“Gaining another job promotion or giving birth to a new baby or finding a new boyfriend or girlfriend will never give us genuine fulfillment. It is not that such events can’t be enriching at one level, it’s just that they are not intrinsically enriching. Our worldly experiences and achievements will always be a source of dissatisfaction because of our misplaced trust and hope. It is not hope and trust in general that is being referred to here, but rather the hope and trust that we might gain release from our samsaric malaise. Our underlying feelings of futility or entrapment only reflect the nature of conditioned existence, and nothing that we do in a worldly sense will ever really alleviate that.”
―
Traleg Kyabgon,
The Practice of Lojong: Cultivating Compassion through Training the Mind
