Daily Zen - Thursday, September 16

Everything can be used as an invitation to

meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, 

the sight of a small flower growing in the crack

of cement pavement...the way the sun lights up 

flower pots on a windowsill. Be alert for any 

sign of beauty and grace. Offer up every joy, 

be awake at all moments to the news 

that is always arriving out of silence.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Daily Zen - Wednesday, May 12

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.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Daily Zen - Friday, December 11

We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity; 

but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity 

depends entirely on an endless collection of things to 

prop it up...without our familiar props, we are faced with 

just ourselves, a person we do not know...Isn't that why we 

have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and 

activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we

are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Weekend Zen, October 24-25

Let the sky outside

awake a sky

inside your mind.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche 

Daily Zen - Thursday, August 13

When you practice meditation, rather than "watching"

the breath, let yourself gradually identify with it, as if you

were becoming it. Slowly the breath, the breather, and the 

breathing become one; duality and separation dissolve. 

You will find that this very simple process of mindfulness 

filters your thoughts and emotions. Then, as if you were 

shedding an old skin, something is peeled off and freed.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Daily Zen - Friday, June 26

We are fragmented into so many different

aspects. We don't know who we really are,

or what aspects of ourselves we should identify

with or believe in. So many contradictory voices,

dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner

lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere,

in all directions, leaving nobody at home. 

Meditation, then, is bringing the mind home.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Daily Zen - Thursday, January 23

Above all else, we need to nourish our

true self –– what we call our Buddha 

nature –– for so often we make the fatal 

mistake of identifying with our confusion, and 

then using it to judge and condemn ourselves, 

which feeds the lack of self-love that

so many of us suffer from today.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Daily Zen - Friday, October 4

Spiritual truth is not something elaborate

and esoteric. When you realize the nature 

of mind, layers of confusion peel away. 

You don't actually "become" a buddha, 

you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. 

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Daily Zen - Monday, February 18

Western laziness...consists of

cramming our lives with 

compulsive activity, so that 

there is no time at all to 

confront the real issues.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Daily Zen - Thursday, July 20

How hollow and futile life can be

when it's founded on a false belief

in continuity and permanence.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Daily Zen - Friday, October 31

Light must come from inside.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche