[OceanofDharma] Quotes of the Week: Belief Comes from Perception

[Carolyn Gimian]

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week

April 26, 2007

BELIEF COMES FROM PERCEPTION

It is worthwhile for individuals, even student and teacher, to have 
eye-level relationships. There is a Sanskirt term, kalyanamitra, 
which means "spiritual friend." It seems most appropriate that we 
relate to each other as friends, rather than as student and master as 
such. If we relate to one another as equal persons, the world in 
which we relate is also an equal situation. The physical living 
situation is the only way to relate with our lives as such. I do not 
believe in the mystical world, the ethereal world, the world of the 
unseen, unknown or whatever. There is no reason to believe in it, 
because we don't perceive it. Belief comes from perception. If 
there's no perception of something, we don't believe it. Belief does 
not come from manufacturing ideas. There may be millions of arguments 
and logics set forth, saying that there is an unseen world that 
operates on higher levels of consciousness, a world which fulfills 
human concerns, punishes those who don't believe, and so forth. But 
from the point of view of physics, that is unreal. I'm afraid I'm not 
going to say that there is another world. The world that we live in 
is the only world.

 From "Work, Sex, and Money," Talk One of an unpublished transcript 
of a seminar in Burlington, Vermont, April, 1972.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used 
by permission.

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Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications,  the Archive of 
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