Quotes by Tibetan Authors - Page 4

Contemplating this suffering which is unbearable to us, and is unbearable to others, too, can produce awake mind, which arises from the compassion that wishes to free all living beings from suffering.

Dalai Lama XIV

We must recognize that the suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity.

Dalai Lama XIV

Once I was running and there was someone on the treadmill next to me who stopped running to answer a question I asked and flew of the back of the treadmill. Being fully engaged has many benefits.

Sakyong Mipham

Can there be a completely different set of laws of physics in a different universe, or do the laws of physics as we understand them hold true in all possible universes? If the answer is that a different set of laws can operate in a different universe system, this would suggest (from a Buddhist perspective) that even the laws of physics are entangled with the karma of the sentient beings that will arise in that universe.

Dalai Lama XIV

There is no need for temples, no need forcomplicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophie is kindness.

Dalai Lama

I need nothing. I seek nothing. I desire nothing.

Milarepa

Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures.

Dalai Lama XIV

Emotional states are fairly quick bursts of neuronal gossip. Traits, on the other hand, are more like the neuronal equivalent of committed relationships.

Yongey Mingyur

One problem with our current society is that we have an attitude towards education as if it is there to simply make you more clever, make you more ingenious… Even though our society does not emphasize this, the most important use of knowledge and education is to help us understand the importance of engaging in more wholesome actions and bringing about discipline within our minds. The proper utilization of our intelligence and knowledge is to effect changes from within to develop a good heart.

Dalai Lama XIV

Like a lamp, dispelling the darkness of ignorance

Dalai Lama XIV

If your mental health is sound, then when disturbances come, you will have some distress but quickly recover.

Dalai Lama XIV

But karma is not in fact a material accumulation, and does not depend on externals; rather its power to condition us depends on the obstacles that impede our knowledge. If we compare our karma and the ignorance that creates it to a dark room, knowledge of the primordial state would be like a lamp, which, when lit in the room, at once causes the darkness to disappear, enlightening everything. In the same way, if one has the presence of the primordial state, one can overcome all hindrances in an instant.

Namkhai Norbu

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.

Chögyam Trungpa

Water may be extremely dirty, yet its nature remains clear.

Dalai Lama XIV

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.

Chögyam Trungpa

In order to lead a meaningful life, you need to cherish others, pay attention to human values and try to cultivate inner peace.

Dalai Lama XIV

We are not interested in developing eternity or immortality, or in preventing being sick or being born. We are interested in doing something while we are alive, while we are breathing, while we can see the beauty of the snow, the flowers, the blue sky, the sunshine, and the many other things we can imagine.

Chögyam Trungpa

Heaven is the natural spaciousness of our mind before we make it small with self-protection.

Sakyong Mipham

Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.

Yongey Mingyur

Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness.

Dalai Lama XIV

The practice of cultivating altruism has a beneficial effect not only from the religious point of view but also from the mundane point of view, not only for long term spiritual development but even in terms of immediate rewards.

Dalai Lama XIV

Sometimes when I meet old friends, it reminds me how quickly time passes. And it makes me wonder if we've utilized our time properly or not. Proper utilization of time is so important. While we have this body, and especially this amazing human brain, I think every minute is something precious. Our day-to-day existence is very much alive with hope, although there is no guarantee of our future. There is no guarantee that tomorrow at this time we will be here. But we are working for that purely on the basis of hope. So, we need to make the best use of our time. I believe that the proper utilization of time is this: if you can, serve other people, other sentient beings. If not, at least refrain from harming them. I think that is the whole basis of my philosophy.So, let us reflect what is truly of value in life, what gives meaning to our lives, and set our priorities on the basis of that. The purpose of our life needs to be positive. We weren't born with the purpose of causing trouble, harming others. For our life to be of value, I think we must develop basic good human qualities—warmth, kindness, compassion. Then our life becomes meaningful and more peaceful—happier.

Dalai Lama XIV

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

Dalai Lama XIV

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

Dalai Lama XIV

As one of the seven billion human beings, I believe everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world.

HH DALAI LAMA

All the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching which is more perfect or effective than another. A teaching's value lies solely in the inner awakening which an individual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. There's no sense in trying to judge it as more or less elevated in relation to other paths to realization.

Namkhai Norbu

It seems that scientific research reaches deeper and deeper. But it also seems that more and more people, at least scientists, are beginning to realize that the spiritual factor is important. I say 'spiritual' without meaning any particular religion or faith, just simple warmhearted compassion, human affection, and gentleness. It is as if such warmhearted people are a bit more humble, a little bit more content. I consider spiritual values primary, and religion secondary. As I see it, the various religions strengthen these basic human qualities. As a practitioner of Buddhism, my practice of compassion and my practice of Buddhism are actually one and the same. But the practice of compassion does not require religious devotion or religious faith; it can be independent from the practice of religion. Therefore, the ultimate source of happiness for human society very much depends on the human spirit, on spiritual values. If we do not combine science and these basic human values, then scientific knowledge may sometimes create troubles, even disaster....

Dalai Lama XIV

There would be no chance to get to know death at all ...if it happened only once.

Sogyal Rinpoche

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, he said:'Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

Dalai Lama XIV

To say 'I want to have sex with this person' is to express a desire which is not intellectually directed in the way that 'I want to eradicate poverty in the world' is an intellectually directed desire. Furthernore, the gratification of sexual desire can only ever give temporary satisfaction. Thus as Nagarjuna, the great Indian scholar said: 'When you have an itch, you scratch. But not to itch at all is better than any amount of scratching.

Dalai Lama XIV

The purpose of our lives is to be happy-Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama XIV

Dharma practice means physical hardship; it means that you shouldn't be pansies about it. You should exert yourselves wholeheartedly to engage in the practice, so that it will affect your body, speech, and mind.

Ngagpa Yeshe Dorje

Only the impossible is worth doing.

Akong Rinpoche

Without discursive thought it is just dharma practice. Hope together with aim obscures. One does not cut through pride by meditatively cultivating the desire for happiness. If there is hope, even the hope for buddhas, it is a negative force. If there is apprehension, even apprehension about hells, it is a negative force.

Machik Labdrön

Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that is nonviolent, non-harming, and nonaggressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility, and respect towards others.

Dalai Lama

We cannot learn real patience and tolerance from a guru or a friend. They can be practiced only when we come in contact with someone who creates unpleasant experiences.

Dalai Lama XIV

Enlightenment, or Nirvana, is nothing other than the state beyond all obstacles, in the same way that from the peak of a very high mountain one always sees the sun. Nirvana is not a paradise or some special place of happiness, but is in fact the condition beyond all dualistic concepts, including those of happiness and suffering.When all our obstacles have been overcome, and we find ourselves in a state of total presence, the wisdom of enlightenment manifests spontaneously without limits, just like the infinite rays of the sun. The clouds have dissolved, and the sun is finally free to shine once again.

Namkhai Norbu

I found, as every teacher does, that there is nothing like teaching to help one learn.

Dalai Lama XIV

Try to notice-in all your thoughts, sensations, and direct encounters-the objects and 'outside-standers' that make appearance meaningful. For each object encountered or referred to, note it and embrace it in its immediate givenness as being part of 'you'. You can do this both by saying to yourself, "That too is 'I'," and by extending your sense of located awareness to embrace the apparently separate and distant object.This exercise helps to counteract the tendency to polarize experience, which creates a self that is cut off from the rest of reality. It might at first seem to set up a monomaniacal selfishness, but actually, if practiced carefully, it will undermine the idea of a solid and continuous 'self'. The exercise might also seem to cultivate confusion between things themselves and thoughts about these things and about the world. But this is not the case. By initially forcing the subject and object together in this way, we can soon progress to the perception of a 'time' which naturally gives the subject and object as together. This process also shows the felt difference between the thought about a thing and the 'thing itself'-between the reference and its referent-in a new light. We can progress from an artificial intimacy to an uncontrived one, and further, to an intimacy which simply is and which involves neither a self nor an object. This intimacy does not reach out to things elsewhere, nor does it assimilate them all in an ordinary location 'here'.

Tarthang Tulku

if we lose our human values by having everything mechanied, then machines will dictate our lives.

Dalai Lama XIV

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

Dalai Lama XIV

Even when dreaming, if the sentient beings who dwell in the three lower realms are witnessed, then at that moment one should pray to sever the continuity of their negat

Pema Lungtok Gyatso

When we find ourselves in a situation in which our buttons are being pushed, we can choose to repress or act out, or we can choose to practice. If we can start to do the exchange, breathing in with the intention of keeping our hearts open to the embarrassment or fear or anger that we feel, then to our surprise we find that we are also open to what the other person is feeling. Open heart is open heart.

Chögyam Trungpa

Many people experience a sense of rage and very strong anger toward their parents and others who hurt them. Ultimately that is also a thought. It doesn’t really exist in this very pure and present moment. It doesn’t really exist. So actually what we are really carrying is nothing but a bunch of thoughts. When we let go of those thoughts then nothing else is required. We are free......Whenever you suffer, whenever you struggle, don’t go outside trying to find out what is wrong with your life. Don’t treat your life like you treat your car. When something is wrong with the car we get out, open the hood, see what’s wrong with the engine, and fix it. But life is not like a car. Life is consciousness. Life is not something outside of us. Therefore whenever we feel that we are suffering, tormented, or challenged we should always look into our consciousness. Immediately we discover that we are having a very evil affair with an evil thought. That’s all there is. Just that thought.Such thoughts always come with a specific idea and with some kind of voice: “I am good. I am bad. I am poor. I don’t have this or that. I am not enlightened.” It is always associate with a concept and a belief system. Until we are awakened to the ultimate truth we are completely ruled by our thoughts. Thoughts are always dictating reality to us. So in that sense thought is the ultimate empire of propaganda. Thought is always coloring and defining reality.

Anam Thubten

Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life. And a good life does not mean just good food, good clothes, good shelter. These are not sufficient. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion, without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their rights and human dignity.

Dalai Lama XIV

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