Devotional Music

Inspiring words

Source : Glimpse after Glimpse - Sogyal Rinpoche.

To learn how to die is to learn how to live; to learn how to live is to learn how to act not only in this life but in the lives to come. To transform yourself truly and learn how to be reborn as a tranformed being to help others is really to help the world in the most powerful way of all.

Let us dare to imagine now what it would be like to live in a world where a significant number of people took the opportunity, offered by the teachings, to devote part of their lives to serious spiritual practice, to recognise the nature of their minds, and so to use the opportunity of their deaths to move closer to Buddhahood, and to be reborn with one aim, that of serving and benefiting others.

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Evoking the power of compassion in us is not always easy. I find myself that the simplest ways are the best and most direct. Everyday, life gives us innumerable chances to open ur hearts, if we can only take them. An ald women passes you with a sad and lonely face and two heavy plastic bags full of shopping which she can hardly carry. Switch on the television, and there on the news is a mother in beirut kneeling above the body of her murdered son, or an old grandmother in moscow pointing to the thin soup which is her only food.........

Anyone of the sight could open the eyes of your heart to the fact of the vast suffering in the world. Let it. Don't waste the love and grief it arouses. In the moment you feel the compassion welling up in you, don;t brush it aside, don't shrug it off and try quickly return to "normal", don't be afraid of your feelings or be embarrased by it, and don't allow yourself to be distracted from it. Be vulnerable : Use that quick, bright uprush of compassion - focus on it, go deep into your heart and meditate on it, develop it, enhance and deepen it. By doing this you will realize how blind you have been to the suffering of the world.

All beings, everywhere, suffer; let your heart go out to them all in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.

Watching disturbance in mind

Source : Glimpse after Glimpse - Sogyal Rinpoche.

Just as the ocean has waves, and the sun has rays, so the mind's own radiance is its thoughts and emotions. The ocean has waves, yet the ocean is not particularly disturbed by them. The waves are the very nature of the ocean. Waves will rise, but where do they go ? Back into the ocean. And where do the waves come from ? The ocean.

In the same manner, thoughts and emotions are the radiance and expression of the very nature of the mind. They rise from the mind, but where do they dissolve ? Back into the mind. Whatever rises, do not see it has a particular problem. If you do not impulsively react , If you are only patient, it will once again settle into its essential nature.

When you have this understanding, then rising thought only enhance your practice. But when you do not understand what they intrisically are- the radiance of the naure of the mind, then your thoughts become the seed of confusion. So have a spacious, open and compassionate attitude towards your thoughts and emotions, because in fact your thoughts are your family, the family of your mind. Before them, as Dudjom Rinpoche used to say "Be like a old wise man, watching a child play".

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Realizing the view subtly but completely transforms your vision of everything. More and more, I have come to realize how thoughts and concepts are all that block us from always being, quite simply, in the obsolute.

Now I see clearly why the masters so often say "Try hard not to create too much fear or hope", for they only engender more mental gossip. When the View is there, thoughts are seen for they are truly are : fleeting and transparent, and only relative. You see through everything directly, as if you had X-ray eyes. You do not cling to thoughts or reject them; you welcome them within the vast embrace of Rigpa. The thing you took so seriously before - ambitions, plans, expectations, doubts and passions - no longer have any deep and anxious hold over you, for the View has helped you to see the futility and pointlesness of them all, and born in you the spirit of true renunciation.