Milarepa Quotes

When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.

Deep in the wild mountains, is a strange marketplace,where you can trade the hassle and noise of everyday life, for eternal Light.

Life is short and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourself to meditation. Avoid doing evil, and acquire merit, to the best of your ability, even at the cost of life itself. In short: Act so that you have no cause to be ashamed of yourselves and hold fast to this rule.

My religion is to live and die without regret.

I have no desire for wealth or possessions, and so I have nothing. I do not experience the initial suffering of having to accumulate possessions, the intermediate suffering of having to guard and keep up possessions, nor the final suffering of loosing the possessions.

In the gap between thoughts nonconceptual wisdom shines continuously.

In the monastery of your heart, you have a temple where all Buddhas unite.

All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances.

All meditation must begin with arousing deep compassion. Whatever one does must emerge from an attitude of love and benefitting others.

My religion is not deceiving myself.

Accustomed long to contemplating love and compassion I have forgotten all difference between myself and others

If one stays too long with friends They will soon tire of him; Living in such closeness leads to dislike and hate. It is but human to expect and demand too much When one dwells too long in companionship.

Do not entertain hopes for realization, but practice all your life.

Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning? Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like thunder?

In horror of death, I took to the mountains - again and again I meditated on the uncertainty of the hour of death, capturing the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind. Now all fear of death is over and done.

The affairs of the world will go on forever, do not delay the practice of meditation. Once you have met with the profound instructions from a meditation master, with single pointed determination, set about realizing the Truth.

In harvesting of evil deeds, the human race is busy; and doing so is to taste the pangs of Hell . . . The piling up of wealth is the piling up of others' property; what one thus storeth formeth but provisions for one's enemies... I wash off human scandal by devotion true; and by my zeal, I satisfy the Deities. By compassion, I subdue the demons; all blame I scatter to the wind, and upward turn my face.

You menace others with your deadly fangs. But in tormenting them, you are only tormenting yourselves.

He who knows that all things are his mind, That all with which he meets are friendly, Is ever joyful.

I need nothing. I seek nothing. I desire nothing.

Hasten slowly and ye shall soon arrive.

To attain Buddhahood ... we must scatter this life's aims and objects to the wind.

Mental activity in the daytime creates a latent form of habitual thought which again transforms itself at night into various delusory visions sensed by the semi-consciousness. This is called the deceptive and magic-like Bardo of Dream.

One should see that all appearance is like mist and fog.

Take the lowest place, and you shall reach the highest.

When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick