If you love the sacred and dislike the worldly...

If you love the sacred and dislike the worldly, you will go on floating and sinking in the ocean of birth and death. The passions arise depending on the heart. If the heart is stilled, where then do you seize the passions? Do not tire yourself by making up discriminations; and quite naturally you will find the way. --from Rinzai Roku, translated by Irmgard Schlogl

We have to be genuine, which means not having aggression and being true to oneself. In that way, we can build an enlightened society. Enlightened society cannot be built and cannot develop on the level of dreams or concepts. Enlightened society has to be real and good, honest and genuine.
Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

All sentient beings including ourselves

All sentient beings, including ourselves, already possess the primary cause for enlightenment.

– Gampopa, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation

Regradless of the emotion being expressed

Regardless of the emotion being experienced -- be it desire, anger, pride, jealousy, envy, greed, or whatever -- what is really going on is a shift in attention. The mind is expressing itself in a different way. Nothing implicitly requires one to presume that this emotion has any reality in and of itself...It is just that the mind is expressing itself in a different way than it was a moment ago.

--Kalu Rinpoche, Gently Whispered

When you feel completely desolate

When you feel completely desolate, you begin to help yourself, you make yourself at home. You begin to realize all kinds of beauties around you.

--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Illusion's Game

When we get a sense of the nonexistence of the self

When we get a sense of the nonexistence of the self, we might feel afraid. However, there is no need for fear. If the self were to exist, we could be harmed, but since the self does not exist, there is no "I" to be harmed. With the realization that the self does not exist comes great courage, and fear simply disappears.

--THE TRADITION AND PRACTICE OF VIPASHYANA -- by Venerable Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, Bodhi Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 4

Ego

Ego is pain, and pain is ego.

--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Illusion's Game

The Root of Delusion

The root of delusion is one’s own mind grasping external appearances as being truly existent.

-- Jamgon Kongtrul Lodrö Thaye, The Essential Points of Creation and Completion

No trace of substance remains in us unchanged

No trace of substance remains in us unchanged. we live in the midst of a uninterrupted current of relations which condition our existence at every instant. We have no possibility of speaking of our self, our being. The Buddhists can't follow Descartes in his famous "ergo." Nothing naturally follows from thought to being, since both are elements of the same changing stream. Instead of affirming, "I think therefore I am," we could say, at most, "I think, therefore I think," or else, as Nietzsche says, 'Something is thinking."

--HH the XIV Dalai Lama, Violence and Compassion

"buddha" literally means awake

“Bodhi,” which related to “buddha,” literally means “awake.” “Chitta” is a Sanskrit word meaning “heart,” or occasionally, “essence.” So “bodhichitta” is the essence of the buddha, the essence of the awakened ones.

-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Heart of The Buddha

Compassion is open space

Compassion is open space in which things can be accommodated. It contrasts strongly with our repulsing situations because we are not willing to accommodate anything. So compassion is creating open space, accepting things happening. --Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Orderly Chaos

Developing compassion

Developing compassion is the most fruitful way of "getting even" with people who make you angry.

--Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Crazy Wisdom

A problem remains a problem

A problem remains a problem. Nothing dissolves into a love-and-lighty beautiful creamy honey lotus lake.

--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, "The 4th Moment", Shambhala Sun Magazine, March 2006

You are not basically condemned

You are not basically condemned. Your naughtiness is not necessarily regarded as your problem- although it is witnessed, obviously. You are not fundamentally condemned; your temporary naughtinesses are regarded as coming from temporary problems only. Therefore, to follow up on that, this slogan says, "Always maintain only a joyful mind." It is a joyful mind because you do not have to be startled by any situation of wretchedness or, for that matter, sudden upliftedness. Instead, you can maintain a sense of cheerfulness all along. --Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, from: Training the Mind, Shambhala

The hinayan version of taming ego

The hinayana version of taming ego is to cut through sloppiness and wandering mind by the application of Shamatha discipline, or mindfulness. Shamatha practice cuts through the fundamental mechanism of ego, which is that ego has to maintain itself by providing lots of subconscious gossip and discursive thoughts.

--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, from: Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness

The Firewood

The firewood is not itself the fire.

–-Nagarjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom Of The Middle Way

This quote courtesy of Shangpa NY, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ShangpaNY/

When he was dying the Buddha said

When he was dying, the Buddha said to his followers:

Hold fast to the truth as a lamp that shines in the darkness. Seek salvation in the truth alone.

Those who either now or after I am dead hold fast to the truth as their lamp and do not look for light from anywhere else - it is they who will reach Nirvana.

--Majjhima Nikaya

Intention

Intention is the karma of the mind.

-– Gunaprabha, The Treasury of Abhidharma

In absolute terms

In absolute terms, each moment of experience is empty of a difference in nature of perceiver and perceived. Rather than regarding consciousness merely as the seeing or observing aspect of a moment of experience, it is also the content of that experience.

-- Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso, Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness

The mistaken ideas about the essence

The mistaken ideas about the essence arise from fixated attachment that solidifies the present mind as being negative. You believe that noble and positive wisdom will be attained only if present mind is relinquished. This is a mistaken idea in the Mahamudra tradition, because there is no wisdom higher than present mind itself.

--Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Introduction to HH the IX Karmapa's Ocean of Definitive Meaning