The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification. When you know this, you become humble.
Interpretation
The journey of spirituality involves ongoing growth and understanding, leading to humility.
This quote by Sogyal Rinpoche emphasizes the idea that spirituality is not a destination but rather a continual process of learning and self-purification. Recognizing that spiritual development requires constant effort encourages a sense of humility, as one acknowledges their limitations and the endless nature of this journey.
In practice
During a meditation workshop, I shared this quote to illustrate the importance of embracing the learning aspect of spiritual practices.
Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to bother it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar
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.
There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.
{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don't question or doubt whether I am in the "correct" state or not. There is no effort, only rich understanding, wakefulness, and unshakable certainty. When I am in the nature of mind, the ordinary mind is no longer there. There is no need to sustain or confirm a sense of being: I simply am.
We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.
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.
If the only tool we use to analyse what's valuable is a price tag, then those things that don't have price tags begin to look like they have no value.
Faith never knows where it is being led, or it would not be faith. True faith is content to travel under sealed orders.
Wars are fought for the benefit of oligarchs, triumphs bought with the blood of peons.
Philosophers, as things now stand, are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of studying and understanding things from within.
What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.
Everything alters me, but nothing changes me.
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