Don't condemn yourself - that only increases the hold of impurity. Accept your limitations but know that you're working towards changing them.
Be willing to laugh at your humanness and at your divinity.
Don't be offended by your lack of purity. Purity is a seed that will grow and develop.
Intentional suffering and the postponement of happiness is not yoga or Buddhism. It will not lead to a better incarnation.
You must be kind to others. You must foster a caretaker personality of gentleness and perseverance, even in the midst of adversity.
We must be able to deal with ridicule and scorn, which it always seems that Buddhists receive. But we feel that it doesn't matter. God's laughing at us; God's laughing at God. We can take a joke too. We're pretty funny.
Enlightenment is not about being political. It is not a social club. Ashrams often turn into that, I know. Societies of enlightenment often just become cliques.
I think cosmopolitan spirituality is the best, where we go beyond "My teacher is better than yours" or "My meditation form is better than yours." It's not Ford versus Chevy. But it's rather the transition of our limited awareness into eternity.
Zen was a reaction. Just as Buddha came into the world and spoke against the fall of Vedanta, so Buddhism lost its essence and became ritual. Zen was a reaction to that.
To go to the very center of the mind of God, to be that, to become aware of our infiniteness, is the goal of Buddhism and along the way, to be as kind to others as possible without thinking that we are particularly wonderful.
When you could get angry with someone and separate yourself from them, don't do that. If you have people who are difficult to deal with, be neither attracted nor repulsed. Go a step higher.
I've moved a lot of my students into a high state of mind, but they don't do the things I have shown them how to do. So then, they drop down into a lower stage of attention.
Some people say that if you have sex you can't be enlightened. I think it isn't really so much whether you have sex or not, but it's what you're doing with your attention level during that time.
We seek absolute neutrality in Buddhism. We don't want to be drawn into anything in particular. We don't want to be pushed away from anything in particular.
As we hate ourselves less, we tend to hate other people less too.
In self-giving you must be so careful of egotism. You must be so careful when you are aiding others in their liberation not to have a sense of self.
Your mind is made up of light. We call it the dharmakaya, the clear light of reality. The transcendental eternal light is everywhere. It's the light of god or whatever you want to call it.
The Tibetan Buddhist realization is that mind does not have any particular qualities or attributes of its own. It's clear - clear light.
The white light is the joker in the deck. It creates transmutations that are completely unpredictable, which is what makes it fun, which is why it scares the hell out of most people.
Life reorders you when you go into the clear light. Even the causal structure is liquefied. The clear light of reality, the dharmakaya, changes us into beings of light.
Within the universe there is a pure light. It is a light that is beyond all darkness. It does not give way to anything. It is the light of existence, the dharmakaya.
Enlightenment is a timeless void. It's an emptiness that's filled with the most excellent light.
Keep your mind centered on that which leads to light, intensively. Accept no substitute.
As you go into light for longer and longer periods, as you progress in your meditation practice, you transform, you become illumined, you overcome all limitation, all sorrow, and all pain. You learn not to be bound by desire, and eventually you transcend death itself.
The miracle of enlightenment is that you take the self and let it dissolve in the white light of eternity.
