Chogyam Trungpa Quotes

The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.

To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy.

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

We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you'll have no problem.

We cannot change the way the world is, but by opening ourselves to the world as it is, we may find that gentleness, decency and bravery are available - not only to us, but to all human beings.

You are sitting on the earth and you realize that this earth deserves you and you deserve this earth. You are there - fully, personally, genuinely.

A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves.

The emphasis on practice is because it is the only time in your life you can steer your karmic situation.

Gentle day's flower - The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air.

We are threatened by the now so we jump to the past or the future.

The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.

Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of extreme impulse, but the area in-between is very fuzzy.

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

If you are telling the truth, then you can speak gently, and your words will have power.

The point is not to convert anyone to our view, but rather to help people wake to their own view, their own sanity.

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

To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life.

Even fear itself is frightened by the bodhisattva's fearlessness.

When we talk about compassion we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative [enough] to wake a person up

The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.

Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.

Becoming "awake" involves seeing our confusion more clearly.

Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy.

There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom.

There is no such thing as talent, only awareness.

Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit.

Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.

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

Helping others is a question of being genuine and projecting that genuineness to others. This way of being doesn't have to have a title or a name particularly. It is just being ultimately decent.

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

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

Life is a straight drink - straight pleasure, straight pain, straightforward, one hundred percent.

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

Elegance means appreciating things as they are. There is a sense of delight and of fearlessness. You are not fearful of dark corners.

When one is able to overcome the romantic and emotional attitude, one discovers truth even in the kitchen sink.

For the warrior, every moment is a challenge to be genuine, and each challenge is delightful. When you let go properly, you can relax and enjoy the challenge.

Things get very clear when you're cornered.

You must personally accept the responsibility of improving your own life.

Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news!

We are caught in a traffic jam of discursive thought.

Artistic vision is having the clarity to fall in love with what you see.

The ideal of warriorship is that the warrior should be sad and tender, and because of that, the warrior can be very brave as well.

meditation is a way of developing clarity, which allows us to see the precision of daily life situations as well as our thought process so that we can relate with both of them fully and completely.

The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought.

Developing confidence is like watching the sun rise. First it seems very feeble and one wonders whether it will make it. Then it shines and shines.

The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.

Sanity is permanent, neurosis is temporary.

The basic wisdom of Shambhala is that in this world, as it is, we can find a good and meaningful human life that will also serve others. That is our true richness.

We must begin our practice by walking the narrow path of simplicity, the hinayana path, before we can walk upon the open highway of compassionate action, the mahayana path.

Synchronizing mind and body is not a concept or a random technique someone thought up for self-improvement. Rather, it is a basic principle of how to be a human being.