Top 150 Chögyam Trungpa Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Mindfulness is like a microscope; it is neither an offensive nor defensive weapon in relation to the germs we observe through it. The function of the microscope is just to clearly present what is there.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

102. “Sometimes one touches on a very painful spot where one is almost too shy to look into it, but somehow one still has to go through it. And by going into it, one finally achieves a real command of oneself. One gains a thorough knowledge of oneself for the first time.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

103. “We must begin our practice by walking the narrow path of simplicity, the hinayana path, before we can walk upon the open highway of compassionate action, the mahayana path.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

104. “There is something suspect about our inability to enjoy anything.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

105. “We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

106. “We can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spirituality when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

107. “Watchfulness is experiencing a sudden glimpse of something without any qualifications – just the sudden glimpse itself.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

108. “If we really prefer basic sanity or enlightenment, it’s irritatingly possible to get into it.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

109. “Just fully being skillful involves total lack of inhibition. We are not afraid to be. We are not afraid to live. We must accept ourselves as being warriors. If we acknowledge ourselves as warriors, then there is a way in, because a warrior dares to be, like a tiger in the jungle.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

110. “People’s creativity is very much alive, but when they get paid for their creativity, they often experience that as rather meaningless. Money as the reward for their creative process is very one-dimensional, a tremendous comedown.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

111. “We must see with our own eyes and not accept any laid-down tradition as if it had some magical power in it.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

112. “Synchronizing mind and body is not a concept or a random technique someone thought up for self-improvement. Rather, it is a basic principle of how to be a human being.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

113. “One day passes and another day comes along, and everything happens the same. But basically, we are so afraid of the brilliance coming at us, and the sharp experience of our life, that we can’t even focus our eyes.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

114. “Any perception can connect us to reality, properly and fully. What we see doesn’t have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

115. “Why don’t we just expand ourselves into our perfect form, our perfect being?”

— Chögyam Trungpa

116. “When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts, so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

117. “The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in a cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns. When we are constantly recreating our basic patterns of habits and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

118. “If we go somewhere on foot, we know the way perfectly, whereas if we go by car or airplane, we are hardly there at all. It becomes merely a dream.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

119. “The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

120. “There seems to be a hypnotic quality to ambition and speed, so that you feel that you are standing still just because you want to go so fast. You might actually be getting close to your goal.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

121. “Mindfulness does not mean pushing oneself toward something or hanging on to something. It means allowing oneself to be there in the very moment of what is happening in the living process – and then letting go.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

122. “A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

123. “Everyone loves something, even if it’s only tortillas.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

124. “You are actually doing something. You are getting into this process without making sure that what you’re doing is okay. Things are actually taking place, almost of their own accord, very simply and directly. That is meditation.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

125. “In fact, a person always finds when he begins to practice meditation that all sorts of problems are brought out. Any hidden aspects of your personality are brought out into the open, for the simple reason that for the first time you are allowing yourself to see your state of mind as it is.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

126. “The courage to work with ourselves comes as basic trust in ourselves, as a sort of fundamental optimism.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

127. “As long as we relate with our underlying primordial intelligence and as long as we push ourselves a little, by jumping into the middle of situations, then intelligence arises automatically.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

128. “Thus openness and surrendering are the necessary preparation for working with a spiritual friend. We acknowledge our fundamental richness rather than bemoan the imagined poverty of our being. We know we are worthy to receive the teachings, worthy of relating ourselves to the wealth of the opportunities for learning.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

129. “We could say that compassion is the ultimate attitude of wealth: an anti-poverty attitude, a war on want. It contains all sorts of heroic, juicy, positive, visionary, expansive qualities. And it implies larger scale thinking, a freer and more expansive way of relating to yourself and the world.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

130. “When you experience your wisdom and the power of things as they are, together, as one, then you have access to tremendous vision and power in the world. You find that you are inherently connected to your own being. That is discovering magic.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

131. “When we speak of God or achieving union with God, we are often merely trying to put that great thing into a small container. One cannot drive a camel through the eye of a needle.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

132. “One has to taste an experience for oneself and find out if the thing is genuine or helpful. Then, before discarding something, one has to go further, so that one gets firsthand experience.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

133. “Meditation practice is regarded as a good and in fact excellent way to overcome warfare in the world; our own warfare as well as greater warfare.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

134. “That is the basic pattern of this kind of meditation, which is based on three fundamental factors: first, not centralizing inward; second, not having any longing to become higher; and third, becoming completely identified with here and now.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

135. “If there is some profound method that offers a quick way, we would rather follow that than undertake arduous journeys and difficult practices. But some manual work and physical effort is necessary.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

136. “Our bodies demand our attention; our bodies demand that we actually pay attention to what is going on with our lives.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

137. “Because there is something difficult and destructive involved, there must be something creative involved as well. Relating to that creative aspect is the point.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

138. “Delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Delight is to open our eyes to the reality of the situation rather than siding with this or that point of view.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

139. “In the practice of sitting meditation you relate to your daily life all the time. Meditation practice brings our neuroses to the surface rather than hiding them at the bottom of our minds. It enables us to relate to our lives as something workable.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

140. “Faith is the readiness to reveal whatever is concealed. You don’t have to conceal doubts by putting on patches of self-confirmation. The readiness to be exposed seems to make the difference between ego’s approach to spirituality and an enlightened one.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

141. “Humans are the only animals that try to dwell in the future. You don’t have to purely live in the present situation without a plan, but the future plans you make can only be based on the aspects of the future that manifest within the present situation.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

142. “You can’t feel the earth if you can’t feel the space.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

143. “We should see money in terms of the expenditure of energy and how we are going to transmute that energy into a proper use.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

144. “This whole world is mind’s world, the product of the mind.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

145. “Opening to oneself fully is opening to the world.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

146. “Anything that is created must sooner or later die. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

147. “Someone who is seriously interested in meditation should not expect any feedback or promises from the practice. Most.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

148. “As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

149. “It could manifest and grow like seeds planted throughout your life, so that life itself becomes the guru. The idea is that life becomes the teacher all the time. This seems to be one of the very important messages of Milarepa’s life.”

— Chögyam Trungpa

150. “Why do you need to reassure yourself? That need for reassurance is precisely the point: We feel that something is leaking, but we don’t want to acknowledge it as such. There is a hole somewhere in our life that we try to plug up. All our posturing is a sign that we are just about to realize that we don’t exist in the way we thought we did. We actually know that intuitively. Yet we keep on trying to prove ourselves to ourselves, to ensure that we will survive.”

— Chögyam Trungpa