Sogyal Rinpoche quotes

Don't you notice that there are particular moments when you are naturally inspired to introspection? Work with them gently, for these are the moments when you can go through a powerful experience, and your whole worldview can change quickly. (Sogyal 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. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
The act of meditation is being spacious. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
There would be no chance to get to know death at all ...if it happened only once. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
There is a famous saying: "If the mind is not contrived, it is spontaneously blissful, just as water, when not agitated, is by nature transparent and clear". View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Tomorrow or the next life - which comes first, we never know. (Sogyal Rinpoche)
We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that, with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, our mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Just as if you put your finger into water, it will get wet, and if you put it into fire, it will burn, so if you invest your mind in the wisdom mind of the Buddhas, it will transform into their wisdom nature. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Our task is to strike a balance, to find a middle way, to learn not to overextend ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more. The key to finding a happy balance in modern life is simplicity. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
What is born will die, What has been gathered will be dispersed, What has been accumulated will be exhausted, What has been built up will collapse, And what has been high will be brought low. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
What most of us need, almost more than anything, is the courage and humility really to ask for help, from the depths of our hearts: to ask for the compassion of the enlightened beings, to ask for purification and healing, to ask for the power to understand the meaning of our suffering and transform it; at a relative level to ask for the growth in our lives of clarity, peace, and discernment, and to ask for the realization of the absolute nature of mind that comes from merging with the deathless wisdom mind of the master. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
The absolute truth cannot be realized within the domain of the ordinary mind, and the path beyond the ordinary mind is the path of the heart. View quote
Sogyal Rinpoche
Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them. (Sogyal Rinpoche)