Yongey Mingyur > Quotes

“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“Emotional states are fairly quick bursts of neuronal gossip. Traits, on the other hand, are more like the neuronal equivalent of committed relationships.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

“If you're determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so.”
― Yongey Mingyur, Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom

“A disciplined mind invites true joy.”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“We choose ignorance because we can. We choose awareness because we can. Samsara and nirvana are simply different points of view based on the choices we make in how to examine and understand our experience. There’s nothing magical about nirvana and nothing bad or wrong about samsara. If you’re determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so, and that the opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“Daily life provides countless occasions for adapting to change and impermanence. Yet we squander these precious opportunities, assuming that we have all the time in the world.”
― Yongey Mingyur, Turning Confusion into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism

“The funny thing about the mind is that if you ask a question and then listen quietly, the answer usually appears.”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“Confusion, I was taught, is the beginning of understanding,”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“Right here, I thought, right now, is where the suffering arises. Between the sound and the projection, between things as-they-are and things as-we-want-them-to-be. This is what the Buddha taught: To misperceive reality is to suffer.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

“We do not need to get rid of the ego—this unchanging, solid, and unhealthy sense of self—because it never existed in the first place.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

“When we become fixed in our perceptions, we lose our ability to fly.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom

“The essence of Buddhist practice is not so much an effort at changing your thoughts or your behavior so that you can become a better person, but in realizing that no matter what you might think about the circumstances that define your life, you’re already good, whole, and complete. It’s about recognizing the inherent potential of your mind. In other words, Buddhism is not so much concerned with getting well as with recognizing that you are, right here, right now, as whole, as good, as essentially well as you could ever hope to be.”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“Nothing endures but change, and accepting this has the potential to transform the dread of dying into joyful living.”
― Yongey Mingyur, In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

“...I began to see that when the pace of external of material progress exceeded the development of inner knowledge, people seemed to suffer deep emotional conflicts without any internal method of dealing with them. An abundance of material items provides such a variety of external distractions that peolpe lose the connection ito their inner lives.”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“The teachings of the Buddha—and the lesson inherent in this exercise in non-meditation—is that if we allow ourselves to relax and take a mental step back, we can begin to recognize that all these different thoughts are simply coming and going within the context of an unlimited mind, which, like space, remains fundamentally unperturbed by whatever occurs within it.”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“All phenomena are expressions of the mind.”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“It [mind of absolute reality] is everywhere and nowhere. It’s somewhat like sky—so completely integrated with our existence that we never stop to question its reality or to recognize its qualities.”
― Yongey Mingyur, In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

“Through the practice of shamata meditation, the tumultuous habits of mind calm down; and then we can investigate the characteristics of the calm waters beyond the monkey’s control. This is called vipashyana—or insight—meditation. I knew monkey mind intimately. I also knew that when we dismiss any value to knowing this monkey, it’s like owning a car without knowing how to drive. The less we know about the chattering, muttering voice in our heads that tells us what to do, what to believe, what to buy, which people we should love, and so forth, the more power we grant it to boss us around and convince us that whatever it says is true.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

“The entire path is a shift in perception.”
― Yongey Mingyur, Turning Confusion into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism

“TO CUT THROUGH problems, we need problems.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom

“Let your own experience serve as your guide and inspiration. Let yourself enjoy the view as you travel along the path. The view is your own mind, and because your mind is already enlightened, if you take the opportunity to rest awhile along the journey, eventually you’ll realize that the place you want to reach is the place you already are.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“My maroon robes, yellow shirt, and shaved head identified me as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, a lama by profession—a perfect disguise for the disorderly mix of curiosity, anxiety, and confidence that accompanied my every heartbeat—and who in so many ways was still seeking the answer to my father’s question: Who is Mingyur Rinpoche?”
― Yongey Mingyur, In Love with the World: What a Buddhist Monk Can Teach You About Living from Nearly Dying

“Recognizing the fluidity of all forms disempowers the false claims of the fixed mind.”
― Yongey Mingyur, In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

“Judging someone for looking unclean or smelling bad, or being loud, or anything, is a pretty neurotic way to seek happiness—but it provides a toehold to climb up from and allows you to temporarily enjoy the illusion that you are better than someone else. It’s never just: They are bad. It is also: Therefore, I am good.”
― Yongey Mingyur, In Love with the World: What a Buddhist Monk Can Teach You About Living from Nearly Dying

“Ego is not an object; it’s more like a process that follows through on the proclivity for grasping, and for holding on to fixed ideas and identities. What we call ego is really an ever-changing perception, and although it is central to our narrative story, it is not a thing. It therefore cannot really die, and cannot be killed or transcended. This tendency for grasping arises when we misperceive the constant flow of our body and mind and mistake it for a solid, unchanging self. We do not need to get rid of the ego—this unchanging, solid, and unhealthy sense of self— because it never existed in the first place. The key point is that there is no ego to kill.”
― Yongey Mingyur, In Love with the World: What a Buddhist Monk Can Teach You About Living from Nearly Dying

“After a few years of asking some very pointed questions in public teachings and in private counseling sessions, I began to see that when the pace of external or material progress exceeded the development of inner knowledge, people seemed to suffer deep emotional conflicts without any internal method of dealing with them.”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“limited by what is commonly referred to as dualism—the idea of a distinct and inherently real “self” that is separate from an apparently distinct and inherently real “other.” As we’ll explore later, dualism is not a “character flaw” or defect. It’s a complex survival mechanism deeply rooted in the structure and function of the brain—”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“The opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“Through applying intention as well as attention to an experience, a person is able to shift the meaning of an experience from a painful or intolerable context to one that is tolerable or pleasant. Over”
― Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“By habit we perceive ourselves and the world around us as solid, real, and enduring. Yet without much effort, we can easily determine that not one aspect within the whole world’s system exists independent of change. I had just been in one physical location, and now I was in another; I had experienced different states of mind. We have all grown from babies to adults, lost loved ones, watched children grow, known changes in weather, in political regimes, in styles of music and fashion, in everything. Despite appearances, no aspect of life ever stays the same. The deconstruction of any one object—no matter how dense it appears, such as an ocean liner, our bodies, a skyscraper, or an oak tree—will reveal the appearance of solidity to be as illusory as permanence. Everything that looks substantial will break down into molecules, and into atoms, and into electrons, protons, and neutrons. And every phenomenon exists in interdependence with myriad other forms. Every identification of any one form has meaning only in relationship to another. Big only has meaning in relation to small. To mistake our habitual misperceptions for the whole of reality is what we mean by ignorance, and these delusions define the world of confusion, or samsara.”
― Yongey Mingyur, In Love with the World: What a Buddhist Monk Can Teach You About Living from Nearly Dying