Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes & Sayings

Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The future is very much in our hands
in our actions. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Again and again we need to appreciate the subtle workings of the teachings and the practice, and even when there is no extraordinary, dramatic change, to persevere with calm and patience. How important it is to be skillful and gentle with ourselves, without becoming disheartened or giving up, but trusting the spiritual path and knowing that it has its own laws and its own dynamics. — Sogyal Rinpoche

So one moment you have lost something precious, and then, in the very next moment, you find your mind is resting in a deep state of peace. — Sogyal Rinpoche

When your amnesia over your identity begins to be cured, you will realize finally that dak dzin, grasping at self, is the root cause of all your suffering. You will understand at last how much harm it has done both to yourself and to others, and you will realize that both the noblest and the wisest thing to do is to cherish others instead of cherishing yourself. This will bring healing to your heart, healing to your mind, and healing to your spirit. It — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

When I came to the West, I realized there was much hunger for spiritual teachings, but no environment for spirituality. — Sogyal Rinpoche

We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved. — Sogyal Rinpoche

When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don't actually "become" a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Saints and mystics throughout history have adorned their realisations with different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Switch on the television or glance at the newspaper: You will see death everywhere. Yet, did the victims of those plane crashes and car accidents expect to die? They took life for granted, as we do. How often do we hear stories of people whom we know, or even friends, who died unexpectedly? We don't even have to be ill to die: Our bodies can suddenly break down and go out of order, just like our cars. We can be quite well one day, then fall sick and die the next. — Sogyal Rinpoche

For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch on to happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now at this very moment: How we live now can cost us our entire future. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Self-grasping creates self-cherishing, which in turn creates an ingrained aversion to harm and suffering. However, harm and suffering have no objective existence, what gives them their existence and their power is only our aversion to them. When you understand this, you understand then that it is our aversion, in fact, that attracts to us every negativity and obstacle that can possibly happen to us, and fills our lives with nervous anxiety, expectation, and fear. Wear down that aversion by wearing down the self-grasping mind and its attachment to a nonexistent self, and you will wear down any hold on you that any obstacle or negativity can have. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Modern civilization is largely devoted to the pursuit of the cult of delusion. There is no general information about the nature of mind. It is hardly ever written about by writers or intellectuals; modern philosophers do not speak of it directly; the majority of scientists deny it could possibly be there at all. It plays no part in popular culture: no one sings about it, no one talks about it in plays, and it's not on TV. We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses. — Sogyal Rinpoche

More and more, I have come to realize how thoughts and concepts are all that block us from always being ... in the absolute ... When the view is there, thoughts are seen for what they truly are: fleeting and transparent, and only relative ... You do not cling to thoughts and emotions or reject them, but welcome them all within the vast embrace of Rigpa. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Death is a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light. — Sogyal Rinpoche

So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. [ ... ] Learning to live is learning to let go. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The masters say if you create an auspicious condition in your body and your environment then meditation and realization will automatically arise. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and that everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer "yes" to both of these, then you really understand impermanence. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Tibetan thangka paintings and derive strength from their beauty. — Sogyal Rinpoche

We often wonder: "How will I be when I die?" The answer to that is that 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, if we do not change. This is why it is so absolutely important to use this lifetime to purify our mindstream, and so our basic being and character, while we can. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Life and death are in the mind, and nowhere else. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Just look at your mind for a few minutes. You will see that it is like a flea, constantly hopping to and fro. You will see that thoughts arise without any reason, without any connection. Swept along by the chaos of every moment, we are the victims of the fickleness of our mind. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Just as if you put your finger into water, it will get wet, and if you put it into fire, it will burn, so if you invest your mind in the wisdom mind of the Buddhas, it will transform into their wisdom nature. — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

The key to finding a happy balance in modern life is simplicity. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the sky-like nature of mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness, which underlies the whole of life and death — Sogyal Rinpoche

Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations. — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

Because the dying also are unable to help themselves, we should relieve them of discomfort and anxiety, and assist them, as far as we can, to die with composure. — Sogyal Rinpoche

At every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying? What more wonderful and consoling gift could you give to dying people than the knowledge that they are being prayed for, and that you are taking on their suffering and purifying their negative karma through your practice for them? — Sogyal Rinpoche

We and all sentient beings fundamentally have the buddha nature as our innermost essence ... — Sogyal Rinpoche

There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to. — Sogyal Rinpoche

At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment. Even if we have accumulated a lot of negative karma, if we are able to make a real change of heart at the moment of death, it can decisively influence our future, and transform our karma, for the moment of death is an exceptionally powerful opportunity to purify karma. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Each time the losses and deceptions of life teach us about impermanence, they bring us closer to the truth. When you fall from a great height, there is only one possible place to land: on the ground-the ground of truth. And if you have the understanding that comes from spiritual practice, then falling is in no way a disaster, but the discovery of an inner refuge. — Sogyal Rinpoche

What is born will die, What has been gathered will be dispersed, What has been accumulated will be exhausted, What has been built up will collapse, And what has been high will be brought low. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Let the sky outside awake a sky inside your mind. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything, counts. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The Western poet Rainer Maria Rilke has said that our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.12 — Sogyal Rinpoche

We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice. — Sogyal Rinpoche

At the beginning of meditation training thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually, as you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea; finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave. — Sogyal Rinpoche

When we are at last freed from the body that has defined and dominated our understanding of ourselves for so long, the karmic vision of one life is completely exhausted, but any karma that might be created in the future has not yet begun to crystallize. So what happens in death is that there is a "gap" or space that is fertile with vast possibility; it is a moment of tremendous, pregnant power where the only thing that matters, or could matter, is how exactly our mind is. Stripped of a physical body, mind stands naked, revealed startlingly for what it has always been: the architect of our reality. So — Sogyal Rinpoche

Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to bother it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar — Sogyal Rinpoche

Just as the ocean has waves or the sun has rays, so the minds's own radiance is its thoughts and emotions. — Sogyal Rinpoche

I remember how people would often come to see my master Jamyang Khyentse simply to ask for his guidance for the moment of death. He was so loved and revered throughout Tibet, especially in the eastern province of Kham, that some would travel for months on end to meet him and get his blessing just once before they died. All my masters would give this as their advice, for this is the essence of what is needed as you come to die: "Be free of attachment and aversion. Keep your mind pure. And unite your mind with Buddha." — Sogyal Rinpoche

When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. — Sogyal Rinpoche

When one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen,
in that gap, in between, isn't there a consciousness of the present moment;
fresh, virgin, unaltered by even a hair's breadth of a concept, a luminous, naked awareness?
Well, that's what naturally peaceful awareness is. — Sogyal Rinpoche

What the world needs more than anything are Bodhisattvas of peace, lawyers, politicians, teachers working tirelessly for the enlightenment of themselves and others. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The Dalai Lama has warned: 'Too many people have the Dharma only on their lips. Instead of using the Dharma to destroy their own negative thoughts, they regard the Dharma as a possession and themselves as the owner. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Perhaps the deepest reason we are afraid of death is that we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity; but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography", our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit card ... It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are? — Sogyal Rinpoche

Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation — Sogyal Rinpoche

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off. — Sogyal Rinpoche

A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion. More — Sogyal Rinpoche

Even though the meditator may leave the meditation, the meditation will not leave the meditator. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well; Meditation is the road to enlightenment. — Sogyal Rinpoche

This world can seem marvelously convincing until death collapses the illusion and evicts us from our hiding place. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The act of meditation is being spacious. — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

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

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

Even if they don't know that you are practicing for them, you are helping them and in turn they are helping you. They are actively helping you to develop your compassion, and so to purify and heal yourself. For me, all dying people are teachers, giving to all those who help them a chance to transform themselves through developing their compassion. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The absolute truth cannot be realized within the domain of the ordinary mind, and the path beyond the ordinary mind is the path of the heart. — Sogyal Rinpoche

And when you talk about realization, accomplishment for that matter enlightenment is that when you realize the fundamental essence of your mind. — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

It is important to remember always that the principle of egolessness does not mean that there was an ego in the first place, and the Buddhists did away with it. On the contrary, it means there was never any ego at all to begin with. To realize that is called egolessness. — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

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

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

This dying forces you to look into yourself. And in this, compassion is the only way. Love is the only way. — Sogyal Rinpoche

There is no armor like perseverance. — Sogyal Rinpoche

What should we "do" with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is. — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

Don't get too excited. In the end, it's neither good nor bad. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Patrul Rinpoche tells the story of an old frog who had lived all his life in a dank well. One day a frog from the sea paid him a visit. "Where do you come from?" asked the frog in the well. "From the great ocean," he replied. "How big is your ocean?" "It's gigantic." "You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?" "Bigger." "Bigger? You mean half as big?" "No, even bigger." "Is it ... as big as this well?" "There's no comparison." "That's impossible! I've got to see this for myself." They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss, clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence of grasping. The diminishing of grasping in yourself is a sign that you are becoming freer of yourself. And the more you experience this freedom, the clearer the sign that the ego and the hopes and fears that keep it alive are dissolving, and the closer you will come to the infinitely generous "wisdom of egolessness." — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification. When you know this, you become humble. — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

What most of us need, almost more than anything, is the courage and humility really to ask for help, from the depths of our hearts: to ask for the compassion of the enlightened beings, to ask for purification and healing, to ask for the power to understand the meaning of our suffering and transform it; at a relative level to ask for the growth in our lives of clarity, peace, and discernment, and to ask for the realization of the absolute nature of mind that comes from merging with the deathless wisdom mind of the master. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Rely on the message of the teacher, not on his personality; Rely — Sogyal Rinpoche

Our buddha nature is as good as any buddha's buddha nature. — Sogyal Rinpoche

When the nature of mind is introduced by a master, it is just too simple for us to believe. Our ordinary mind tells us this cannot be, there must be something more to it than this. It must surely be more "glorious", with light blazing in space around us, angels with flowing golden hair swooping down to meet us, and a deep Wizard of Oz voice announcing, "Now you have been introduced to the nature of your mind." There is no such drama. — Sogyal Rinpoche

I often think of the words of the great Buddhist master Padmasambhava: "Those who believe they have plenty of time get ready only at the time of death. Then they are ravaged by regret. But isn't it far too late?" What more chilling commentary on the modern world could there be than most people die unprepared for death, as they have lived, unprepared for life? — Sogyal Rinpoche

If all we know of mind is the aspect of mind that dissolves when we die, we will be left with no idea of what continues, no knowledge of the new dimension of the deeper reality of the nature of mind. So it is vital for us all to familiarize ourselves with the nature of mind while we are still alive. Only then will we be prepared for the time when it reveals itself spontaneously and powerfully at the moment of death; be able to recognize it "as naturally," the teachings say, "as a child running into its mother's lap"; and by remaining in that state, finally be liberated. — Sogyal Rinpoche

This world can seem marvellously convincing until death collapses the illusion and evicts us from our hiding place. What will happen to us then if we have no clue of any deeper reality? — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow. — Sogyal Rinpoche

In this complex world, the best way to survive is to be genuine. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected. — Sogyal Rinpoche

As long as you cultivate stillness, you may enjoy peace, but whenever your mind is a little bit disturbed, deluded thoughts will set in again. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Peaceful death is really an essential human right, more essential perhaps even than the right to vote or the right to justice; it is a right on which, all religious traditions tell us, a great deal depends for the well-being and spiritual future of the dying person. There — Sogyal Rinpoche

When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn. And in the all-revealing clarity of its sunlight, this insight can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own mind and the nature of reality. — Sogyal Rinpoche