Sunday, June 12, 2011

A person should learn to meditate on the spot

In human life, if you feel that you have made a mistake, you don’t try to undo the past or the present, but you just accept where you are and work from there. Tremendous openness as to where you are is necessary. This also applies to the practice of meditation, for instance. A person should learn to meditate on the spot, in the given moment, rather than thinking, “. . . When I reach pension age, I’m going to retire and receive a pension, and I’m going to build my house in Hawaii or the middle of India, or maybe the Gobi Desert, and THEN I’m going to enjoy myself. I’ll live a life of solitude and then I’ll really meditate.” Things never happen that way.

—Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Transcending Madness

1 comment:

Lily said...

They really don't work that way, do they? It's such a good goal, to be able to slow down like that, to just be where you are. Hard of course. Thanks for this quote.