Quotes about Dzogchen

Begin with bodhicitta, do the main practice without concepts,

Conclude by dedicating the merit. These, together and complete,

Are the three vital supports for progressing on the path to liberation.

Knowledge of Dzogchen is like
being on the highest mountain peak;
no level of mountain remains mysterious or hidden,
and whoever finds themelves on the highest peak
cannot be conditioned by anyone or anything.

Someone may first take interest in spiritual practice to improve her life. But practice doesn’t just improve your life — it also newly defines the meaning of your life…. When anyone, anywhere, learns to abide in such loving wisdom, they generate a zone of refuge and protection that encircles all those around them. They become a force to remake this world into a place of deep mutual reverence and appreciation. To learn to embody such wise love, and to act from there for the sake of all, is the greatest gift we can give to our families, communities and world.

Through the wisdom of letting be, we learn that we don't have to react to the shifting contents of our experiences but can 'lean into' their unchanging essence of knowing emptiness. We can let be and find deep rest right there.... Wise compassion keeps our mind on realities that transcend self-centeredness, so our best intentions can be realized instead of being overwhelmed by emotional reactions to fallible people or disappointing outcomes.

Through these meditations, we discover that our suffering is not just a personal problem. It need not isolate us from others into narrow confines of personal pain. We can rediscover the meaning of our own suffering as a profound connection to countless others and to the dignity and sacredness of all our lives.... Such compassion doesn't just share the sorrow of beings in their suffering. It is also a resolute will and liberating energy which communes with others at the level of their deepest freedom. And it is joy at participating in their freedom now.

Let all the rituals of family life be rediscovered as gestures of wise love.… Commune with your children through the energy of love as they deal the cards, take a turn on the game board, or toss a ball. In that spirit, when you look into their eyes, your gaze mirrors their fundamental goodness without even speaking.

To find refuge in our capacity for unwavering, impartial love is to find a stable refuge for all persons, to bless them as sacred beings worthy of love. It is to extend refuge to the many — to encircle all in a zone of healing and protection. We can sense this emerging within the meditation and we can learn to carry its protective power into every part of our world.

We are learning to take off the Coke bottle-like glasses that have hidden the sacred truth that each person is seen accurately only through eyes of wisdom and love, the eyes of the Buddha in us, the eyes of God. Such pure vision is not some ideal from on high. It is our own inmost vision.

As we grow older, we learn to pay attention to things that society considers more real and significant than the loving care of all those people. According to the social discourse around us, it seems much more important to identify those whom we should hate, fear, or compete with for affirmation, power, and wealth. Meanwhile, television news and magazines focus our communal attention each day on the horrible things that some people have done to others, as if that is all that happened throughout the entire world that day.

The claim that love pervades this world may not sound real to you, but not because it isn't true. Rather, many of us haven't learned to pay much attention to countless moments of love, kindness, and care that surround us each day: a child at the store reaching for her mother's hand, an elderly stranger at the park who smiles upon a young family, a grocery clerk or waitress who beams at you with kindness as she hands you the change.

When individuals and groups do not experience being loved -- when whole communities lose hope that anyone cares -- fear and violence are often seized upon as seeming protectors in the form of gangs, mobs, and communal hostility.

If our motivation for serving others is tied to a strong desire for specific outcomes or for praise, our potential is limited. Because we can never completely control the results of our efforts, we may become easily frustrated and disheartened.

We ache at the violence, pain, and hunger in our world, and inside us is a will to help. But 'help' only helps if it is an active expression of love. Otherwise our attempts to help, limited by narrow self-concern, become rigid and too easily discouraged.

Whatever the strategies for a successful life promulgated in self-help books, and no matter how hard someone may thump a holy book to declare a particular belief as the answer to all life's problems, none of these approaches works if the basic motive of genuine love, of actual care for persons, is not present.

What is the difference between the real state of rigpa and the imitation?
Check whether or not there is any clinging, any sense of keeping hold of something. With conceptual rigpa you notice a sense of trying to keep a state, trying to maintain a state, trying to nurture a state. There is a sense of hope or fear and also a sense of being occupied. Understand? The keeping means there’s a sense of protecting, of not wanting to lose it, in the back of the mind. This is not bad, it’s good, and for some people there’s no way around training like that in the beginning. Through training in this way, that conceptual aspect becomes increasingly refined and clarified.

So you practice more, more, more. Now you have more of a sense of openness, but still you’re holding this openness. All right, then, let the openness go. Let’s say that after two months you let it go. But still you’re staying within the openness—so then you practice letting go of the staying. And somehow there is still a remnant of wanting to achieve it again. So you let that go as well, and slowly again let it go, let it go, until you become very much “just there,” and finally very free and easy.