Top 150 Chögyam Trungpa Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

2. “To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

3. “Enlightenment is ego’s ultimate disappointment.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

4. “We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you’ll have no problem.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

5. “To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

6. “The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

7. “Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

8. “In order to develop love – universal love, cosmic love, whatever you would like to call it one must accept the whole situation of life as it is, both the light and the dark, the good and the bad. One must open oneself to life, communicate with it.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

9. “The basic work of health professionals in general, and of psychotherapist s in particular, is to become full human beings and to inspire full human-beingness in other people who feel starved about their lives.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

10. “The attainment of enlightenment from ego’s point of view is extreme death.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

11. “Things get very clear when you’re cornered.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

12. “Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

13. “Becoming “awake” involves seeing our confusion more clearly.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

14. “You must personally accept the responsibility of improving your own life.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

15. “Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news!”

— Chögyam Trungpa

16. “We cannot change the way the world is, but by opening ourselves to the world as it is, we may find that gentleness, decency and bravery are available – not only to us, but to all human beings.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

17. “If kindness doesn’t work, try more kindness.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

18. “Fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

19. “There is no such thing as talent, only awareness.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

20. “Fearlessness is extending ourselves beyond our limited view.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

21. “Buddhism doesn’t tell you what is false and what is true but it encourages you to find out for yourself.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

22. “The point is that whatever one is trying to learn, it is necessary to have firsthand experience, rather than learning from books or from teachers or by merely conforming to an already established pattern.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

23. “Nowness or the magic of the present moment is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

24. “For the warrior, every moment is a challenge to be genuine, and each challenge is delightful. When you let go properly, you can relax and enjoy the challenge.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

25. “Disappointment results from the removal of illusion.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

26. “The ideal of helping is to make others independent of you. You help them to become more independent rather than making them addicted to you.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

27. “Ultimately, the definition of bravery is not being afraid of yourself.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

28. “If you are telling the truth, then you can speak gently, and your words will have power.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

29. “Our life is an endless journey; it is like a broad highway that extends infinitely into the distance. The practice of meditation provides a vehicle to travel on that road. Our journey consists of constant ups and downs...”

— Chögyam Trungpa

30. “It’s easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

31. “A great deal of chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves. Having never developed sympathy or gentleness toward themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is also inharmonious and confused.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

32. “Helping others is a question of being genuine and projecting that genuineness to others. This way of being doesn’t have to have a title or a name particularly. It is just being ultimately decent.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

33. “Artistic vision is having the clarity to fall in love with what you see.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

34. “Sanity is permanent, neurosis is temporary.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

35. “Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

36. “Warriorship does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Warriorship is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

37. “The challenge of warriorship is to step out of the cocoon, to step out into space, by being brave and at the same time gentle.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

38. “If we open our eyes, if we open our minds, if we open our hearts, we will find that this world is a magical place. It is magical not because it tricks us or changes unexpectedly into something else, but because it can be so vividly and brilliantly.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

39. “When we clean up after ourselves, we have nothing to blame. When we begin to live our lives in that way, cleaning up after ourselves, what is left is further vision and further openness, which leads to cleaning up the rest of the world.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

40. “The challenge of warriorship is to live fully in the world as it is and to find within this world, with all its paradoxes, the essence of nowness. If we open our eyes, if we open our minds, if we open our hearts, we will find that this world is a magical place.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

41. “Too often, people think that solving the world’s problems is based on conquering the earth, rather than touching the earth, touching ground.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

42. “The strongest of us are those that are spiritually strong, and a spiritual warrior is one of vulnerability.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

43. “I would like to say, ladies and gentlemen, that you shouldn’t be afraid of who you are. That’s the first key idea. You shouldn’t be afraid of who you are. You should NOT be afraid of who you are. It’s very important for you to realize that.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

44. “The charnel ground is that great graveyard in which the complexities of samsara and nirvana lie buried.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

45. “Facing yourself is a question of honesty rather than condemning yourself. Good or bad the idea is simply to face the facts. Just see the simple, straightforward truth about yourself without cutting yourself down.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

46. “It’s all Ati. Now, let’s be practical.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

47. “You are sitting on the earth and you realize that this earth deserves you and you deserve this earth. You are there – fully, personally, genuinely.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

48. “Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle. You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin. You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone and marrow to the world.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

49. “Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

50. “Life is a straight drink – straight pleasure, straight pain, straightforward, one hundred percent.”

— Chögyam Trungpa