Top 100 Rinpoche's Quotes
#1. In Tibet there were practitioners in retreat who so strongly reflected on impermanence that they would not wash their dishes after supper. - PALTRUL RINPOCHE'S SACRED WORD
Dalai Lama XIV
#2. If we can allow some space within our awareness and rest there, we can respect our troubling thoughts and emotions, allow them to come, and let them go. Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#3. Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch; Nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions. If you have got to think about something - Make it the uncertainty of the hour of your death .
Sogyal Rinpoche
#4. Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#6. Each one of us is responsible for other living beings' happiness, besides our own. As a result, your loving kindness is the most wish-fulfilling thing in life, more precious than anything else in this world. That makes for a most satisfying, fulfilling life.
Thubten Zopa Rinpoche
#7. I can't say it strongly enough; to integrate meditation in action is the whole ground and point and purpose of meditation
Sogyal Rinpoche
#9. The whole of meditation practice can be essentialized into these 3 crucial points: Bring your mind home. Release. And relax!
Sogyal Rinpoche
#10. Achala, worrying and scheming about your next life, before you have even completed this one, is not a good practice. Rinpoche
Daniel Prokop
#11. A beautiful country is a dream-like illusion. It is senseless to cling to it. Unless the inner forces of negative emotions are conquered, strife with outer enemies will never end.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#12. Tibetan thangka paintings and derive strength from their beauty.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#13. Whenever you hear that someone else has been successful, rejoice. Always practice rejoicing for others-whether your friend or your enemy. If you cannot practice rejoicing, no matter how long you live, you will not be happy.
Thubten Zopa Rinpoche
#14. Like birds landing on a tree top together, and then dispersing, we are together for a very short time, so it makes sense to live in harmony, in unconditional friendship.
Bokar Rinpoche
#15. There is a famous saying: "If the mind is not contrived, it is spontaneously blissful, just as water, when not agitated, is by nature transparent and clear".
Sogyal Rinpoche
#16. Generally we waste our lives, distracted from our true selves, in endless activity. Meditation is the way to bring us back to ourselves, where we can really experience and taste our full being.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#18. All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle. When no such thing occurs, they feel extremely disappointed. But the real miracle of meditation is more ordinary and much more useful ...
Sogyal Rinpoche
#20. The expectations you bring to meditation practice are often the greatest obstacles you will encounter.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
#21. The longing for happiness and freedom from suffering
expresses the great natural potential of mind.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
#23. Our problems, all come from nothing; they are all based on a misunderstanding that does not even exist.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#24. The Western poet Rainer Maria Rilke has said that our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.12
Sogyal Rinpoche
#26. Maturity is about Challenging yourself and Improving!
And then taking that experience to help others ...
Tsem Tulku Rinpoche
#28. As Trungpa Rinpoche put it, "Everybody loves something, even if it's only tortillas." Bodhichitta
Pema Chodron
#29. William Blake: He who binds to himself a Joy, Does the winged life destroy; He who kisses the Joy as it flies, Lives in Eternity's sunrise.7
Sogyal Rinpoche
#30. Not recognizing natural mind is simply an example of the mind's unlimited capacity to create whatever it wants.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
#31. Just as the ocean has waves or the sun has rays, so the minds's own radiance is its thoughts and emotions.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#32. The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, Like they who lick the honey from a razor's edge. How pitiful they who cling strongly to concrete reality: Turn your attention within, my heart friends.5
Sogyal Rinpoche
#33. Our buddha nature is as good as any buddha's buddha nature.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#34. Don't get too excited. In the end, it's neither good nor bad.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#36. Compassion is the spontaneous wisdom of the heart. It's always with us. It always has been, and always will be. When it arises in us, we've simply learned to see how strong and safe we really are.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
#37. Praying is not about asking; it's about listening ...
It is just opening your eyes to see what was there all along.
Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
#38. Whatever state of mind we are in now, whatever kind of person we are now: that's what we will be like at the moment of death,
Sogyal Rinpoche
#39. I thought I heard a cow mooing in Seese's back yard. Later on, later down the road, as they say, I would learn that this was the sound of the Rinpoche chanting some ancient prayer. But, at that moment, it sounded to me very much like a mooing cow.
Roland Merullo
#40. Well there were other Maharajis, so Neem Karoli Baba was his technical name, like there are a thousand Lamas called Rinpoche.
Surya Das
#41. How wonderful it would be, I thought, if only we could practice the teachings of the Buddha as he really taught them from his own experience - free from the clouds of religiosity that often surround them Yet it's difficult to distinguish the tools themselves from their cultural packaging.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
#42. In our own present world age, one thousand Buddhas will appear. Each one will be accompanied by an emanation of Guru Rinpoche to carry out the Buddha's activities.
Padmasambhava Guru Rinpoche
#43. Instead of thinking of this and that, one thing after the other, let your mind recognize itself in a single moment. When the mind recognizes itself, there is no thing to see there. It's just wide open. That's because the essence of mind is empty. It's wide open and free
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#45. True spirituality is to be aware that if we are interdependent with everything and everyone else, even our smallest, least significant thought, word and action have real consequences throughout the universe.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#46. Train in compassion is to know that all beings are the same and suffer in similar ways, to honor all those who suffer, and to know that you are neither separate from nor superior to anyone.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#47. We cannot be fearful all the time; we have to rise above our fear, whatever is to happen to us, however our conditions may challenge us. To be fearless is a decision that one must make. And this fearlessness becomes the fundamental ground of nonviolence.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
#48. A mantra is basically a means of talking with your thoughts and feelings. It's a time-honored method sometimes referred to as prayer, but really it's an opening of a conversation between the heart and the mind.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#49. Like this cup, you are full of opinions and speculations. To see the light of wisdom... you first must empty your cup.
Lama Rinpoche
#50. But, in fact, impermanence is like some of the people we meet in life - difficult and disturbing at first, but on deeper acquaintance far friendlier and less unnerving than we could have imagined.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#51. The definition of mantra is "that which protects the mind." That which protects the mind from negativity, or that which protects you from your own mind, is called mantra.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#52. Never sit under a tree waiting for the apple to fall. Climb the tree, grab that apple!
When it comes, never be inert and take your time, TIME TO MOVE!
Tsem Tulku Rinpoche
#53. To wish happiness for others, even for those who want to do us harm, is the source of consummate happiness.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#54. Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#55. Meditation is really quite simple. All we have to do is embrace each experience with awareness and open our hearts fully to the present moment. When we are completely at ease with our own being, the ripples of awareness naturally spread out in all directions, touching the lives of everyone we meet.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
#56. Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#57. We enter the bardo, the intermediate state after # death , just as we enter dream after falling asleep. If our experience of # dream lacks clarity and is of confused emotional states and habitual reactivity, we will have trained ourselves to experience the processes of death in the same way.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
#58. Why exactly are we so frightened of death that we avoid looking at it altogether? Somewhere, deep down, we know we cannot avoid facing death forever. We know, in Milarepa's words: "This thing called 'corpse' we dread so much is living with us here and now."
Sogyal Rinpoche
#59. Anyone looking honestly at life will see that we live in a constant state of suspense and ambiguity.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#60. We need to make a very clear distinction between what is in our ego's self-interest and what is in our ultimate interest; it is from mistaking one for the other that all our suffering comes.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#62. How many of us are swept away by what I have come to call an 'active laziness'?
It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#64. Seeing that nothing is solid or permanent you begin to make yourself at home in the unknown.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
#65. Love is the only cause of happiness. Its nature is all-pervasive like space. Love is the sunlight of the mind
Garchen Rinpoche
#66. The Mother Tantra says that if one is not aware in vision, it is unlikely that one will be aware in behavior. If one is not aware in behavior, one is unlikely to be aware in dream. And if one is not aware in dream, then one is unlikely to be aware in the bardo after death.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
#67. You as a salt-being, made of salt, go to fathom the depth of the ocean, and in the process you yourself dissolve. A great maharishi once said that true meditation is like this.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
#68. Through recognizing and realizing the empty essence, instead of being selfish and self-centered, one feels very open and free
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#69. Give Happiness, Patience, kindness, and Care, and the PAIN goes away.
Then only LOVE remains ...
Tsem Tulku Rinpoche
#70. Rest in natural great peace, this exhausted mind, beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought, like the relentless fury of the pounding waves in the infinite ocean of samsara.
Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche
#71. Your emotional understanding about the preciousness of your human birth comes through conscious, repetitive mind training.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#72. Every person whose heart is moved by love and compassion, who deeply and sincerely acts for the benefit of others without concern for fame, profit, social position, or recognition expresses the activity of Chenrezig.
Bokar Rinpoche
#73. To discover your real questions, simply take a time-out. Stop looking ahead of yourself at where you're going or backward at where you've been. When you do stop, there's a sense of going nowhere. There's a sense of gap, which is a tremendous relief. You can simply breathe and be who you are.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
#74. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to teach anything. You just have to be who you are: a bright flame shining in the darkness of despair, a shining example of a person able to cross bridges by opening your heart and mind.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#75. Within our perceived weaknesses and imperfections lies the key to realizing our true strength.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
#76. Whenever ego suffers from fear of death & your practice turns to seeing impermanence, ego settles down.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#77. MY teacher Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged us to lead our lives as an experiment, a suggestion that has been very important to me.
Pema Chodron
#79. That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in each and every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#80. When you give in to aversion and anger, it's as though, having decided to kill someone by throwing him into a river, you wrap your arms around his neck, jump into the water with him, and you both drown. In destroying your enemy, you destroy yourself as well.
Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
#83. Even if death were to fall upon you today like lightning, you must be ready to die without sadness and regret, without any residue of clinging for what is left behind. Remaining in the recognition of the absolute view, you should leave this life like an eagle soaring up into the blue sky.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#84. Anyen Rinpoche is a compassionate embodiment of wisdom. The skillful teachings in The Tibetan Yoga of Breath will be a source of peace and happiness for many in these troubled times, for which I am very grateful.
Garchen Rinpoche
#85. Let yourself become that space that welcomes any experience without judgement.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#87. Live with compassion. Work with compassion. Die with compassion. Meditate with compassion. Enjoy with compassion. When problems come, experience them with compassion.
Thubten Zopa Rinpoche
#88. We are acting as if we were the last generation on the planet. Without a radical change in heart, in mind, in vision, the earth will end up like Venus, charred and dead.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#89. And when you talk about realization, accomplishment for that matter enlightenment is that when you realize the fundamental essence of your mind.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#90. Instead of allowing ourselves to be led and trapped by our feelings, we should let them disappear as soon as they form, like letters drawn on water with a finger.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#91. Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything, counts.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#92. Never forget how swiftly this life will be over, like a flash of summer lightning or the wave of a hand. Now that you have the opportunity to practice dharma, do not waste a single moment on anything else.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#93. More important than finding the teacher is finding and following the truth of the teaching ...
Sogyal Rinpoche
#94. Simply notice that you're aware. At any given moment, you can choose to follow the chain of thoughts, emotions, and sensations that reinforce a perception of yourself as vulnerable and limited, or to remember that your true nature is pure, unconditioned, and incapable of being harmed.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
#95. We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#96. Simply let experience take place very freely, so that your open heart is suffused with the tenderness of true compassion.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#98. The towns and countryside that the traveller sees through a train window do not slow down the train, nor does the train affect them. Neither disturbs the other. This is how you should see the thoughts that pass through your mind when you meditate.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#99. The fruit of meditation is not the absence of thoughts, but the fact that thoughts cease to harm us. Once enemies, they become friends.
Bokar Rinpoche
#100. This dying forces you to look into yourself. And in this, compassion is the only way. Love is the only way.
Sogyal Rinpoche
