paṭisotagāmī

Most of our suffering is psychological, nourished by fear and our identification with the pain. It is important to break down the idea that this is our suffering, our fear. Concentrate on the feeling, not on thoughts about it. Concentrate on the center of the feeling; penetrate into that space. There is a density of energy in that center that is clear and distinct. This energy has great power, and can transmit great clarity.

“A fool is someone who doesn’t recognize a fool, and, even more, someone who does, but doesn’t get rid of him.”

“The person who realizes that hatred is an enemy … and who persistently strikes it down, is happy in this world and the next.”

Don’t forget not to imagine at all.

Quotes About Nonduality:

“But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.”

“This world…is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. And…humans are condemned to do both. We have evolved a yearning for metaphysical purpose—for intrinsic justice and meaning in any earthly event—that is destined for frustration by our real environment. The process of life is oblivious to the beings it makes and breaks in the course of its perpetuation. And while no living creature escapes this carnage, only humans bear the burden of awareness. An uninhabited globe…would be no unfortunate thing.”

“The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.”

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth.

Most people you see are just sleepwalking through their roles, absent from their own lives. They’re fully in character and don’t know any other way.

The notion of doership

This is the thing: the empty mind can access everything, but the ego fixation can access very little. The only one limiting us is our own fixation on being like *this*—‘I know what I'm like’—release from that, rest in the potential, and you find your mind is full of all kinds of weird shit.

Dzogchen doesn't ask you to change your religion, philosophy or ideology, nor to become something other than what you are. It only asks you to observe yourself and to discover the 'cage' you have built with all your conditioning and limits. In fact Dzogchen teaches us how to regain that freedom of being which we all have in potentiality. "Freedom" in this case means a state in which we are no longer conditioned by dualism, by judgements, by the passions and by everything we believe in. One might ask, "But what is then left of a person?" Pure presence, uncontaminated clarity, like that of a mirror that reflects everything, which is the true treasure of mankind

The only reason we have no true equanimity is because of ego-protection. We fear that “I” may be in some sort of danger, some sort of attack on “me”, which may make my life less secure. The security that everyone is looking for is a myth anyway. It is an illusion. There is no security. Everybody is subject to death, decay, disease, disappearance, changing his or her mind. There is no security in any of that. The lack of equanimity that arises when things happen that we don’t like is based on the illusion that we’ve lost something that is really significant to our well-being. This is our ego-protection. But even our well-being is an illusion because there is nothing that can ever make us truly well and lastingly secure.