Quotes by Chogyam Trungpa

About Chogyam Trungpa:

Chögyam Trungpa was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anythin...

Chogyam Trungpa

If you are involved with the intensity of crescendo situations, with the intensity of tragedy, you might begin to see the humor of these situations as well. As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to he...

Chogyam Trungpa

In the process of burning out these confusions, we discover enlightenment. If the process were otherwise, the awakened state of mind would be a product dependent upon cause and effect and therefore liable to dissolution. Anything which is created mus...

Chogyam Trungpa

As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music.

Chogyam Trungpa

Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other 'undesirable' side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there...

Chogyam Trungpa

As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.

Chogyam Trungpa

They were the good old days. Don't give up hope in the bad new days, which will become then good old days. We appreciate because he was killed; was a great man. If you'd meet or on the spot you'd be pissed off. History is very deceptive, reality is m...

Chogyam Trungpa

Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.

Chogyam Trungpa

If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness ...

Chogyam Trungpa

Hope and fear cannot alter the season.

Chogyam Trungpa

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

Chogyam Trungpa

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

Chogyam Trungpa

When we find ourselves in a situation in which our buttons are being pushed, we can choose to repress or act out, or we can choose to practice. If we can start to do the exchange, breathing in with the intention of keeping our hearts open to the emba...

Chogyam Trungpa

When you eat with awareness, you find that there is more space, more beauty. You begin to watch yourself, to see yourself, and you notice how clumsy you are or how accurate you are…When you practice awareness, everything becomes majestic and good. ...

Chogyam Trungpa

We are not interested in developing eternity or immortality, or in preventing being sick or being born. We are interested in doing something while we are alive, while we are breathing, while we can see the beauty of the snow, the flowers, the blue sk...

Chogyam Trungpa

Whether we eat, sleep, work, play, whatever we do life contains dissatisfaction, pain. If we enjoy pleasure, we are afraid to lose it; we strive for more and more pleasure or try to contain it. If we suffer pain we want to escape it. We experience di...

Chogyam Trungpa

Author Bio

  • NameChogyam Trungpa
  • DescriptionBuddhist Writer
  • BornFebruary 28, 1939
  • DiedApril 4, 1987
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Author; Painter