Kalu Rinpoche

Within the concept of karma, there is no notion of destiny or fatalism;
we only reap what we sow.
We experience the results of our own actions.

Nobody Watches

The term for awareness in Tibetan means "the knowledge that realizes egolessness through awareness." Awareness brings egolessness because there is no object of awareness. You are aware of the whole thing completely, of you and other and of the activities of you and other at the same time. So everything is open. There is no particular object of awareness. If you're smart enough, you might ask the question," Who is being aware of the whole thing?" That's a very interesting question, the sixty-four-dollar question. And the answer is, nobody is being aware of anything but itself. The razor blade cuts itself. The sun shines by itself. Fire burns by itself. Water flows by itself. Nobody watches -- and that is the very primitive level of egolessness.

From "Continuing Our Confusion," in THE PATH IS THE GOAL: A BASIC HANDBOOK OF BUDDHIST MEDITATION, pages 21 to 22. Edited by Sherab Chodzin.All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission. OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK now has 5, 210 subscribers.Please send comments on and contributions to OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK to the list moderator, Carolyn Gimian at: carolyn@shambhala.com.
Carolyn Rose GimianOcean 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 Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.TO SUBSCRIBE visit the Chogyam Trungpa website by clicking on the following link: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

Wasting Our Time

We can actually sit on a cushion without any purpose, none whatsoever. It is outrageous. It's unthinkable. It's terrible -- we would be wasting our time. Now there's the point: wasting our time. Maybe that's a good one, wasting our time. Give time a rest. Let it be wasted. Create virgin time, uncontaminated time, time that hasn't been hassled by aggression, passion, and speed. Let us create pure time. Sit and create pure time. Buddha did it. Buddha did it two thousand five hundred years ago. He sat and wasted his time. And he transmitted the knowledge to us that it is the best thing we can do for ourselves -- waste our time by sitting. The very idea of aggression and passion could be tamed by sitting practice. Just sitting like a piece of rock is a very important point. I want you to think about the importance of wasting time sitting, slowing down, becoming like a piece of rock. It's the first message of the Buddha. _
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

From "The Only Way," in THE PATH IS THE GOAL: A BASIC HANDBOOK OF BUDDHIST MEDITATION, pages 10 to 11. Edited by Sherab Chodzin.

Compassion is the ultimate attitude of wealth

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... It is the attitude that one has been born fundamentally rich rather than one must become rich. --Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

How To Die

Even if death were to strike you today like lightning, be ready to die without any sadness or regret, without any residual clinging for what is left behind. Remaining in the recognition of the view, leave this life like an eagle soaring up into the blue sky. When an eagle takes flight into the immensity of the sky, he never thinks, "My wings won't be able to carry me. I won't be able to fly that far." Likewise, when dying, remember your teacher and his instructions, and adhere to them with utter confidence. --Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

LIVING ON THE RAZOR'S EDGE

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. It is extraordinarily sharp, extraordinarily tentative and quivering. We try to establish ground but the ground is not solid enough, because it is too sharp. We are quivering between that and this....This razor-blade quality is something more than psychological irritation. Life as a whole becomes penetratingly sharp -- unavoidable and at the same time cutting. We could say that is the living description of the truth that life contains pain. According to Buddhism, life or existence is defined according to the truth of suffering, which is the razor blade.
From "The Razor's Edge," in ORDERLY CHAOS: THE MANDALA PRINCIPLE, pages 18 to 19. All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission. OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK now has 5, 190 subscribers. Please send comments on and contributions to OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK to the list moderator, Carolyn Gimian at: carolyn@shambhala.com. 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

MINDFULNESS IS EXTRA BLISS

According to the Buddha, when you are being mindful, then walking is mindful, talking is mindful, breathing is mindful, feeling is mindful, hearing is mindful, sensation is mindful. You don't need to work harder to feel more than you usually feel, or to hear more than you usually hear. Rather, mindfulness is extra bliss in some sense. I am not particularly trying to make a sales pitch for mindfulness, but it is somewhat joyful. You realize that you could be so uplifted by being mindful. You begin to feel very good that you could rise beyond your regular, ordinary struggles, which don't even require that much awareness, but which normally give you tremendous pain and misery and unmindfulness....We can always experience some sense of the joy of being alive, as human beings. From "Mindfulness Discipline: Cutting the Root of Cause and Effect," in THE 1981 HINAYANA-MAHAYANA TRANSCRIPTS, page 24.All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission.

OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK now has 5, 180 subscribers.Please send comments on and contributions to OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK to the list moderator, Carolyn Gimian at: carolyn@shambhala.com.
Carolyn Rose GimianOcean 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/

THE TRUTH OF SUFFERING

We must work with our fears, frustrations, disappointments, and irritations, the painful aspects of life. People complain that Buddhism is an extremely gloomy religion because it emphasizes suffering and misery. Usually religions speak of beauty, song, ecstasy, bliss. But according to Buddha, we must begin by seeing the experience of life as it is. We must see the truth of suffering, the reality of dissatisfaction. We cannot ignore it and attempt to examine only the glorious, pleasurable aspects of life....So all sects and schools of Buddhism agree that we must begin by facing the reality of our living situations. We cannot begin by dreaming.


From THE MYTH OF FREEDOM and the Way of Meditation, Shambhala Library Edition, pages 3-4.


All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo.

THE OPEN GAP

The moment you wake up, the first thing in the morning, or when you have to struggle to swallow a big piece of meat, or when you have a gigantic sneeze -- there are always occasions where a gap occurs in your mind, where you can plant shamatha in your mind, in the form of mindfulness-awareness. It is not mindfulness in the sense of looking for danger: "Be careful. There might be trouble for you." It is not in that sense. It is simply mindfulness in the sense that there is openness, there is a gap; therefore you might as well be more wakeful. That moment of openness is an opportune situation for you.
From "Mindfulness Discipline: Cutting the Root of Cause and Effect," in THE 1980 HINAYANA-MAHAYANA TRANSCRIPTS, page 24. All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission. OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK now has 5, 177 subscribers. Please send comments on and contributions to OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK to the list moderator, Carolyn Gimian at: carolyn@shambhala.com. 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

Meditation is not regarded a medicine

Meditation is not regarded as medicine or even as therapeutic.
It is just an unconditional way of being in life.
--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

GO FOR SANITY

In the practice of meditation, we are trying to plant a seed of mindfulness-awareness; we are trying to plant a seed of less habitual, less animal-like instinct. Rats always go for cheese, and rabbits always go for carrots, but we could do better than that. As human beings, we could always go for sanity. We don't always have to think immediately, for our own sake, of our own comfort alone. But right from the moment when cognitive mind begins to function, we could think in terms of something more than self-interest.
From "Mindfulness Discipline: Cutting the Root of Cause and Effect," in THE 1980 HINAYANA-MAHAYANA TRANSCRIPTS, page 24. All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission. OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK now has 5, 174 subscribers. Please send comments on and contributions to OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK to the list moderator, Carolyn Gimian at: carolyn@shambhala.com. 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

THE ONLY WAY

According to the Buddha, no one can attain basic sanity and basic enlightenment without practicing meditation. You might be highly confused or you might be highly awakened and completely ready for the path. You might be emotionally disturbed and experiencing a sense of claustrophobia in relation to your world. Perhaps you are inspired by works of art you have done or the visual and audial aspects of works of art in general. You might be fat, thin, big, small, ntelligent, stupid -- whatever you are, there is only one way, unconditionally, and that is to begin with the practice of meditation. The practice of meditation is THE and ONLY way. without that, there is no way out and no way in.
>From "The Only Way," in THE PATH IS THE GOAL: A HANDBOOK OF BUDDHIST MEDITATION, page 4.
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