Top 100 Chogyam Trungpa Quotes
#1. When I was going into one of my first meditation retreats, I asked my father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, for some advice. He said, "How you act when you're alone affects the rest of your life." Even in solitude, the ruler engages in virtue.
Sakyong Mipham
#2. Chogyam is spinning, watching the spinning / samsara; If there is no samsara / spinning, there is no Chogyam.
- from the poem Cynical Letter by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Trungpa Chogyam
#3. Someone who is seriously interested in meditation should not expect any feedback or promises from the practice. Most
Chogyam Trungpa
#4. 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
#6. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#7. When one is able to overcome the romantic and emotional attitude, one discovers truth even in the kitchen sink.
Chogyam Trungpa
#9. 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
#10. 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
#12. You are sitting on the earth and you realize that this earth deserves you and you deserve this earth. You are there - fully, personally, genuinely.
Chogyam Trungpa
#13. 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
#15. Becoming "awake" involves seeing our confusion more clearly.
Chogyam Trungpa
#16. You do not have to force yourself to do anything at all. There is a continual exchange, a continual dance. It is similar to the sun shining and plants growing. The sun has no desire to create the vegetation; plants simply react to sunlight and the situation develops naturally.
Chogyam Trungpa
#17. The strongest of us are those that are spiritually strong, and a spiritual warrior is one of vulnerability.
Chogyam Trungpa
#19. Facing yourself is a question of honesty rather than condemning yourself. Good or bad the idea is simply to face the facts. Just see the simple, straightforward truth about yourself without cutting yourself down.
Chogyam Trungpa
#20. 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
#21. Unfortunately there are many kinds of psychotherapy and many psychotherapists involved with trying to prove themselves and their own theories rather than working with what is. In fact they find it very frightening to work with what is.
Chogyam Trungpa
#22. 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
#23. To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy.
Chogyam Trungpa
#24. The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought.
Chogyam Trungpa
#25. Fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart.
Chogyam Trungpa
#26. Language should fulfill your individual existence as a wholesome human being ... Language should be more than just getting by.
Chogyam Trungpa
#27. 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
#28. What is needed is the constant unmasking of ego's strategy.
Chogyam Trungpa
#29. Fearlessness is extending ourselves beyond our limited view.
Chogyam Trungpa
#30. We must begin our practice by walking the narrow path of simplicity, the hinayana path, before we can walk upon the open highway of compassionate action, the mahayana path.
Chogyam Trungpa
#31. You are actually doing something. You are getting into this process without making sure that what you're doing is okay. Things are actually taking place, almost of their own accord, very simply and directly. That is meditation.
Chogyam Trungpa
#32. It's easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.
Chogyam Trungpa
#34. Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of the extreme impulse
Chogyam Trungpa
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. Whatever shakes you should without delay, right away, be incorporated into the path.
Chogyam Trungpa
#38. 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
#39. We should see money in terms of the expenditure of energy and how we are going to transmute that energy into a proper use.
Chogyam Trungpa
#40. The point is that whatever one is trying to learn, it is necessary to have firsthand experience, rather than learning from books or from teachers or by merely conforming to an already established pattern.
Chogyam Trungpa
#41. In Tibetan, authentic presence is wangthang, which literally means, 'field of power' ... The cause or the virtue that brings about authentic presence is emptying out and letting go. You have to be without clinging.
Chogyam Trungpa
#42. Spirituality doesn't exist on another level different from ordinary life.
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. The charnel ground is that great graveyard in which the complexities of samsara and nirvana lie buried.
Chogyam Trungpa
#46. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit.
Chogyam Trungpa
#47. The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.
Chogyam Trungpa
#48. If we really prefer basic sanity or enlightenment, it's irritatingly possible to get into it.
Chogyam Trungpa
#49. 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
#50. In the cocoon, there is no idea of light at all, until we experience some longing for openness, some longing for something other than the smell of our own sweat. When we examine that comfortable darkness - look at it, smell it, feel it - we find it is claustrophobic.
Chogyam Trungpa
#51. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#52. When we are afraid of ourselves and afraid of the seeming threat the world presents, then we become extremely selfish. We want to build our own little nests, our own cocoons, so that we can live by ourselves in a secure way.
Chogyam Trungpa
#53. We need to encourage an attitude of constant questioning, which is a genuine part of our potential as students. If students were required to drop their questions, that would create armies of zombies- rows of jellyfish ... The questioning mind is absolutely necessary.
Chogyam Trungpa
#54. In order to establish a real teacher-student relationship it is necessary for us to give up all our preconceptions regarding that relationship and the condition of opening and surrender. Surrender means opening oneself completely, trying to get beyond fascination and expectation.
Chogyam Trungpa
#55. Compassion is not having any hesitation to reflect your light on things
Chogyam Trungpa
#56. Generosity is a willingness to give, to open without philosophical or pious or religious motives, just simply doing what is required at any moment in any situation, not being afraid to receive anything.
Chogyam Trungpa
#57. Life is a straight drink - straight pleasure, straight pain, straightforward, one hundred percent.
Chogyam Trungpa
#58. 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
#59. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#60. We must continue to be open in the face of great opposition. No one is encouraging us to be open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart.
Chogyam Trungpa
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. Everyone loves something, even if it's only tortillas.
Chogyam Trungpa
#64. If you are telling the truth, then you can speak gently, and your words will have power.
Chogyam Trungpa
#65. As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music.
Chogyam Trungpa
#66. 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
#67. Our bodies demand our attention; our bodies demand that we actually pay attention to what is going on with our lives.
Chogyam Trungpa
#68. There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom.
Chogyam Trungpa
#69. 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
#70. Even fear itself is frightened by the bodhisattva's fearlessness.
Chogyam Trungpa
#71. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#72. 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
#73. Begin to build up confidence and joy in your own richness. That richness is the essence of generosity. It is the essence of resourcefulness ; that you can deal with whatever is available around you and not feel poverty stricken.
Chogyam Trungpa
#75. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#78. No matter what the practice or teaching, ego loves to wait in ambush to appropriate spirituality for its own survival and gain.
Chogyam Trungpa
#79. 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
#80. The path of truth is profound - and so are the obstacles and possibilities for self-deception.
Chogyam Trungpa
#81. Buddhism doesn't tell you what is false and what is true but it encourages you to find out for yourself.
Chogyam Trungpa
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. In order to develop love - universal love, cosmic love, whatever you would like to call it one must accept the whole situation of life as it is, both the light and the dark, the good and the bad. One must open oneself to life, communicate with it.
Chogyam Trungpa
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. Warriorship does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Warriorship is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness.
Chogyam Trungpa
#89. 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.
Chogyam Trungpa
#90. 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
#91. Humans are the only animals that try to dwell in the future. You don't have to purely live in the present situation without a plan, but the future plans you make can only be based on the aspects of the future that manifest within the present situation.
Chogyam Trungpa
#92. To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life.
Chogyam Trungpa
#93. Nowness or the magic of the present moment is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present
Chogyam Trungpa
#94. 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
#95. Gentle day's flower - The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air.
Chogyam Trungpa
#96. That is the basic pattern of this kind of meditation, which is based on three fundamental factors: first, not centralizing inward; second, not having any longing to become higher; and third, becoming completely identified with here and now.
Chogyam Trungpa
#97. 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
#98. The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.
Chogyam Trungpa
#99. 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
#100. 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
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