The signs of progress
What are the signs of progress in our practice? What can we expect? Should we wait for a signal from the guru — or an award? According to Karma Chagme Rinpoche, we will have no experiences, no special dreams, no pure visions. The “king of all signs,” also known as the “sign of no-sign,” which was highly prized by the Kagyupa masters of the past, is when renunciation mind, sadness and devotion blaze in your mind. The signs to be cherished most include an escalating appetite for dharma practice; noticing the futility of everything you do; ever-increasing conflicts as a result of old habits; and while you may still have the urge to party with your friends, to be plagued by the unwelcome sense that the whole thing is a useless waste of time. Therefore do not constantly aim to finish the practice. Instead, try to accept that your spiritual journey will never end. Your journey began with the wish that you, personally, bring all sentient beings to enlightenment, so until that wish is fulfilled, your activities as a bodhisattva will never cease.
– Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
The practice of karma
Karma is not something complicated or philosophical. Karma means watching your body, watching your mouth, and watching your mind. Trying to keep these three doors as pure as possible is the practice of karma.
– Lama Yeshe
With thanks to Just Dharma Quotes
Signs of Practice
Calm and self-control are signs of listening to the Dharma;
Few passions, signs of meditation;
Harmony with everyone is the sign of a practitioner;
Your mind at ease, the sign of accomplishment.
– Dudjom Rinpoche
Perseverance
Lama Zopa Rinpoche says 
Every step we take is a step closer to the grave. As we walk, we should meditate on impermanence and death, otherwise that it will be a walk toward misery. Each step we take away from our room, that much of our life is gone. With the first step, that much of our life is gone; with the second step, that much more of our life is gone; and with the third . . .and so forth. By practicing mindfulness of impermanence like this, a walk can be so helpful.
Every step we take is a step closer to the grave. As we walk, we should meditate on impermanence and death, otherwise that it will be a walk toward misery. Each step we take away from our room, that much of our life is gone. With the first step, that much of our life is gone; with the second step, that much more of our life is gone; and with the third . . .and so forth. By practicing mindfulness of impermanence like this, a walk can be so helpful.It is the same when we are talking. With each word we say, that much of our life has gone. This is especially good to remember when we gossip, when we talk about meaningless things that cause delusions to arise. With that many words spoken, words that could have been highly meaningful for us and others, that much of our life has been wasted.
When we read a book, every word we read is one word closer to death; every page is one page closer to death. When we finish that book, it is one less book we will read in this life. When we eat a plate of rice, each time the spoon goes to our mouth, a spoonful of life has finished.
For every mantra we recite, think that life has become that much shorter; and after each mala, that our life is shortened by that much, that we are that much closer to death.
This is an especially effective meditation to do when we are driving because we are travelling at speed and so we can really feel how we are racing toward death. The faster we drive, the quicker we reach the hells. We might be driving to work or to a restaurant, but we are really driving to our place of execution.
The nature of impermanence is that we are all dying every moment. In a hospital there are doctors, nurses, and staff who are labelled “not dying” and terminally ill patients who are labeled “dying,” but in reality there is no such difference. We are all dying. Some of us have only a few hours left, some a few days, some a few years. And who is to say that the doctor treating the person in the last stages of cancer will outlive the patient? We all have a terminal condition called life. The difference between our illness and that of the cancer patient is just a matter of degrees. Ours will probably take a little longer to take effect.
All this is morbid and depressing unless we can see the truth in it and how this is the big wake-up call to get us to stop wasting our life. Seeing how we are racing toward death, we should think, “I must not waste my life. I must practice the Dharma purely. I must make my life highly beneficial by practicing bodhicitta. I will do whatever is of greatest benefit to sentient beings.” By thinking in all these different ways about impermanence and death, we should reach this conclusion.
From the chapter *Overcoming Laziness* in which Rinpoche offers commentary and guidance on how to overcome this greatest obstacle to our happiness from 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘥𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘷𝘢
Read the rest of *Overcoming Laziness*
From head to heart
One of my teachers said: “First hear and study, then you think about it and you become it.” And that’s the point: We go from head to heart and that transforms us. Then spontaneously, what we say, what we think, and what we do naturally arise from our understanding.
– Tenzin Palmo
With thanks to Just Dharma Quotes
No roots, no home
The clouds that wander through the sky have no roots, no home,
Nor do the distinctive thoughts floating through the mind. Once the self-mind is seen,
Discrimination stops.
– Tilopa
View, meditation, conduct and result
The realization that all phenomena of samsara and enlightenment are emptiness inseparable from naked awareness is the view.
To release present awareness within the spacious natural state and then to sustain the self-liberation of thoughts without grasping is meditation.
All post-meditative activity done harmoniously with the Dharma is the conduct.
The complete manifestation of that abiding nature is the result.
Dudjom Rinpoche
– Dudjom Rinpoche
With thanks to Just Dharma Quotes
We are in control
It is important to realize that there is nobody else who can wake us up and save us from samsara. There is no such thing in Buddhism. That may be Buddhism’s biggest drawback, and at the same time its greatest advantage. This view shows us that there is nobody else in control of our lives, our experiences, our freedom or our bondage. Who is responsible? Who is in control? It is us. We are in control. We can bind ourselves further in samsara or we can free ourselves from it right now. It is all up to us. We are the ones who have to keep looking at our thoughts, looking for the nature of our mind. There is no guru, deity, buddha or bodhisattva out there to look for it for us. Although they would happily do this, it would not help us; it would only help them. We have to do it for ourselves. That is the key point.
– Ponlop Rinpoche
from the book “Mind Beyond Death”
With thanks to Just Dharma Quotes
Who is your enemy?
“Who is your enemy? Mind is your enemy. No one can harm you more than your own untamed mind. And who is your friend? Mind is your friend. No one can help you more than your own mind, wisely trained.”
— Buddha
Being in harmony with the dharma
The categories of teachings are endless. The entrance doors to the vehicles are innumerable. The words to be explained are extensive. Even if you succeed in memorizing millions of volumes of dharma scriptures, unless you are able to practice the essential meaning, you can never be sure that they will help you at the moment of death. And even if your education in studies and reflections is boundless, unless you succeed in being in harmony with the dharma, you will not tame your enemy, negative emotions. Even if you succeed in being the owner of a trillion worlds, unless you can curtail your plans from within with the feeling that nothing more is needed, you will never know contentment. Unless you prepare yourself with the attitude that your death could happen at any time, you cannot achieve the great aim that is surely needed at the time of death.
– Longchenpa
With thanks to
Just Dharma Quotes
Death Might Come First
[𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵’𝘴 𝘜𝘵𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘕𝘦𝘦𝘥 by Pabongka Rinpoche] is the very heart advice or practice from deep inside the heart. This advice about death is something to think about seriously from the bottom of our heart. We are not just doing research on death, like for a university thesis. Here we are seriously thinking about our own death from the bottom of our heart.
We are looking at our own death, mainly to persuade us to practice Dharma; so that we don’t put off our practice for many months or many years or leave it for future lives. We think, “First I will do this (the works for this life), then I will do that later.” In this way, we put off Dharma practice for many months or years.
It persuades us to practice immediately, so in that way, we do the practice and don’t waste our life. Otherwise, there’s the risk that not only will we waste our life, but death might come first, before the practice. There’s the danger that even though we’re wishing and planning to practice, death might come before the practice. If we don’t hurry up, death might come before the practice, and then we will miss out. I think that’s the main point.
Also, it is very useful to see other people dying, especially family members, friends or people that we know. It’s a great teaching, a great reminder to practice Dharma. Practicing Dharma is not so much chanting mantras or doing other external things. Here, seeing the death of people we know, of family members or even people we live with, really makes us look at our life seriously. Our entire life up until now has passed in distraction.
Of course, we recited prayers, chanted mantras and this and that; but the real practice of renunciation didn’t happen. The cutting of desire, of clinging to this life, didn’t happen. The actual practice of Dharma didn’t happen. Here it reminds us to look at our own life up to now, at how we spent it. We have done many activities, but we haven’t really given up the desire clinging to this life. Here it reminds us of that.
When we see even the deaths of others, of family members or people that we know, it brings our attention to the fact that in the past we haven’t seriously practiced. It reminds us that now we have to give up all that distraction or desire, which has no meaning at all. Now we really have to dedicate our life to serious practice, freeing ourselves from desire.
We should practice this continuously, day and night. Other than this, nothing else in life is meaningful. There’s nothing there that will be useful at the time of death. So, it reminds us to really pay attention to our life and to practice seriously. Here seriously has mainly to do with our mind, with the purity of our mind, with its being free from the desire clinging to this life.
So, it’s very useful to see others’ deaths, and, of course, to visualize our own death. Pabongka says that the most effective one is to visualize ourselves as dead, on the bed, and then visualize all the things that usually happen when someone dies. The members of our family will come and cry. Our body will then be put in a coffin and taken to the cemetery. Before that, our breathing will change, and we will know that we’re dying and that everything will have to be left: our family, all our possessions and even our body. Everything will have to be left, and our consciousness alone will go to the next life.
This is like the tantric practice of meditating on the three kayas, in which we meditate on the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya that we’re going to achieve in the future as having happened now. In that way, we purify ordinary death, intermediate state and rebirth, and then use them to achieve enlightenment, the result-time three kayas. So, this effective meditation on impermanence and death is a little like that. We visualize that the whole process that is going to happen later is happening now, and then see what happens to our mind.
However, the main point is to persuade us to practice Dharma.
-Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Keep It Simple
Once you have committed to a particular path, I suggest that you look for the simplest way forward. You should make things accessible and approachable in your religious community and in your personal practice, rather than more complicated.
Keep it simple. The life of the spirit is actually very basic and easy. We often don’t appreciate that. In the beginning, our spiritual path may strike us as very simple and perfectly clear. But then, after we have been practicing it for a few years, we sometimes find ourselves going backward, and moving away from that initial simplicity. The spiritual breakthrough we experience may simply consist in rediscovering what we had seen in the beginning.
Spiritual discovery is not a matter of finding wisdom out there somewhere. It is a matter of discovering what already exists within us. Like cleaning the surface of a stone inscription, the more you clean it, the more the original carving becomes apparent. We are like that stone. With spiritual practice, instead of gaining something we did not have before, we gradually make ourselves clearer to ourselves.
– 17th Karmapa
With thanks to Just Dharma Quotes
Be as simple as you can be
“Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become. Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself… ” ― Paramahansa Yogananda
We are all bodhisattvas, doing our best
“A bodhisattva doesn’t have to be perfect. Anyone who is aware of what is happening and who tries to wake up other people is a bodhisattva. We are all bodhisattvas, doing our best.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Right here with us
Only when we have a genuine, abiding desire to free ourselves from suffering and all its causes does our spiritual journey begin. That original desire is very potent and very real. It is the basis upon which we enter the path that will lead us to our goal. Yet from the point of view of the Vajrayana, or tantric, school of Buddhism, there is no place to go on that path, no end of the road where we will one day satisfy our thirst for liberty. Why? Because the very thing that we are looking for — freedom, wakefulness, enlightenment — is right here with us all the time.
– Ponlop Rinpoche
Dharma talks aren’t the truth
“Dharma talks aren’t the truth. The true Dharma exists in the mind of the students as seeds and the Dharma talks are just like a little cloud that releases rain and causes the seeds in the mind of the practitioners to sprout and manifest.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh
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