Indestructible Truth Quotes

“Truth makes little sense and has no real impact if it is merely a collection of abstract ideas. Truth that is living experience, on the other hand, is challenging, threatening, and transforming. The first kind of truth consists of information collected and added, from a safe distance, to our mental inventory. The second kind involves risking our familiar and coherent interpretation of the world -it is an act of surrender, of complete and embodied cognition that is seeing, feeling, intuiting, and comprehending all at once. Living truth leads us ever more deeply into the unknown territory of what our life is.”
― Reginald A. Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism

“From the Nyingma perspective, without emphasis on realization in this life, Buddhism will produce good people but not awakened saints. Thus their critique of a life consisting primarily of study and ethical behavior: when a religion is composed only of “good” and learned people without the freedom, wildness, and accuracy of awakened ones, it can become stuck.”
― Reginald A. Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism

“As understood in Tibet, the king’s particular function is to join heaven and earth. Heaven refers to the sphere of spiritual truth and reality, includ­ing the world of unseen beings as well as the realm of ultimate reality itself. Earth is the realm of practicality. The king, then, is supposed to provide the connecting link, bringing spiritual reality down and making it real in this world. He is to rule over human society in such a way that it reflects and respects “the ways things are” in the largest sense. Tibetans say that their first kings originated in the mists of prehistory. Originally, these rulers were sacred beings who came from heaven and returned there at the end of their lives.”
― Reginald A. Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism

“There is a dimension to the accumulation of merit that can only be called magical. We begin to exert ourselves in performing acts of kindness and love toward others. With the help of meditation, we begin to tone down some of our sharper and more aggressive edges. And strangely, the complexion of our world begins to change. We begin to find ourselves softer, more open, and more able to work our way through the extremes of our own self-absorption. And in the external world, we notice doors opening that had seemed firmly shut in the way of time, opportunities, and encouragement for practice. This change cannot be quantified. But it is also undeniable, as if the world had heard our attempts at helping others as itself a call for help; and as if the world responded with its own, much vaster outpouring of love.”
― Reginald A. Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism