Chogyam Trungpa

Watchfulness is experiencing a sudden glimpse of something without any qualifications - just the sudden glimpse itself.

It's easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.

When we clean up after ourselves, we have nothing to blame. When we begin to live our lives in that way, cleaning up after ourselves, what is left is further vision and further openness, which leads to cleaning up the rest of the world.

It's possible to be completely enlightened... except with your family.

I would like to say, ladies and gentlemen, that you shouldn't be afraid of who you are. That's the first key idea. You shouldn't be afraid of who you are. You should NOT be afraid of who you are. It's very important for you to realize that.

There is something suspect about our inability to enjoy anything.

The basic work of health professionals in general, and of psychotherapist s in particular, is to become full human beings and to inspire full human-beingness in other people who feel starved about their lives.

Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.

Mindfulness is like a microscope; it is neither an offensive nor defensive weapon in relation to the germs we observe through it. The function of the microscope is just to clearly present what is there.

Fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart.

Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.

When you are frightened by something, you have to relate with fear, explore why you are frightened, and develop some sense of conviction. You can actually look at fear. Then fear ceases to be the dominant situation that is going to defeat you. Fear can be conquered. You can be free from fear if you realize that fear is not the ogre. You can step on fear, and therefore, you can attain what is known as fearlessness. But that requires that, when you see fear, you smile.

Any perception can connect us to reality, properly and fully. What we see doesn't have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything.

Too often, people think that solving the world's problems is based on conquering the earth, rather than touching the earth, touching ground.

In the garden of gentle sanity, _x000D_ May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.

For the very reason that we expect things to be good and beautiful, they won't be. In genuine spirituality, we don't look for bliss.

In Tibetan, authentic presence is wangthang, which literally means, 'field of power'... The cause or the virtue that brings about authentic presence is emptying out and letting go. You have to be without clinging.

Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious, and direct. If we can open, then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing.

Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon.

Anything that is created must sooner or later die. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it.

Free passion is radiation without a radiator, a fluid, pervasive warmth that flows effortlessly. It is not destructive because it is a balanced state of being and highly intelligent. Self-consciousness inhibits this intelligent, balanced state of being. By opening, by dropping our self-conscious grasping, we see not only the surface of an object, but we see the whole way through.