Tuesday, June 10, 2008

[OceanofDharma] Quotes of the Week: The Records that Count


Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week

June 10, 2008

THE RECORDS THAT COUNT

The basic problem we seem to be facing is that we are too involved with trying to prove something, which is connected with paranoia and a feeling of poverty. When you are trying to prove or get something, you are not open anymore, you have to check everything, and you have to arrange it "correctly." It is such a paranoid way to live and it really does not prove anything. One might set records in terms of numbers and quantities -- that we have built the greatest, the biggest; we have collected the most, the longest, the most gigantic. But who is going to remember the record when you are dead? Or in one hundred years? Or in ten years? Or in ten minutes? The records that count are those of the given moment, of now -- whether or not communication and openness are actually taking place now....In the sacred writings, you never read stories of the bodhisattvas, the great practitioners of mahayana, receiving medals. And quite rightly so, because there is no need for them to prove anything. Their action is spontaneous. It is the open life, open communication, which does not involve struggle or speed at all.

From "The Open Way," in CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, pages 102 to 103.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission.

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Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications,  the Archive of his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
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