Thursday, February 28, 2008

Prepare To Leap

February 28, 2008 (In honor of Leap Year)

PREPARE TO LEAP

In order to overcome selfishness, it is necessary to be daring. It is as though you were
dressed in your swimsuit, standing on the diving board with a pool in front of you, and
you ask yourself: Now what? The obvious answer is: Jump. That is daring. You
might wonder if you will sink or hurt yourself if you jump. You might. There is no
insurance, but it is worthwhile jumping to find out what will happen. The student warrior
has to jump. We are so accustomed to accepting what is bad for us and rejecting what is
good for us. We are attracted to our cocoons, our selfishness, and we are afraid of
selflessness, stepping beyond ourselves. So in order to overcome our hesitation about
giving up our privacy, and in order to commit ourselves to others welfare, some kind of
leap is necessary.

From the forthcoming book: OCEAN OF DHARMA: The Everyday Wisdom of Chogyam Trungpa. Available any week now from Shambhala Publications.


All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission.

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Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
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Sunday, February 24, 2008

MILAREPA'S LAST INSTRUCTIONS

February 24, 2008

[Yesterday was the annual celebration of the life of Milarepa, a
great Tibetan yogi saint.]

MILAREPA'S LAST INSTRUCTIONS

Before Milarepa died, he gave his final instructions to the assembled
students. He said,
"When I die...don't build statues or stupas in my memory.
Instead, raise the banner of meditation. Reject all that increases
ego-clinging or inner poison, even if it appears good. Practice all
that benefits others, even if it appears bad. This is the true way of
dharma. Since life is short and the time of death unknown, devote
yourselves wholly to meditation. Act wisely and courageously
according to your innate insight, even at the cost of your life. In
short, act in a way that you will not be ashamed of."

From "Milarepa: A Warrior's Life" in THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHOGYAM
TRUNGPA, Volume Five, page 359.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used
by permission.

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Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of
his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
TO SUBSCRIBE visit the Chogyam Trungpa website by clicking on the
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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Shunyata

Shunyata means "emptiness."
It is vaguely connected with the idea of the attainment of
enlightenment.
The idea of the attainment of enlightenment is based on ignorance,
which is the opposite of enlightenment.
So if you accept shunyata,
you have to accept ignorance and enlightenment simultaneously.
Therefore the shunyata principle is accepting the language of samsara
as the language of enlightenment.
When we talk about aggression, passion, and confusion,
that automatically is the language of shunyata:
Aggression as opposed to what? Passion as opposed to what? Ignorance
as opposed to what?
That kind of open space is related to the shunyata principle.

â Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, from: Glimpses of Shunyata, Shambhala
Publications

Monday, February 11, 2008

Self and Others

As you wish to be happy, so you should wish others to be happy too.
As you wish to be free from suffering, so you should wish that all
beings may also be free from suffering. You should think, âMay all
living creatures find happiness and the cause of happiness. May they
be free from suffering and the cause of suffering. May they always
have perfect happiness free from suffering. May they live in
equanimity, without attachment or hatred but with love towards all
without any discrimination.â

To feel overflowing love and almost unbearable compassion for all
living creatures is the best way to fulfil the wishes of all the
Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Even if for the moment you cannot actually
help anyone in an external way, meditate on love and compassion
constantly over the months and years until compassion is knit
inseparably into the very fabric of your mind.

âDilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Patrul Rinpoche

Your mind is spinning around
About carrying out a lot of useless projects:
It's a waste! Give it up!
Thinking about the hundred plans you want to accomplish,
With never enough time to finish them,
Just weighs down your mind.
You're completely distracted
By all these projects, which never come to an end,
But keep spreading out more, like ripples in water.
Don't be a fool: for once, just sit tight.
âPatrul Rinpoche, From: "Advice to Myself"

A BUDDHIST SAINT

February 10, 2008

A BUDDHIST SAINT

Padmasambhava was an Indian teacher who brought the complete
teachings of buddhadharma to Tibet. He remains our source of
inspiration even now, here in the West...I suppose the best way to
characterize Padmasambhava for people with a Western or Christian
cultural outlook is to say that he was a saint....The Buddhist
approach to spirituality is nontheistic. It does not have the
principle of an external divinity.The Buddhist approach to
spirituality is connected with awakening within oneself rather than
with relating to something external....A saint in the Buddhist
context -- for example, Padmasambhava or a great being like the
Buddha himself -- is someone who provides an example of the fact that
completely ordinary, confused human beings can wake themselves up.
They can put themselves together and wake themselves up....The pain,
the suffering of all kinds, the misery and the chaos that are part of
life, begins to wake them, shake them.

From "Padmasambhava and Spiritual Materialism," in CRAZY WISDOM, pages 3 to 5.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used
by permission.

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Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of
his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
TO SUBSCRIBE visit the Chogyam Trungpa website by clicking on the
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Thursday, February 07, 2008

THE MOUSE AND THE TURQUOISE

February 7, 2008 SHAMBHALA DAY

A story for the Year of the Earth Mouse

THE MOUSE AND THE TURQUOISE

There is the Tibetan story of a certain monk who renounced his samsaric, confused life and decided to go live in a cave in order to meditate all the time. Prior to this he had been thinking continually of pain and suffering. His name was Ngonagpa of Langru, the Black-faced one of Langru, because he never smiled at all but saw everything in life in terms of pain. He remained in retreat for many years, very solemn and deadly honest, until one day he looked at the shrine and saw that someone had presented a big lump of turquoise as a gift to him. As he viewed the gift, he saw a mouse creep in and try to drag away the piece of turquoise. The mouse could not do it, so it went back to its hole and called another mouse. They both tried to drag away this big lump of turquoise but could not do it. So they squeaked together and called eight more mice that came and finally managed to drag the whole lump back into their hole. Then for the first time Ngonagpa of Langru began to laugh and smile. And that was his first introduction to openness, a sudden flash of enlightenment.
So a sense of humor is not merely a matter of trying to tell jokes or make puns, trying to be funny in a deliberate fashion. It involves seeing the basic irony of the juxtaposition of extremes, so that one is not caught taking them seriously, so that one does not seriously play their game of hope and fear.

From "A Sense of Humor" in CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM pp. 114-115.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission.

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Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
TO SUBSCRIBE visit the Chogyam Trungpa website by clicking on the following link: http://OceanofDharma.com

Saturday, February 02, 2008

The Secular and the Spiritual

THE SECULAR AND THE SPIRITUAL

We could discuss the question of the amateurish and the genuine
warrior, in connection with the secular and the spiritual. When we
talk about the secular, we're referring to looking directly at
ourselves and discovering our existence and our health and our glory
without being influenced by any religious outlook. We are simply
discovering ourselves. Vajrayana Buddhists might say that's what they
are doing too, and maybe that's true. When we talk about a secular
approach, we're not talking about something desecrated. We are simply
talking about a situation where you have your own resources and your
existence, and you discover whatever is to be discovered from that.
We don't have to debuddhicize our discovery. We might find that what
we are actually looking for and experiencing in a secular way
coincides with Buddhist discoveries, the discoveries described in Buddhism.
Within the secular situation, we still have to use the
discipline presented by the Buddhist path. This is the discipline of
mindfulness and natural exertion, which is there so that we can
actually be open to ourselves, so that we are constantly checking on
ourselves, so to speak. In some subtle way, we might find that the
secular becomes very sacred, and very real, genuine. From that point
of genuineness, where the secular becomes sacred, we begin to
discover the true warrior as opposed to the mimicking warrior.

From Talk Three, Talks to Shambhala Training Directors, January 17,
1978. Unpublished.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used
by permission.

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Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of
his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
TO SUBSCRIBE visit the Chogyam Trungpa website by clicking on the
following link: http://OceanofDharma.com