Here are 10 inspiring quotes that I've selected from Tsem Tulku Rinpoche's book, "If Not Now,When?". There were many beautiful and meaningful quotes in the book, but somehow, these 10 quotes attracted my attention.
Here are the 10 quotes:
- The greatest mind is not about wanting other people to change; but you yourself changing and accepting other people. The greatest mind is to stop thinking when THEY will change. No. We should think, "When will I change?"
- Spiritual practice is not about going to places and chanting, knowing the stuff and debating. Spiritual practice is the transformation of our perspective and how we look at things. It is how much our mind has changed from negative to positive. That is spiritual practice.
- We can bring joy to others if we have controlled our minds. We can control our minds if we take any holy being's teachings - of Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus Christ, Krishna - and we really sincerely practice them, not just follow blindly, then we will see a big difference.
- If we are going to pray for and benefit the world, we should start with the people we live with. We don't talk about world peace, we talk about the people we live with.
- If we have been having arguments with our wife, we should stop thinking, "Why is my wife like that? Maybe we should start thinking, "Why do I react to my wife life like that?" and let go and change ourselves.
- If you blame others for everything wrong in your life, you give control over your life to them. If you control your life, you cannot blame others.
- Gymnast, lazy people, complainers and successful people have all practiced to be what they are good at. So, if you keep practicing being lazy, you will be lazy. If you keep practicing complaining, you will always complain. If you practice compassion, generosity, patience, working hard and having a bigger vision, you will become better at it with time because you will create the causes to become better. You are practicing to become better.
- God and Buddha cannot get rid of hatred but a development of love within ourselves can. Forgiveness is the start.
- Time and death of people will not stand still for you to finish your project, plans, works and wishes. If the real reason for what we are doing now is to bring happiness to those we care about, and we neglect, mistreat, forget them or make them sad, then how do we know they will still be around or alive when we are ready?
- What matters is right now. How you react.
Good to contemplate and reflect on these wise words from Rinpoche, don't you think?
(The photo above was taken by me last December while taking a short break at Marriot Putrajaya Resort.)
