Photo courtesy of Andrea Roth
A once-in-a-generation kind of teacher, a mahasiddha for our times, a transducer transforming ancient wisdom into modern idiom. Per Allen Ginsberg, “A Renaissance man of the highest peaks of East, meditation emperor, space awareness Dance-master, witty rude calligrapher whose poetry and flower arrangements unite the Mind with Body… Prime Minister of Imagination… Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ordinary Mind.” Meditation master, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, he was honored as a mahasiddha by teachers like Khyentse Rinpoche and the 16th Karmapa. “The father of Tibetan Buddhism in the US,” his influence was and remains beyond words.
Lineages
American (USA) Artists Humanism Mahasiddha Poets Rimé Lineage Taoist Tibetan Vajrayana Translators Trickster
A Buddhist Approach to Politics
Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Martial Arts and the Art of War
Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
Crazy Wisdom (1972)
Dharma Poetics
Dome Darshan
Heart of the Buddha
Interview with Pema Chodrin and Alice Walker, 1999
Lineage and Devotion (1976)
Naropa Institute talk (1975)
Political Treatise (1972)
Rain of Wisdom
Secret Beyond Thought (1971-2)
Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
Selected Talks on Lineage and Devotion (1970)
The Art of Milarepa
The Enlightenment of the Buddha (1975)
Transcending Materialism
True Perception: the Path of Dharma Art
“… crazy wisdom is absolute perceptiveness, with fearlessness and bluntness… being wise, but not holding to particular doctrines or disciplines or formats. There aren’t any books to follow, only endless spontaneity… all activity is created by the environment.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
41. Distilled Life
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“…you are without set ideas and patterns; you are not bound by any social, philosophical, or religious standards. You are free from that indoctrination; therefore you are able to see…”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
38. Fruit Over Flowers
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“‘That’ has a name but ‘this’ doesn’t have a name.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
5. Christmas Trees
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“According the Buddhist scriptures, a true guide is one who helps you to cross the turbulent river, then burns your boat for you.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
Chapters:
19. All Methods Become Obstacles
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“A warrior doesn’t need color television or video games… doesn’t need to read comic books… the world of entertainment doesn’t arise.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
60. Less is More
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“Again and again it happens… the methods become obstacles… The problem seems to be the attitude that the pain should go and then we will be happy. This is our mistaken belief. The pain never goes, and we will never be happy.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
19. All Methods Become Obstacles
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“All (Buddhist) teachings are basically related with a way of subjugating our ego, shedding our ego.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
Chapters:
3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones
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“Arrogant people are so involved with themselves and they are competing so much with others that they won’t even look. When you are fully gentle, without arrogance and without aggression, you see the brilliance of the universe.”
Chapters:
36. The Small, Dark Light
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“Awareness without choice or awareness that contains no experience…you begin to see yourself as tables and chairs or rocks and sky and water. You begin to identify with the phenomenal world completely.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
16. Returning to the Root, Meditation
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“Because of the feminine principle… there is a lot of room, openness, groundlessness… no one is standing on any ground so communication can take place quite freely.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
6. The Source
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“Because they do not bring about notions as to what to reject and what to accept, they are also free from hope and fear, and they are not subject to cultivating and exerting.”
from Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
Chapters:
72. Helpful Fear
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“coemergent wisdom… refers to confusion and realization existing simultaneously, as opposed to confusion coming first and then realization taking over and cleaning out the confusion… confusion and realization are simultaneous.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
23. Nothing and Not
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“Death can be regarded as a way of extending ourselves into the next life… as some kind of invitation to allow this thing we cherish so very much called our body, to perish.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
Chapters:
24. Unnecessary Baggage
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“Death could be said to be birth at the same time… The moment something ends, the next birth takes place naturally. So death is the re-creating of birth.”
from Six States of Bardo
Chapters:
52. Cultivating the Changeless
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“Either you look and see beyond language – as first perception – or you see the world through the filter of your thoughts.”
Chapters:
3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones
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“Energy is openness and all-pervasiveness. It is constantly expanding. It is decentralized energy, a sense of flood, ocean, outer space, the light of the sun and moon.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
25. The Mother of All Things
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“Everybody is a caricature of themselves… as well as everything having its own basic fullness. You represent yourself not by name but by being. So there is a sense of completion.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
50. Claws and Swords
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“Everything is compartmentalized, so you can never experience things completely… packaged food, packaged vacations, package deals of all kinds. There is no room to experience doubtlessness in that world… no room to experience reality fully and properly.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
Chapters:
18. The Sick Society
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“He feels the joy and sorrow of love in everything he does. He feels hot and cold, sweet and sour, simultaneously. Whether things go well or things go badly, whether there is success or failure, he feels sad and delighted at once.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
24. Unnecessary Baggage
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“Form is empty of our preconceptions, empty of our judgements… Form is empty if we see it in the absence of our own personal interpretations of it.”
Chapters:
2. The Wordless Teachings
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“From the point of view of samsara, Buddha is mad.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
41. Distilled Life
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“Fundamentally we have no idea what we are doing or what we are experiencing, and we are completely missing the point all the time.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
53. Shameless Thieves
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“Going beyond challenge is learning the art of war… when you do not produce another force of hatred, the opposing force collapses,”
from Martial Arts and the Art of War
Chapters:
31. Victory Funeral
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“I think it’s a question of being in contact with reality, then we don’t have to crank up something else.”
from Realizing Enlightened Society
Chapters:
81. Journey Without Goal
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“If we are passionate, if we are in love or in a lustful state, we begin to feel that there is an enormous amount of glue sprayed all over the world… We want to be stuck to things, to objects, wealth, money, friends… so we begin to spray this crude glue all over the place. We are asking to be stuck.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
44. Fame and Fortune
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“If we try to solve society’s problems without overcoming the confusion and aggression in our own state of mind, then our efforts will only contribute to the basic problems.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
21. Following Empty Heart
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“If you do not start at home, you have no hope of helping the world… the first step is learning to rule your household, your immediate world…. If you do so, then the next step will come naturally. If you don't, then your contribution to this world will only be further chaos.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
54. Planting Well
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“If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household, your own individual life, in order first… the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your household, your immediate world.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
17. True Leaders
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“inscrutability is based on fearlessness. This is unlike the conventional concept of inscrutability, which is deviousness or a blank wall… From this fearlessness, you develop gentleness and sympathy, which allow you to be noncommittal, but with a sense of humor.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
15. Inscrutability
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“Iinstead of seeing things as new, you see them as very ordinary and full of details… You yourself become a living teaching; you yourself become living dharma… the reference point takes the form of awareness… choiceless awareness.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
40. Returning
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“it is absolutely important to make the practice of meditation your source of strength,your source of basic intelligence.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
29. Not Doing
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“It is the war that is going on inside our own heads to which we have to call the truce.”
from The New Age
Chapters:
31. Victory Funeral
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“It’s actually not trying to do anything at all (even relax). That’s the whole point.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
57. Wu Wei
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“It’s not a question of what you should be or what you should not be doing. It’s a question of what you are.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
59. The Gardening of Spirit
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“It’s okay. Everything is okay… Don’t rush; everything is going to be okay… Just cool it. You don’t have to do a complete job, all at once. If you go too far, if you are too hungry, you could become a cosmic monster. That message is very courageous, but very few people have the courage to say that.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
57. Wu Wei
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“Just fully being skillful involves total lack of inhibition. We are not afraid to be. We are not afraid to live… like a tiger in the jungle.”
from Myth of Freedom
Chapters:
57. Wu Wei
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“Meditation in action is… awareness of how we... create our basic perceptions out of our preconceptions… and the games going on do not become big games but simply illusory games.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
Chapters:
12. This Over That
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“needlessness of reassurance is a source of humility, because you do not have to confirm yourself anymore.”
from Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
Chapters:
67. Three Treasures
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“Once you are really into something,you become part of that experience, or it becomes part of you. When you become part of the teachings, you are no longer hassled. You are no longer an entity separate from the teachings. You are an embodiment of them.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
27. No Trace
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“One taste does not mean that everything becomes gray and tasteless. By one taste, we mean the absence of all tastes. Tasting in this way becomes very natural and very beautiful. One taste is no taste; therefore, it is everything.”
from Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
Chapters:
56. One with the Dust
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“Our vast collections of knowledge and experience are just part of ego’s display… we have simply created a shop, an antique shop.”
from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Chapters:
71. Sick of Sickness
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“Politics is the ability for all reflections of political situations to arise in the mirror of discriminating awareness at once… the ability to look joyfully in the mirror of mind with a relaxed mind free from projections and doubt… the great confidence that is not afraid to be inspired by unprejudiced views”
Chapters:
32. Uncontrived Awareness
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“Spiritual practice is stepping out of the duality of me-ness and my-ness as opposed to otherness, of who is me and who is not me.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
33. Know Yourself
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“Stop acting, stop speeding. Sit and do nothing. You should take pride in the fact that you have learned a very valuable message: you actually can survive beautifully by doing nothing.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
26. The Still Rule the Restless
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“Suddenly you’re seeing something extraordinary arising out of a very ordinary thing.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
64. Ordinary Mind
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“That big-deal quality of our perception is known as a veil that prevents us from relating with reality properly… it makes us more numb.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
Chapters:
63. Easy as Hard
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“the basic requirement for treading the spiritual path is hopelessness… the only and best remedy is hopelessness”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
13. Honor and Disgrace
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“The Buddhist idea of a politician is not so much one of a con man or of a businessman who wins favor with everybody, but someone who simply does what is necessary… having a sense of responsibility to society.”
from A Buddhist Approach to Politics
Chapters:
78. Water
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“The conventional moral law purely has to do with relating with your conscience rather than dealing with situations… that means you don’t actually relate with the situation at all; you don’t even have any idea of understanding.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
22. Heaven's Door
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“The great setting sun of the West has provided us with beautiful, comfortable conditions for living our life, like central heating, air-conditioning, taxicabs, and numerous other conveniences. But that setting-sun approach has provided us purely with a comfortable way to die.”
Chapters:
35. The Power of Goodness
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“The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are… If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find that, in spite of all our problems and confusion, all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
51. Mysterious Goodness
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“The more you see that it is very ordinary, the more that becomes an extraordinary case, which creates a further veil.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
8. Like Water
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“The most important point is that when you take, you take the worst; and when you give, you give the best… So don’t take any credit – unless you have been blamed.”
from Lojong III
Chapters:
77. Stringing a Bow
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“The nonexistence of a dualistic barrier does not quite mean that we are one, but that we are zero.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
39. Oneness
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“the only way to grow up and mature further is through further openness to the world… this is realization of the sacredness of the universe and of yourself.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
25. The Mother of All Things
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“The past is fiction, the future a dream. We are living on the edge of a razor.”
Chapters:
40. Returning
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“The point at which we can either extend ourselves further and go towards an unfamiliar brilliance, or return to a more soothing and familiar dimness is the threshold of magic.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
73. Heaven’s Net
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“the result of anything aimed at enriching the ego is destruction, complete confusion, perpetual confusion.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
11. Appreciating Emptiness
7. Lose Yourself, Gain Your Soul
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“The result of letting go is that you discover a bank of self-existing energy that is always available to you – beyond any circumstance. It actually comes from nowhere, but is always there. It is the energy of basic goodness.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
62. Basic Goodness
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“The source of energy which need not be sought is… that you are rich rather than being enriched by something else.”
from Mudra
Chapters:
9. Know When to Stop
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“The tantric tradition builds us up so we do not have to relate at the level of a donkey reaching for a carrot anymore. The donkey has the carrot already”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
58. Goals Without Means
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“the warrior’s journey is based on resting in the state of warriorship rather than struggling to take the next step.. which is not based on ego-centered concerns but on resting in unconditional confidence, free from aggression.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
46. Enough
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“Then there is the other kind of compassion that Mr. Gurdjieff calls idiot compassion, which is compassion with neurosis, a slimy way of trying to fulfill your desire secretly. This is your aim, but you give the appearance of being generous and impersonal.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
67. Three Treasures
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“There are enormous problems with thinking that we can only trust in what we were told rather than in how we feel… we are trying to become perfect actors rather than real people.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
14. Finding and Following the Formless Form
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“these twelve experiences that Naropa went through were a continuous unlearning process. To begin with, he had to unlearn, to undo the cultural façade. Then he had to undo the philosophical and emotional façade. Then he had to step out and become free altogether.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
48. Unlearning
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“We cannot find an answer, because answers always run out. That is the problem and the promise.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
67. Three Treasures
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“We cannot find the beginning of the tantric thread unless we come to the conclusion that we do not exit.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
22. Heaven's Door
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“We cut our ground and have a frightening – terrifying – sudden glimpse of groundlessness… no one is standing on any ground, so communication can take place quite freely”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
28. Turning Back
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“we do not have to depend on feedback and we can relate with life as directly and straightforwardly as possible… Working with energy in a tantric sense is a decentralized process… energy is openness and all-pervasive… constantly expanding.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
34. An Unmoored Boat
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“We end up bombarded by all kinds of alternatives, and we are never able to relate with any of them properly.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
80. A Golden Age
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“What seems to be insane is enlightenment.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
41. Distilled Life
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“What we have to deal with is the kind of psychological materialism in our heads. We are allowing ourselves to be fed ideas and concepts from outside in a way that never lets us really be free. It is inward materialism that we have to deal with first.”
from The New Age
Chapters:
65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness
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“Whatever we experience in our life – pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness… or whatever – is just purely memories… a phantom… things have a dreamlike quality.”
Chapters:
49. No Set Mind
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“Whatever you may be doing, every minute of every hour is a new chapter, a new page.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
55. Forever Young
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“When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
4. The Father of All Things
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“When we find… something familiar, we are dying to get on to the next… and we rush. We are constantly looking for. We don’t really want to read the pages of life properly and we panic.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
35. The Power of Goodness
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“When we look at things as they are on a very simple and ordinary level, we find that they are fantastically , obviously true, frighteningly true… There is a kind of courtship, a love affair between the obviousness and you perceiving it.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
47. Effortless Success
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“when we say that human beings are basically good, we mean that they have every faculty they need, so that they don’t have to fight with their world.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
10. The Power of Goodness
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“When we see things as they are, they make sense to us: the way leaves move when they are blown by the wind, the way rocks get wet when there are snowflakes sitting on them. We see how things display their harmony and their chaos at the same time. So we are never limited by beauty alone, but we appreciate all sides of reality properly.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
76. The Soft and Flexible
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“Whenever you need reassurance, that means you have a fixed idea of what ought to be.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
12. This Over That
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“Whether it is a vacuum cleaner salesman or a guru, we find the same level of salesmanship.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
38. Fruit Over Flowers
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“Wisdom is connected with looking, and knowledge is connected with seeing.”
from Illusion's Game
Chapters:
47. Effortless Success
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“You begin to experience the simplicity of awareness,so although the sensorial hallucinations might continue, they don’t mean anything to you. There is a quality of one flavor, or one taste.”
from Path of Individual Liberation
Chapters:
56. One with the Dust
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“You don’t have to try to catch the universe in the same way that you would try to catch a grasshopper or a flea. You don’t have to do something with what you have experienced, particularly… If you actually want to use something, you have to let it be.”
from Journey Without Goal
Chapters:
61. Lying Low
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“you don’t spell out the truth, you imply the truth with wakeful delight… When you spell out the truth it loses its essence and becomes either ‘my’ truth or ‘your’ truth… By implying the truth, the truth doesn’t become anyone’s property.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
70. Inscrutable
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“You have to recover from the hangover of the previous medicine you were taking.”
Chapters:
19. All Methods Become Obstacles
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“Look into every situation and examine it, so that you won’t be fooling yourself by relying on belief alone. Instead, you want to make a personal discovery of reality through your own intelligence and ability.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chapters:
71. Sick of Sickness
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“Inner authentic presence comes from exchanging yourself with others, from being able to regard other people as yourself, generously and without fixation.”
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“The cause or the virtue that brings about authentic presence is emptying out and letting go. You have to be without clinging… earn authentic presence by letting go, and by giving up personal comfort and fixed mind.”
Chapters:
18. The Sick Society
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“When you meet a person with authentic presence, you find he has an overwhelming genuineness, which might be somewhat frightening because it is so true and honest and real. You experience a sense of command radiating from the person of inner authentic presence. Although that person might be a garbage collector or a taxi driver, still he or she has an uplifted quality, which magnetizes you and commands your attention. This is not just charisma.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
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“He subdues what needs to be subdued, he destroys what needs to be destroyed and he cares for whatever needs his care.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“The bandits of hope and fear are subdued and all experiences are transformed into crazy wisdom.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“vajra ignorance... sweeps away all thoughts of possessiveness and self like a pile of dust.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“the distinctions between meditation and the postmeditation experience no longer occur.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“I have been fool enough to think that I possess my own projections.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“apparent phenomena are all the books one needs.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“The idea of a deity as an external being has deceived us, led us astray.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“Counting on friends has brought nothing but sorrow and insecurity.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“The materialistic outlook dominates everywhere and the mind is intoxicated with worldly concerns.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“The search for an external protector has met with no success.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
Chapters:
38. Fruit Over Flowers
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“Every movement of the mind becomes bliss and emptiness”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“The whole point is to have a vision of the totality. Then there’s no problem. If you don’t have a vision of the totality, obviously you will have problems.”
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“If there isn’t any format; there’s no freedom. Freedom has to come from structure… freedom itself exists in structure.”
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“Compassion is based on some sense of soft spot in us... some kind of opening. It doesn't matter what it is we love as long as there is a sore spot of some kind, an open wound of some kind.”
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“The first expression of compassion is to experience whatever occurs in our life as dreamlike, a phantom, just purely memories.”
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“Democracy is built on the attitude that I speak out for myself, the invincible me… but that approach doesn’t work.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“We only develop by understanding ourselves.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“Buddha teaches us not just to accept [violence] but to understand the cause of it and do something creative about it.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“If you go to a shop and the shopkeeper cheats you and you go back and let him cheat you again, that doesn’t seem to be a very healthy thing to do for others – only a self-indulgent way of thinking that you are creating a compassionate situation when in fact you are feeding the other person’s aggression.”
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“The basic principle of mandala involves working with our life situation, our basic existence, our whole being.”
from Mandala Principle
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“Mandalas multiply so many times that they finally become nonexistent. The boundaries begin to dissolve. This is such an invasion of privacy! That is why it's called freedom.”
from Mandala Principle
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“You don't have to know how to do it... There is no help coming from anywhere at all. You have to make your own individual journey that is purely based on you.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“ViewYou will be able to develop American Buddhism, you will be able to teach the rest of the world, to go back to the Tibetans or the Indians and teach them what their earlier understanding was all about.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“Spiritual materialism is constantly trying to substitute one myth for another.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“We let ourselves be blinded by promises, reduce ourselves to a state of deaf and dumb, and accept without question the battlefield situation of fighting against something else.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“If you are willing to make a fool out of yourself, an absolutely perfects fool, then you get to be president.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“Ape instinct creates projections because the projector has definite ideas and the projections ‘prove’ that the projector is real creating the most gigantic syndicate of hypocrisy that could ever be thought of.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“The problems arise because of too many presented ideas about how to save ourselves rather than about why we should save ourselves or what the problem actually is… the how comes spontaneously.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“Talking about confusion is much more helpful than talking about how to save ourselves.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“Our sophisticated frivolousness makes it easy to criticize society, to become anti-establishment and make fun of traditions. But how would we do it? We could take responsibility for running the whole world economically, spiritually, psychologically, and politically.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“There is a big difference between a cynical and a serious joke... enlightened jokes are much lighter because they leave room for wisdom and an acceptance of the past.”
from Orderly Chaos — The Mandala Principle
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“The mother principle, the feminine principle of basic sanity is the basic ground of pure space uncorrupted by dualistic confusion. A fundamental and cosmic principle, it constantly gives birth churning out the colorful display of phenomena while protecting and nurturing discrimination.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“All doctrines are limited and the dogma of the early Buddhists is inseparable from their cultural attitudes. It failed to see the phenomenal world as mother, sister, maiden, or child.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“We are not saying that the feminine principle belongs to women and the masculine principle belongs to men. Realization does not belong to either sex. Wherever there is a perceiver, that is the masculine principle; wherever there is a perception, that is the feminine principle.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“The shadows of dreams are reality. Dreams produce reality; reality produces dreams.”
from Illusion's Game
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“Appreciation deals with qualities, fascination deals with the colors of those qualities.”
from Illusion's Game
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“No longer under control of other, you are just yourself, very simply.”
from Illusion's Game
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“Whenever we talk about relationship, we manage to reduce ourselves into just simply one louse trying to fight another louse in the crack of a seam in our shirt — psychiatrists, marriage counselors, physicians, and local gurus all do that.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“In trying to fight for a grain of sesame seed each day, we lose track of our sky.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“Emotionally, spiritually, domestically, politically; things don't seem to be associated or connected with each other and somehow these isolated situations, which from our confused way of thinking seem to have nothing to do with the basic quality of continuity, are the continuity itself.”
from Six States of Bardo
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“The ultimate idea of rebirth is not purely the idea of physical birth and death. Physical birth and death are very crude examples of it, actually. It's a changing, evolutionary process: there's nothing you can grasp onto; everything is changing. But there is some continuity, of course—the change is the continuity.”
from Six States of Bardo
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“Nothing is fatalistic, everything is continuously growing, as an evolutionary, developing process. Rebirth takes place every moment, every instant is death; every instant is birth.”
from Six States of Bardo
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“The process of birth and death is continual, taking place all the time… in the West people make birth more important. You congratulate someone for having a child, and you have parties for birthdays. But there are no parties for dying.”
from Six States of Bardo
Chapters:
52. Cultivating the Changeless
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“People pick up some kind of psychic vibrations that you put out, and before you exchange words there is a kind of meeting of the two psyches... If you can afford to be what you are, then that automatically means you could receive others as your guests which makes them feel more comfortable and welcome.”
from Six States of Bardo
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“Reality is a harry beast... How connected you are with reality depends somewhat on your degree of sanity, but at the same time your disconnection with reality also comes through, and a message will come through at once, very clearly, strongly and properly.”
from Selected Talks on Lineage and Devotion (1970)
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“Equanimity, not fabricated by anyone, is a unified circle, not confused anywhere.”
from Sadhana of Mahamudra
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“[The Shambhala teachings are] a manual for people who have lost the principles of sacredness, dignity, and warriorship in their lives.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
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“Because of the extraordinary vastness of perception, you have possibilities of communicating with the depth of the world—the world of sight, the world of sound—the greater world.”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
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“Politics are often based on bad-mouthing and copying someone else's aggression. This only snowballs making things worse. A Buddhist approach would look at the chaos and problems that exist as delightful and something to confidently work on.”
from A Buddhist Approach to Politics
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“The best approach is a long-term approach,,, trying to develop some trend of continuity in a different direction rather than believing there will be tremendous good news if the right person is elected. It takes the work of centuries.”
from A Buddhist Approach to Politics
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“We can't expect a golden age... if we have a long period of time without a war, everyone will be effected by a depression; if we have a long period of economic high, everyone will just abuse themselves completely.”
from A Buddhist Approach to Politics
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The idea in the Western world is bringing the Kingdom of God to earth, or trying `to create the ideal Jewish level which is really a poverty-stricken way of viewing it. As long as we condemn ourselves, no confidence can take place. People are bewildered and only rely on technicians, technocrats, theologians, politicians...”
from A Buddhist Approach to Politics
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“The Buddhist approach is not based on hope. It would look at the chaos and problems that exist as delightful and something to work on relaxed with the turmoil in complete confidence.”
from A Buddhist Approach to Politics
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“The great setting sun of the West has provided us with beautiful, comfortable conditions for living our life, like central heating, air-conditioning, taxicabs, and numerous other conveniences. But that setting-sun approach has provided us purely with a comfortable way to die.”
from Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
Chapters:
35. The Power of Goodness
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“You and your wakefulness have different opinions altogether... the whole thing goes wrong at the very beginning. And that split is not a 'once upon a time' story—it happens all the time in your everyday life.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“Appreciation of the world outside is called compassion, and the appreciation of yourself is called maitri. Unless those two are working together, it is a dead end.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“Bodhisattvas are known as warriors because they are visionary. They are not confused, and they do not shy away from others.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“Doubt and compassion are both very direct... There is a sense of something touching your heart, and it is painful.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“Before any kind of perception occurs, wakefulness is already thre—beyond concept, beyond limitation, beyond anything measurable.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“If you have awareness... you do not cheat, you do not do things just because they are traditional, and you don't just do something this year simply because you did it last year... honesty and genuineness begin to hurt.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“Dedication becomes not just dedication to yourself... the path begins to expand beyond one's own individuality.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“You can achieve complete freedom; you can experience vastness. Genuine wakefulness is possible constantly.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“There are two types of friends—those who buy and appreciate your habitual patterns and your true friends that don't buy into and support those same patterns.”
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“Devotion is building oneself up without kleshas, it makes you smile and in whatever we do with appreciation makes us feel wholesome.”
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“When you experience total sacred outlook... the forms you see in the outer world are seen as the heavenly realm of the deities; speech is experienced as mantra; and the psychology of the world is experienced as awakened clarity.”
from Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
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“It would be good to drop the concept of philosophical schools and view [teachings] as systems of thinking... A philosophical school [mainly only] develops arguments to protect its own concepts and ideas.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“When you begin to realize aggression as it is, there is a sudden flash of spaciousness, and the aggression is completely cleared out. It is like living is a stuffy room, and suddenly the window is wide open and fresh air is coming in.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“Emotions are very aggressive, so in order to cut through them, you need some kind of cool moon, fresh water, iceberg.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“externally empty, internally empty, and absolutely empty... there is nothing particularly to do do. There is nothing to work on, no one to make a reference point, nothing whatsoever.”
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion
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“We look at national or international things so much in terms of our own projections that we lose track of the actual political situation.”
from Mandala Principle
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“Live your life as an experiment so that you're always experimenting.”
from Interview with Pema Chodrin and Alice Walker, 1999
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“This life, this experience of the universe is the only thing; there is nothing beyond this at all... it would be much easier to make up a mysterious myth or a mystical experience out of it, rather than seeing things as they are.”
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
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“People who take holidays, vacations, instead of finding luxury where they are, face spiritual problems. The physical world is the spiritual world and all the problems of the world are therefore spiritual problems.”
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
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“Universally—in all traditions and schools of thought, religions, philosophies, political theories—there's always a conflict about how to relate the imaginary world to the physical world.”
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
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“If we stop making ingratiating gestures to please the world and just centralize in what is, we begin to see that being alone is a very beautiful thing.”
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
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“Mandala means 'society' or 'group' and is connected with unique or alone, loneliness. When you stand in the middle of your mandala, no one else, only you can see this vision.”
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
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“You don't have to dress up in fancy costumes, you don't have to have someone—or a whole organization—behind you to prove that what you're doing is right... a tremendous conflict with form goes along with that.”
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
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“Tibetans virtually lived in the Middle Ages and, when they were thrust out by the communist invasion, they were forced to see twentieth-century life which became a kind of novelty.”
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
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“Consciousness is a combination of speech and our basic, sharp intelligence.”
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971
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“All people complain to a greater or lesser extent... But the ultimate complaint comes from a sense of having no joy... You are being toasted between two pieces of hot metal.”
from Path of Individual Liberation
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“We can plant the moon of bodhichitta in everyone’s heart and the sun of the Great Eastern Sun in their heads.”
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“Instead of having our own anxiety, we produce a further state of anxiety in others... Everybody is constantly making everybody else feel bad. We have been participating in this tremendous project, this constant mishap, this terribly bad mistake, for a long time—and we are still doing it.”
from Path of Individual Liberation
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“The esoteric meaning of Shambhala is Tathagatagarbha, Buddha-nature, which is the essence of all things. It transcends existence and non-existence and is the ground of both samsara and nirvana.”
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“the Emperor of Shambhala waged war against and subdued the Three Lords of Materialism [who] extend their power and seduction, enslaving the human mind with psychological and spiritual materialism.”
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“Every moment we might be doing the same things — brushing our teeth every day, combing our hair every day, cooking our dinner every day. But that seeming repetitiveness becomes unique every day. A kind of intimacy takes place with the daily habits that you go through and the art involved in it. That is what is called art in everyday life.”
from True Perception: the Path of Dharma Art
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“Once we give up our heart and brain, the magic begins. We give up our little heart, our little brain, and then we get greater nothingness. Actual magic begins there.”
from Journey Without Goal
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“You don't have to dress up in fancy costumes, you don't have to have someone—or a whole organization—behind you to prove that what you're doing is right”
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“Artistic mind is a mind that's clear enough to love what it sees.”
from Secret Beyond Thought (1971-2)
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“From the point of view of the Madhyamaka school, these other approaches... earlier Buddhist philosophical schools, theistic Hinduism, Vedantism, Islam, Christianity, and most other religious and philosophical traditions... can be grouped together into three categories: the eternalists, the nihilists, and the atomists... atomisitic pluralism”
from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
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“Nagarjuna much preferred to approach truth by taking the arguments of other philosophical schools on their own terms and logically reducing them ad absurdum, rather than by himself offering any definitions of reality.”
from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
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“Marpa is an example of someone who was on his way to becoming a successful self-made man... It was Marpa's intention to study and collect texts unknown in Tibet, bring them home, and translate them, thus establishing himself as a great scholar-translator [but meeting his teacher Naropa,] he had to give up everything he had, not just his material possessions, but whatever he was holding back in his mind had to go. It was a continual process of opening and surrender.”
from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
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“In the case of primordial craziness of crazy wisdom, we do not permit ourselves to get seduced by passion or aroused by aggression at all... crazy wisdom becomes completely accurate out of the moment of things as they are... if anything comes up in the midst of that complete ordinariness and begins to make itself into a big deal, then we cut it down... Crazy wisdom is just the action of truth.”
from Crazy Wisdom (1972)
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“Padmasambhava was an Indian teacher who brought the complete teachings of the buddhadharma to Tibet. He remains our source of inspiration even now, hre in the West. We have inherited his teachings, and from that point of view, I think we could say that Padmasambhava is alive and well.”
from Crazy Wisdom (1972)
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“we constantly assume that there is a 'mystery,' something which we do not know—the meaning of life, the key to happiness—as long as we continue to look for a conceptual answer, there will always be areas of mystery”
from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
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“Milarepa reached the 'old dog' stage, his highest attainment. People could tread on him, use his as a road, as earth; he would always be there. He transcended his own individual existence so that there is a sense of the universality of Milarepa, the example of enlightenment.”
from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
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“The songs of Tilopa point out the indivisibility of samsara and nirvana so that whatever arises is neither rejected nor accepted and we can recognize naked and raw coemergent wisdom on the spot.”
from Rain of Wisdom
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“The songs of Gampopa inspire us in the supreme samadhi that quells neurotic tendencies... by achieving ultimate samatha-vipasyana and realizing the great bliss”
from Rain of Wisdom
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“The songs of the Karmapas enable us to transcend hope and fear. Through total devotion, the blessings of auspicious coincidence are realized, so that we become genuine dharmic people.”
from Rain of Wisdom
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“Some engaged in lifestyles that ordinarily would have been transgressions of Buddhist ethics. For example, the mahasiddha Saraha worked as an arrow maker and produced weapons in violation of the principle of harmlessness and nonaggression. Tilopa, the founder of the Karyu lineage, worked for a while as a procurer for an Indian prostitute. Virupa was famed for consuming miraculous amounts of liquor...”
from Rain of Wisdom
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“Suzuki Roshi, my accidental father, presented as a surprise from America, the land of confusion. All his gestures and communications were naked and to the point, as though you were dealing with the burning tip of an incense stick... It was amazing that such a compassionate person existed in the midst of so much aggression and passion.”
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“Christianity, more or less, has been a religion of a future life. Life here is very ephemeral and we are here only in order to prepare ourselves for another life, a greater life, which comes after death... A great deal of social evolution didn't take place because the attitude was to keep to the status quo since this life was not supposed to be improved; you are supposed to accept it as God's will”
from A Buddhist Approach to Politics
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“The science of politics should be regarded as great good news since it deepens the student's insight and renders his action skillful... To acquire the ability to bring about a good future situation, it is absolutely necessary to study and science of politics and become a skillful politician.”
from Political Treatise (1972)
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“Sectarian views of any kind are a great obstacle, preventing the student's insight and his spontaneously existing dignity from shining through. However, it is useful to see the useful aspects of these systems in order to be able to apply them to the appropriate situations of time and country.”
from Political Treatise (1972)
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“The premature evocation of the future veils the present moment. Dwelling on one's good dream of the future and borrowing from others in the present on the basis of it is the attitude of pet dogs and cats.”
from Political Treatise (1972)
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“It is necessary that the student take great pride in his country, in his culture... However, he should not, from the vantage point of this pride, look down on other countries as barbaric. The cultures and traditions of other countries should be seen as adornments of the culture and traditions of his own country and he should study them wholeheartedly.”
from Political Treatise (1972)
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“A student of politics is anyone who is seeking to be aware of people's problems in making a living and developing a way of life. Knowledge of people's livelihoods and their psychological attitudes towards their living situations is absolutely necessary to skillful action.”
from Political Treatise (1972)
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“People like sickness because it gives them a break. The ultimate authority is that you're sick, and nobody can say, 'You can't do that.' If you're an employee, your first and best excuse is that you're sick—which is not a good idea. Don't buy it.”
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“On the whole, it could be said that the discovery of confusion is enlightenment. When we discover confusion, the enlightened state becomes redundant. Discovering the confusion is the most important thing of all. It is facing reality and getting beyond the many kinds of self-deception.”
from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa
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“Here, the term spirit is like the spirit of the morning, or the spirit of watching the sun rise, the spirit of a journey. This kind of spirit is based on the idea of delight and joy and heroism... You are about to give birth to it.”
from The Enlightenment of the Buddha (1975)
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“trying constantly to attain something higher and greater... completely drunk on competitiveness... everyone is regarded as the enemy... your experiences are so strong that they overpower you, hypnotize you.”
from Myth of Freedom
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“Then we have Tilopa, Naropa's teacher, a person who did not have to seek for teachings, but discovered that the teachings were founded in himself, so that he could just expose himself.”
from Selected Talks on Lineage and Devotion (1970)
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“Discussing Marpa's life seems to be an extremely immediate situation. It concerns everybody and is very immediate.”
from Selected Talks on Lineage and Devotion (1970)
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“At the time of the second Karmapa, Karma Pakshi, the Chinese emperor had seen the possibility that the Karmapas would become the future emperors of the practicing lineage. According to the stories, he actually had a vision of the crown, and he had the crown made, adorned with all kinds of precious gems, and presented it to Karma Pakshi.”
from Selected Talks on Lineage and Devotion (1970)
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“When we talk of nationalism, that is a sign of weakness. A person wants to fight just anyone who enters his territory, to defend himself. As a sign, a symbol, that becomes an expression of a source of territory and patheticness.”
from A Buddhist Approach to Politics
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“I would like you to think twice about what you see as your role in this country. It doesn't matter so much about your own particular development. But you should pay some kind of attention to a society which is slowly decaying and full of maggots and worms. We don't want to sit here idle discussing subtleties of philosophy only pleasing ourselves while the rest of the people are suffering immensely... spiritually they are suffering, economically, politically people are suffering.”
from Naropa Institute talk (1975)
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“Whenever there is any inspiration, you just jump in. That is why it is said that 'first thought is best thought.' Just jump in!”
from Heart of the Buddha
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“awake means basically realized, being able to see the pain of the world and being able to see the way out of the world of suffering.”
from Heart of the Buddha
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“There's only one eternity, that's the eternity of discontinuity... you can't hang on to one continuous continuation, things do change constantly, you have no permanent security.”
from Dome Darshan
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“America's love affair with materialism provides a tremendous opportunity which is unique to this country... American speed and its neurosis are being put into rediscovering spirituality. America could become the world's leading spiritual center fairly soon, as soon as we get out of spiritual materialism and begin to realize what its consequences are.”
from Dome Darshan
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“As long as you are entertained, you are fascinated by what's happening rather than relating to what you have experienced, the facts of the scientific approach to life.”
from Dome Darshan
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“nowness is not a way of seeing the truth; nowness is being true... You have to stop running in order to ask questions, and this cuts the chain reaction of karmic energy”
from Transcending Materialism
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“Poetics also includes one's vision, hearing, and feeling altogether... When we talk about poets and poetics, we are talking in terms of expressing ourselves so thoroughly, so precisely, that we don't just mumble our words, mumble our minds, mumble our bodies.”
from Dharma Poetics
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“Hope is the source of pain, and hope operates on the level of something other than what there is. We hope, dwelling in the future, that things might turn out right. We do not experience the present, do not face the pain or neurosis as it is.”
from Dome Darshan
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“The only way to deal with spiritual materialism as such is to develop an ultimately cynical or critical attitude toward the teachings and the teachers and the practices that we're involved with... question all the time, develop a critical attitude.”
from Dome Darshan
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“Forgiving implies that you were wrong, but that now it's okay. Instead, the mistakes or the neuroses become adornments... each mistake, each unskillful action, becomes another brick in your wall, which you can build higher and higher.”
from Dome Darshan
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“The whole world is mind's world, the product of mind”
from Heart of the Buddha
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“there was an extraordinary quality about Milarepa, a steadfast wildness, a quality of relating to basic sanity rather than to convention... the ruggedness of Milarepa's literal poetry is comparable to the koan quality in the Zen tradition—purely stating the facts.”
from The Art of Milarepa
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“I have no home.
The family created by my parents and friends was just a family according to their way of thinking... Still, strangely, this home of being homeless is my home wherever I go. Everything is my home, the great home of being homeless.”
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“It is essential to surrender, to open yourself, to present whatever you are to the guru, rather than trying to present yourself as a worthwhile student. It does not matter how much you are willing to pay, how correctly you behave”
from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
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“If Buddha Shakyamuni were alive, he would look like Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche... Whatever he did was perfection of its kind. Even the way he
walked into the hall showed this quality.”
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“Inscrutability is not a product of hard work, but is inspiration, realization... when the situation is being experienced and felt fully and properly, then you have nothing to fight for... nothing to lose.”
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“Your doubts are very helpful, very useful... if you had no doubt, you all would become jellyfish. You would be like flocks of pigeons or sheep.”
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“I received this transmission at the age of eight, and was trained in this teaching by my tutors, who also guided me in dealing with dying people. Consequently I visited dying or dead people about four times a week from that time onwards. Such continual contact with the process of death, particularly watching one's close friends and relatives, is considered extremely important for students of this tradition, so that the notion of impermanence becomes a living experience rather than a philosophical view.”
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“crazy wisdom is a certain kind of penetrating intelligence which knows no limit... like a 360 degree mirror seeing itself... it has no allegiance to ego at all... it's straight forward wisdom which knows no limitations.”
from Lineage and Devotion (1976)
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“Seeing one drop of water can be seeing all water... water of water”
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
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“The ancient and renowned lineage of the Trungpas, since the great siddha Trungmase Chökyi Gyamtso Lodrö, possessor of only holy activity, has in every generation given rise to great beings. Awakened by the vision of these predecessors in the lineage, this my present lineage holder, Chökyi Gyamtso Trungpa Rinpoche, supreme incarnate being, has magnificently carried out the vajra holders' discipline in the land of America, bringing about the liberation of students and ripening them in the dharma. This wonderful truth is clearly manifest.”
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“Suzuki Roshi asked Trungpa to give a talk to the students in the zendo the next night. Trungpa walked in tipsy and sat on the edge of the altar platform with his feet dangling. But he delivered a crystal-clear talk, which some felt had a quality – like Suzuki's talks – of not only being about the dharma but being itself the dharma.”
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“To think of Trungpa Rinpoche it is not just to remember an extraordinary man, but to be drawn into the depth and vastness of his mind, to glimpse a state of being, completely liberated and beyond concepts... his most exceptional quality was his willingness to do anything whatever in order to convey the essential truth of dharma... he showed us how to let go of absolutely everything... He taught a lesson that very few others are willing to teach by their own example: that there is no one to protect... he lived his life as a bodhisattva, for whom every thought, word and action is the display of skillful means to lead sentient beings to awakening.”
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“Exceptional as one of the first Tibetan lamas to become fully assimilated into Western culture, he made a powerful contribution to revealing the Tibetan approach to inner peace in the West.”
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“A Renaissance man of the highest peaks of East, meditation emperor, space awareness Dance-master, witty rude calligrapher whose poetry and flower arrangement unite the Mind with Body; Admiral of Tibetan navies, Prime Minister of Imagination in the Buddhafields, General of empty Doorkeeper Armies... Chairman of Board of Directors of Ordinary Mind.”
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“Exceptional as one of the first Tibetan lamas to become fully assimilated into Western culture, he made a powerful contribution to revealing the Tibetan approach to inner peace in the West.”
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“I have no home.
The family created by my parents and friends was just a family according to their way of thinking... Still, strangely, this home of being homeless is my home wherever I go. Everything is my home, the great home of being homeless.”
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“That is why I respect Trungpa Rinpoche. He is supporting us. You may criticize him because he drinks alcohol like I drink water, but that is a minor problem. He trusts you completely. He knows that if he is always supporting you in a true sense you will not criticize him, whatever he does. And he doesn't mind whatever you say. That is not the point, you know. This kind of big spirit, without clinging to some special religion or form of practice, is necessary for human beings.”
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“My first knowledge of Trungpa is very funny. I was very young, ten I think... His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche had this small shrine and on this shrine there were not many statues, but there were many photos of lamas. And somewhere in the middle there was this man with a sort of army uniform [laughter] and his hat was a bit small so you could see his head was shaved like a Second World War Japanese army general or something... I even thought that maybe the attendants had made a mistake... I think it’s really important to establish and strengthen and carry on the work that Trungpa Rinpoche initiated... He was not someone who gave into social expectations, conventional expectations... He is a great mahasiddha. You can tell. His work alone.
”
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Comments (1)
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OceanWind
7 years ago
Chögyam Trungpa was a mahasiddha. We are so fortunate to have had him in our lives.
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