“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.”

from The Chronicals of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

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“the chain of cause and effect is not unalterable; it can be interrupted and transformed by recognizing its illusory nature and by tapping into the inconceivable energy of our natural awakened state.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“In the gap between the disappearance of one thought and the arising of the next, the mind rests in the state of clarity, luminous awareness vibrant with the magical display of energy”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“All meditation is about getting to know the mind: first, our individual minds, and then the essence of mind itself.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“If we learn to know our mind during this life, we shall understand that the same mind continues after death, and that whatever occurs after death also happens here and now.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“the Tibetan Book of the Dead is a most extraordinary and wonderful text... on the one hand, it is a very specialized teaching connected with advanced meditation practices, but on the other, it is an expression of a univerasal truth, appealing to many people beyond the sphere of Buddhism.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Often, the stronger the emotion, the greater opportunity there is for a sudden glimpse of clarity. The intense energy of the poisons is transmuted”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Sacred vision is the all-important practice, seeing the whole environment as a pure land and ourselves and all the other beings in it as deities.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The sense of ego depends on clinging to the past. By seeing this clearly and letting go, we can prevent our past mistakes from repeating themselves over and over.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Giving up means relaxing into the openness of being where the magical play of forms takes place, as in a dance.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“understand the illusory nature of everything and watch it all unfold without being drawn in.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“All the time, we are being pursued by the illusry manifestations of karma... The whole atmosphere is terrifying... we become attached to our hiding place are are too frightened to come out”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Nothing would be possible without desire and passion. It is only the root problem of grasping at a permanent self that turns them into poison... the five poisons cannot simply be denied, but must be transmuted”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Words can only point to the truth; genuine knowledge must be experienced directly.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The Buddha did not teach a dogma; he offered a path based on understanding and personal experience rather than a creed. His own spiritual search was one of constant questioning and experimentation.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Above all, Buddhism is a religion of practical methods for spiritual realization.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“From the absolute point of view, to speak about truth is inevitably to lie, yet it is the very nature of truth to communicae itself.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“we who think ourselves the living could really be called the dead. We are the unawakened, living our lives in a dream—a dream that will continue after death, then through life after life, until we truly awaken.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Whatever happens to us after death is simply a continuation of what is happening to us now in this life... The sense of self in each of us , the "I," is being. born and dying every moment.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Our fundamental awakened state has never been diminished or destroyed, only obscured by ignorance. But where did ignorance come from? It arose from that basic state itself, just like an illusion.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“All translation is interpretation, and there is no perfect translation... Above all, translation is an art. As translators, we must remember that the same words that give us so much trouble... are used in poetry, spontaneous songs, and liturgies whose purpose is to inspire and around the imagniation.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“We each think of ourselves as a single, unified personality, but... the 'I' is continually changing. We are an endless stream of momentary interconnected, psychophysical states.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“ordinary consciousness is unconscious”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The mandala principle points the way toward transmuting the confused patterns of samasara into the harmonious patterns of enlightenment... The secret of the mandala is to tap into that raw, chaotic energy and transform it through awareness to reveal its inherent nature.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“the five skandhas are in essence the five buddhas”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“wakefulness that has never needed to become awakened because it has never fallen asleep... never falls into the illusion of self”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The Tibetan for dakini, the embodied feminine principle, is khandroma, which means 'she who moves through space'... the space and emptiness that gives birth to all apparent existence.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Music is constantly changing, movement is its very existence; it is the perfect teaching on impermanence for the gods, who are attached to immortality and eternity.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“sound flows out of silence and returns again to silence almost as soon as it has arisen; the moments of silence are just as essential as the moments of sound.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The mandala is not a static diagram, but an ever-changing dynamic display, a magical dance of life”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“action-accomplishing knowledge... combines the intuition of knowing exactly what needs to be done in every situation with the infallible power to bring it about.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The aim of vajrayana practice is to live in such a way that all sights are seen as the appearances of the buddhas; all sounds are heard as mantras, the sacred speech of the buddhas; and all thoughts and feelings arise as the natural experssions of the awakened mind of the buddhas.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Where there are no longer any barriers between self and others, love, which is the essence of investigative knowledge, cannot help arising.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Enlightenment cannot be for oneself alone... bodhisattvas can only save all beings by realizing the paradox that there are really no beings to be saved, and no one to save them.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“All the emotional poisons are addictive; when we are in their grip, they appear absolutely necessary to keep us going, and they provide a reason for our very existence.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The realm of hell-beings is caused by extreme aggression... the most difficult to let go of, because it makes us feel so strongly that we are in the right.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“an essential element of vajrayana, the necessity of including every single aspect of life on the path and embracing wholeheartedly even those things that we would rather avoid. This is the principle of crazy wisdom.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“the feminine principle is the creative power that gives birth, the space, the zero dimension of emptiness from which all phenomena arise.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The masculine principle is nondual transcendent knowledge, spontaneously arising from the openness of space.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Bliss is the very essence of enlightenment; it is the waking up of one's whole being into the transcendent experience of sensitivity... the great bliss that does not leak away: it is inexhaustible, not affected by any external circumstances that never dissipates into the ordinary emotions”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The expression of compassion is skillful means, the unhesitating application of any method that can be used to help living beings in whatever way possible.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Space is the nonexistence of everything that exists. So whenever there is a sense of grasping and fixation, there is also the possibility of letting go.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Existence may not be real in the way we have always imagined, but it is real in a far more wonderful way, as the play of wakefulness.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“As long as there is a body there will be thought elaborating on what has been perceived, an endless cycle of further thoughts and actions, so that we continually re-create ourselves from moment to moment.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The mandala is much more than a visualized or painted image; it is a principle that applies to every area of life... In Buddhist terms, our environment, our bodies, and our minds are all mandalas.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“This mirror is mind itself, clear as the sky, empty yet luminous... the cosmic mirror that contains the whole of existence.... It holds the images of all space and all time.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“the essential nature of an illusion is that it does, in fact, appear thoroughly real; it has to be convincing or it cannot be called an illusion. In Buddhism, this is called relative or conventional truth.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The energy of anger can be extremely positive... the wrathful deities... anger without hatred... directed toward evil and ignorance but entirely free from personal hatred”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“powerful emotions are only poisons if they are used in the service of ego... expressions of energy: they can be poison or they can be food and medicine.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Water always flows down to the lowest place it can find and settles there, creating a basis of unshakable stability... it is unstoppable and invincible.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“The mind resting in a state of equanimity intuitively perceives that all phenomena share the same essential nature, so it regards everything as equal”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“When intellect is misused or allowed to run wild, it becomes destructive... completely intolerant and unable to see any good points in anything”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“the principle of buddhahood transcends all attributes, qualification, and descriptions,,, cause and effect are simultaneous... It is total positive thinking... good in all ways, at all times, and in all places.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“we are actually creating our everyday world all the time with our confused, limited, dreamlike imaginations, so it would be far better to create an enlightened world through the techniques of tantric imagination.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“at a certain point we have to abandon reliance on technique, let go of deliberate effort, and allow spontaneity to take over”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Dreaming intensifies the illusory nature of life, whereas meditation presents a way of seeing life as it truly is.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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“Meditation is a state of mind with greater clarity... a gap in the continual flow of confused thoughts and complete identification with ego.”

from Luminous Emptiness

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