as the reward for their creative process is very one-dimensional, a tremendous comedown.
Chogyam Trungpa
#67. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#68. Developing confidence is like watching the sun rise. First it seems very feeble and one wonders whether it will make it. Then it shines and shines.
Chogyam Trungpa
#69. When we let go of the self, we are more inspired to work with others; and when we are generous to others, we realize that the self is lost.
Chogyam Trungpa
#70. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#71. Sometimes one touches on a very painful spot where one is almost too shy to look into it, but somehow one still has to go through it. And by going into it, one finally achieves a real command of oneself. One gains a thorough knowledge of oneself for the first time.
Chogyam Trungpa
#72. Artistic vision is having the clarity to fall in love with what you see.
Chogyam Trungpa
#74. The point of meditation is not merely to be an honest or good person in the conventional sense, trying only to maintain our security. We must begin to become compassionate and wise in the fundamental sense, open and relating to the world as it is.
Chogyam Trungpa
#75. Ultimately, the definition of bravery is not being afraid of yourself.
Chogyam Trungpa
#76. When one learns a different way of dealing with the situation, one no longer has to have a purpose. One is not on the way to somewhere. Or rather, one is on the way and one is also at the destination at the same time. That is really what meditation is for.
Chogyam Trungpa
#77. The practice of meditation is a way of continuing one's confusion, chaos, aggression, and passion - but working with it, seeing it from the enlightened point of view.
Chogyam Trungpa
#78. There is something suspect about our inability to enjoy anything.
Chogyam Trungpa
#79. Shambhala vision teaches that in the face of the world's great problems, we can be heroic and kind at the same time.
Chogyam Trungpa
#80. There is more to fearlessness than merely having overcome fear ... This state of being is not dependent on any external circumstances. It is individual dignity ... that comes from being what we are, right now.
Chogyam Trungpa
#81. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#82. The challenge of warriorship is to live fully in the world as it is and to find within this world, with all its paradoxes, the essence of nowness. If we open our eyes, if we open our minds, if we open our hearts, we will find that this world is a magical place.
Chogyam Trungpa
#83. The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego.
Chogyam Trungpa
#84. You can almost convince yourself that you've accomplished things just by thinking about them. The alternative is to be more realistic. You don't necessarily regard the dreaming process as bad or an obstacle, but it's not realistic enough.
Chogyam Trungpa
#85. When you experience your wisdom and the power of things as they are, together, as one, then you have access to tremendous vision and power in the world. You find that you are inherently connected to your own being. That is discovering magic.
Chogyam Trungpa
#86. Nowness is the sense that we are attuned to what is happening. The past is fiction and the future is a dream, and we are just living on the edge of a razor blade.
Chogyam Trungpa
#87. Synchronizing mind and body is not a concept or a random technique someone thought up for self-improvement. Rather, it is a basic principle of how to be a human being.
Chogyam Trungpa
#89. Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon.
Chogyam Trungpa
#90. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#91. As well as making friends with yourself, fundamentally one should be cynical and critical. This doesn't mean that you should punish yourself, but you just attack the areas of ego's indulgence. At the same time, you continue the friendship with yourself.
Chogyam Trungpa
#92. A great deal of chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves. Having never developed sympathy or gentleness toward themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is also inharmonious and confused.
Chogyam Trungpa
#94. When we clean up after ourselves, we have nothing to blame. When we begin to live our lives in that way, cleaning up after ourselves, what is left is further vision and further openness, which leads to cleaning up the rest of the world.
Chogyam Trungpa
#95. It's possible to be completely enlightened ... except with your family.
Chogyam Trungpa
#96. The emphasis on practice is because it is the only time in your life you can steer your karmic situation.
Chogyam Trungpa
#97. There are many, many details of action involved in the simplicity and sharpness of being in this very moment, here, now.
Chogyam Trungpa
#98. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#99. Artistic vision comes from a mind clear enough to fall in love with what we see.
Chogyam Trungpa
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