Top 240 Quotes & Sayings by Tenzin Palmo

We're normally caught up in the current of our thinking, feelings and emotions. With awareness, we can observe it all without being swept away. This gives us access to something much vaster and deeper than our usual compressed minds. All of us can access this. It's not so difficult. With some instruction and practice, anybody can do it.

Perhaps one of the main antidotes to depression, lack of self-esteem, loneliness and so forth is the recognition that we really do have Buddha nature. All the other problems like anger, jealousy, ambitions, are merely habitual patterns that we've learned, but aren't inherent to who we are.

If we greet situations with a positive attitude, we will eventually create positive returns. If we respond with a negative attitude, negative things will eventually come our way.

All of the external circumstances and the rude and difficult people we meet, instead of getting angry, upset, or frustrated, we see that we can take them all and use them on the path in a way that actually invigorates and strengthens us, rather than defeats us. It's all very practical advice, and that's why I talk a lot about how to make our daily life into Dharma practice, otherwise it's easy to feel hopeless and helpless.

We make the commitment to stop for a moment and look at what the mind is doing, what mind state we are dwelling in. We don't judge it, we just know it. Gradually we'll become more and more accustomed to being conscious of what we're thinking and our various positive and negative states. We'll become more and more the masters of our mind, rather than the slaves.

Ultimately there is light and love and intelligence in this universe. And we are it, we carry that within us, it’s not just something out there, it is within us and this is what we are trying to re-connect with, our original light and love and intelligence, which is who we are, so do not get so distracted by all this other stuff, you know, really remember what we are here on this planet for.

My mother's love was really not based on attachment. Her love was genuine love. To make me happy, not how I will make her happy.

The first thing is to learn how to quiet the mind, relax the mind, and bring the awareness to the front so that we are conscious of what we're doing when we're doing it without all the commentary.

I sometimes feel tremendous compassion and helplessness.

The power of thought is extremely powerful.

The point with Buddhism is that it doesn't just tell you to be good, it tells you how. It doesn't just say, "Don't be angry," it shows us the methods to help us not to be angry. It gives techniques for everything that it advises us to cultivate, and all the negative qualities we need to overcome and transform.

In the very deep darkness of this world, little pinpoints of light show up very brightly and can shine a long way.

We only think about the difficult people and the horrible things that happen. That's what gets all the media attention.

For any practice to work, the mind which is meditating on the object must merge. Often they are facing each other. One has to become completely absorbed, then the transformation will occur.

To become effortless takes a lot of effort. It's good to compare it to learning an instrument or learning a sport.

The more you realize, the more you realize how much there is to realize and, at the same time, how much you realize that there is nothing to realize. So, it's an enormous job, not something that is going to be finished in this lifetime.

Realization is wonderful, but you have to expand it until there's not a single defilement left in the mind and the mind is completely open and spacious. Even in that condition, you still use the relative mind. You use them both.

Because we're trying, because we want, it's very hard to get.

The Buddha always emphased the important of good friends.

It's very important to realize that every person that you meet, everything that you do, with the right attitude and a little awareness and skillful means - we can transform everything - all our joys and sorrows.

The purpose of dharma is to help your mind to expand, to grow, to clarify. It should uphold us and create an inner sense of peace, joy, and clarity.

We live in a society which is heading in one direction, so it's good to have at least a few friends who share the same values and can encourage us and help us to remember that we're not alone or peculiar, but that what we're doing is a very valid way of life. This will encourage us to put the Dharma at the centre of our life and not the periphery, to use our daily life as our Dharma practice.

One of the advantages of being born in an affluent society is that if one has any intelligence at all, one will realize that having more and more won't solve the problem, and happiness does not lie in possessions, or even relationships: The answer lies within ourselves. If we can't find peace and happiness there, it's not going to come from the outside.

Meditation is for you to realise that the deepest nature of your existence is beyond thoughts and emotions, that it is incredibly vast and interconnected with all other beings.

All of us are playing roles, and there's nothing wrong with playing roles because we have to live in this world - the problem is only when we believe in those roles.

It's not a matter of how much you know or can define, or how many millions of mantras or thousands of prostrations you have done, or how many months of wangs you've attended. The important thing is whether or not the mind is really changing, whether our negative emotions are really coming under control, whether we are really beginning to understand ourselves, whether our mind is really improving, and whether in our hearts there is genuine love and caring for other people.

Buddhism helps us to overcome our endless ego grasping mind to open up to something so much more spacious and genuinely meaningful.

Buddhism is the most active one! The whole time, we're dealing with the mind and how to tame it, and how to transcend our ordinary conventional mind. This takes an enormous amount of determination and perseverance. It also requires an attitude of being relaxed and spacious, rather than tense and stressed. It's certainly not a matter of lying back and expecting it all to happen. If we don't make it happen, it won't!

Some males are intelligent, some are dumb. Some females are intelligent, some are dumb. We're all human beings, no one is superior.

In fact there are beautiful people in this world doing incredibly selfless acts over and over and over. Dedicating their lives completely for the welfare and happiness of others.

Most of the people I talk to are not going to go off and live in a cave. Why should they? So I talk about how people can stop separating dharma practice - going on retreats, going to dharma centers, hearing talks, reading books - from their ordinary life.

Our pure awareness is not male or female.

I have made a vow to attain Enlightenment in the female form - no matter how many lifetimes it takes.

We have produced many of our problems through our confused mental states.

If we could turn around and stand back, then we would see the whole complete pattern. And therefore what we have to do in this lifetime is to perfect this pattern, so that it will continue a most beautiful pattern next time and next time and next time and next time because we vowed until samsara is empty! Now, that's going to be a long time, so you'd better get prepared for the long haul, and the best way to do that is to really prepare yourself as much as possible in this lifetime, and not waste your opportunities so that we can genuinely benefit beings, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly.

It's interesting to see people's projections because one lives very much in the world of projections.

One of the beauties of the Buddhadharma is there are so many approaches, and not everything is right for everybody.

If you don't find that people find you're easier to live with than you were before, if you don't find that your heart is feeling warmer toward others and if your negative emotions are not getting any better, then there's something wrong. That is always the touchstone of the Dharma practice.

You can still practice to be a better and kinder and happier person. That's perfectly possible.

The future of Dharma is in women's hands now because they have this energy which was never really tapped.

Most religions have always appreciated the extreme power of concentrated thought directed toward the benefit of others, especially when that person is practicing in solitude. That's why they have contemplative orders.

Meditation is a way to take us to a deeper level of awareness.

I think the problem with Western students is they're very ambitious.

We have to cultivate contentment with what we have. We really don't need much. When you know this, the mind settles down. Cultivate generosity. Delight in giving. Learn to live lightly. In this way, we can begin to transform what is negative into what is positive. This is how we start to grow up.

Each of us has something to do in this lifetime. We all have negative emotions to be purified and positive emotions to be cultivated. All of us need to reconnect to our source and drop our personal stories, don't we? Men, women, old, young, from here, from there - it is the same. All you can do is your practice. There is nothing else. Don't get caught up. Don't stop. We have to learn how to get out or our own way. Because ultimately, the only thing standing in our way is ourselves.

Our thinking can create liberation or it can create imprisonment. It depends on how we use our mind.

The dharma is the most precious thing in the world and we should put it at the center of our hearts and transform our whole lives into dharma practice. Otherwise, at the time of death, we will look back and say, now what was all that about? If we truly want to benefit others and ourselves, we have to do it. No excuses.

We shouldn't be too naïve, or taken in by charisma.

It's important to lighten up a bit!

Either we're aware and present, or we're not. There is no half way.

You see people swimming, and you think, oh, how wonderful to swim. But most people stand on the edge swaying back and forth, afraid to jump. They don't think they can swim.

The Buddha himself said, "I still use conceptual thinking, but I'm not formed by it." And that's the Buddha.

Actually we've got countless lifetimes, so relax.

Keep your practice very simple and don't be too ambitious.

Even if one isn't a committed Buddhist, it just helps us become better human beings.

The answer lies within ourselves. If we can't find peace and happiness there, it's not going to come from the outside.

I think to dwell continually on the dark side creates gloom and despair and anger and hatred, and that just adds to the darkness. So rather than that, we need to think of the beauty in the world, and also send out love and compassion to all beings in this world. Not just the people we like, but people who we find difficult. Because they are very deeply in need of compassion.

To me the special quality (which of course many men have as well) is first of all a sharpness, a clarityIt cuts through - especially intellectual ossification. Itgets to the point. To me the dakini principle stands for the intuitive force.

Develop confidence in your innate qualities and believe that these qualities will be brought to fruition.

People get very deep experiences and they think they're enlightened. That's not enlightenment, that's just some realization.