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Tenzin Palmo

Tenzin Palmo Quotes

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Famous Tenzin Palmo Quotes

“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.”

“When you learn an instrument, it takes an awful lot of time to just learn the scales, and then eventually when you have completely mastered the instrument, the music plays for you. But you still have to keep practicing. And it takes an awful lot of practice. Nonetheless, if you diligently practice, hours and hours and hours and hours, you probably won't get it. You'll probably just end up hurting your fingers.”

“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 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.”

“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 Westerners are in a better position to practice true renunciation than uneducated Orientals because most Western people, by the time they come to the Dharma, have led a pretty full worldly life with lots of sensual pleasures, money and lots of toys to play with. They have seen that the path of accumulation of worldly treasure does not lead to happiness or contentment. That's why they come to the Dharma.”

“Even if the hermits do not appear to benefit other beings with their presence or teachings, still they are enormously inspiring to many. Perhaps, in this lifetime, they were meant to work on their own practice, to try to purify their own mindstream so that in future lifetimes (that will last a lot longer than this one), they will be fit vessels to give the teachings to others.”