Rinpoche Meditation Quotes & Sayings

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

Simply let experience take place very freely, so that your open heart is suffused with the tenderness of true compassion. — Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Rest in natural great peace, this exhausted mind, beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought, like the relentless fury of the pounding waves in the infinite ocean of samsara. — Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche

The expectations you bring to meditation practice are often the greatest obstacles you will encounter. — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of
attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The Buddha said that all conscious beings possess an enlightened nature.
Because of that, we have this natural purity, peacefulness and power.
We can rest the mind naturally because we are already in possession of these qualities.
If one can rest the mind naturally, that's the best meditation. — Yongey Mingyur 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

Meditation is not supposed to be the fabrication or the reinforcement of some particular state, but simply the cultivation of the awareness of whatever is arising in the mind. — Thrangu Rinpoche

If you meditate in perfect peace and then flash someone an irritable look because they make noise or their child cries, you are entirely missing the point. — Khandro Rinpoche

Meditation is actually a very simple exercise in resting in the natural state of your present mind, and allowing yourself to be simply and clearly present to whatever thoughts, sensations, or emotions occur. — Yongey Mingyur 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

Any daily activity can be used as an opportunity for meditation. — Yongey Mingyur 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

Understanding that everything is impermanent, that happiness is transformed into suffering, and that all phenomena are lacking reality in themselves and are only projections of our mind, will permit us to counteract the first hindrance to meditation, that is, our attachment to this world. — Bokar 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

The natural purity of our mind is of no use to us if we are not aware of it,
and if we do not integrate it with our moving mind.
If we realize our innate purity, but only integrate with it from time to time, we are not totally awakened.
Being in total integration all the time is final realization — Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

The best part of all is that no matter how long you practice, or what method you use, every technique of Buddhist meditation ultimately generates compassion. — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

The whole of meditation practice can be essentialized into these 3 crucial points: Bring your mind home. Release. And relax! — Sogyal Rinpoche

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

The fruit of meditation is not the absence of thoughts, but the fact that thoughts cease to harm us. Once enemies, they become friends. — Bokar Rinpoche

Meditation is not something that you can "do"; it is something that has to happen spontaneously, only when the practice has been perfected. However, — Sogyal Rinpoche

When I was going into one of my first meditation retreats, I asked my father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, for some advice. He said, "How you act when you're alone affects the rest of your life." Even in solitude, the ruler engages in virtue. — Sakyong Mipham

Now when the bardo of this life is dawning upon me, I will abandon laziness for which life has no time, Enter, undistracted, the path of listening and hearing, reflection and contemplation, and meditation, Making perceptions and mind the path, and realize the "three kayas": the enlightened mind;4 Now that I have once attained a human body, There is no time on the path for the mind to wander. — Sogyal Rinpoche

In meditation take care not to impose anything on the mind, or to tax it. When you meditate there should be no effort to control, and no attempt to be peaceful. Don't be overly solemn or feel that you are taking part in some special ritual; let go even of the idea that you are meditating. Let your body remain as it is, your breath as you find it, and remain in your natural condition of unchanging pure awareness. — Sogyal Rinpoche

You as a salt-being, made of salt, go to fathom the depth of the ocean, and in the process you yourself dissolve. A great maharishi once said that true meditation is like this. — Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

I can't say it strongly enough; to integrate meditation in action is the whole ground and point and purpose of meditation — Sogyal Rinpoche

Meditation could be said to be the Art of Simplicity: simply sitting, simply breathing and simply being. — Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

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

Meditation is simply getting to know your mind. — Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

The act of meditation is being spacious. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Don't let us take doubts with exaggerated seriousness nor let them grow out of proportion, or become black-and-white or fanatical about them. What we need to learn is how slowly to change our culturally conditioned and passionate involvement with doubt into a free, humorous, and compassionate one. This means giving doubts time, and giving ourselves time to find answers to our questions that are not merely intellectual or "philosophical," but living and real and genuine and workable. Doubts cannot resolve themselves immediately; but if we are patient a space can be created within us, in which doubts can be carefully and objectively examined, unraveled, dissolved, and healed. What we lack, especially in this culture, is the right undistracted and richly spacious environment of the mind, which can only be created through sustained meditation practice, and in which insights can be given the change slowly to mature and ripen. 129-130 — Sogyal Rinpoche

Once an old woman came to Buddha and asked him how to meditate. He told her to remain aware of every movement of her hands as she drew the water from the well, knowing that if she did, she would soon find herself in that state of alert and spacious calm that is meditation. — 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

Meditation is really quite simple. All we have to do is embrace each experience with awareness and open our hearts fully to the present moment. When we are completely at ease with our own being, the ripples of awareness naturally spread out in all directions, touching the lives of everyone we meet. — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

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

Simply notice that you're aware. At any given moment, you can choose to follow the chain of thoughts, emotions, and sensations that reinforce a perception of yourself as vulnerable and limited, or to remember that your true nature is pure, unconditioned, and incapable of being harmed. — Yongey Mingyur 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

Meditation is bringing the mind home. — Sogyal Rinpoche

An important characteristic of calm abiding meditation is to let go of any goal and simply sit for the sake of sitting. We breathe in and out, and we just watch that. Nothing else. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse 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

The perfect teaching of Buddha Is not accomplished through mere study. Dharma without meditation Is like people who die of thirst While being helplessly carried away By a great river. Dharma without meditation Is like a person who, having supplied Many beings with food and drink, Starves to death himself. — Khamtrul Rinpoche III

When we let our mind relax, a moment will come when we rest without thoughts. This stable state is like an ocean without waves. Within this stability a thought arises. This thought is like a wave which forms on the surface of the ocean. When we leave this thought alone, do nothing with it, not "seizing" it, it subsides by itself into the mind where it came from. — Bokar 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

Meditation is one of the rare occasions when we're not doing anything.
Otherwise, we're always doing something, we're always thinking something, we're always occupied.
We get lost in millions of obsessions and fixations.
But by meditating-by not doing anything-
all these fixations are revealed and our obsessions will naturally undo themselves like a snake uncoiling itself. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

In each meditation session, we gather knowledge about the mind through observation, questioning, and testing. We do this over and over, until we gradually develop a meaningful understanding of our own mind. — Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Mindfulness meditation should be more than just watching what you are doing. What you really need to watch is your motivation. — Thubten Zopa 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