[OceanofDharma] Quotes of the Week: The Records that Count

[Carolyn Gimian]

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week

June 10, 2008

THE RECORDS THAT COUNT

The basic problem we seem to be facing is that we are too involved 
with trying to prove something, which is connected with paranoia and 
a feeling of poverty. When you are trying to prove or get something, 
you are not open anymore, you have to check everything, and you have 
to arrange it "correctly." It is such a paranoid way to live and it 
really does not prove anything. One might set records in terms of 
numbers and quantities -- that we have built the greatest, the 
biggest; we have collected the most, the longest, the most gigantic. 
But who is going to remember the record when you are dead? Or in one 
hundred years? Or in ten years? Or in ten minutes? The records that 
count are those of the given moment, of now -- whether or not 
communication and openness are actually taking place now....In the 
sacred writings, you never read stories of the bodhisattvas, the 
great practitioners of mahayana, receiving medals. And quite rightly 
so, because there is no need for them to prove anything. Their action 
is spontaneous. It is the open life, open communication, which does 
not involve struggle or speed at all.

 From "The Open Way," in CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, pages 
102 to 103.

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 
his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
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