Picture of Chögyam Trungpa

Chögyam Trungpa

CTR Quote of the Week

The Bad News Is Good News

In the mahayana, inspiration comes from experiencing the spark of intelligence or enlightenment in us. Discovering that potential is one of the fundamental characteristics of the mahayana. Having looked into our feelings of inadequacy, pain, and confusion, we see them as neither good nor bad but as workable. In our day-to-day life, we find that the search for pleasure, either materialistic or spiritual, in unconvincing. Behind that whole approach is a sense of dissatisfaction and continual struggle.

Recognizing that dissatisfaction and struggle is the discovery of the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, or dukkha. However, that discovery of the universality of pain is the discovery of buddha nature as well. That realization is not stupid or ignorant, but intelligent. So the struggle we go through is an expression of enlightened mind. The bad news is itself good news.

From “A Golden Buddha,” in “Glimpses of Mahayana” one of four short works in Glimpses of the Profound, page 11.

Visit the Chogyam Trungpa Digital Library to access more than 550 audio and video recordings.

Share Quote

Subscribe to

Quote of the week

Our newsletter

Bodhisattva Activity

Bodhisattva activity is a model of action without ego’s goal orientation, at least theoretically. Bodhisattvas are mahayana practitioners who have vowed to help all sentient

Read More

In the Flash of One Second

Everyone possesses the unconditioned possibility of cheerfulness, which is not connected purely with either pain or pleasure. You have an inclination: in the flash of

Read More

Practice and Life

In the practice of meditation, you think that you’re practicing life. In fact, ironically, you begin to find that you can’t escape — that life

Read More

Just Being

Openness and awareness is a state of not manufacturing anything else; it is just being. There is a misunderstanding, particularly in connection with vipashyana, which

Read More

The Threshold of Magic

According to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, when a brilliant light comes to us in the after-death state, we shy away from it. When a

Read More

The Magic of One Taste

Because things have a self-existing simplicity, they do not need any reference point. That is one taste: no need for further reference point. It is

Read More

The Guru Is Not Superman

The popular idea of magic is the dream of the comic books–Clark Kent transforming himself into Superman. But a guru will not turn you upside

Read More

Devotion on the Buddhist Path

The mahayanists view the teacher as a spiritual friend–kalyanamitra in Sanskrit–which literally means “spiritual friend” or “companion in the virtue.” Virtue, as it is used

Read More

The Bodhisattva Has Vision

Student: The bodhisattva has committed him or herself to save all sentient beings, yet the bodhisattva is themself a sentient being. How are they different?

Read More

Cynical Letter

Licking honey from a razor blade, Eyes of the learned gouged out by books, The beauty of maidens worn by display, The warrior dead from

Read More

The Pain of Unmasking

We sometimes blame our reluctance to open ourselves on lack of experience: “I’m not learned enough”; “I don’t have enough practice.” But in fact our

Read More

Numb to the World

When we don’t want to hear or see the real truth, we close ourselves off and make ourselves numb to situations. We play at being

Read More

Non-Conceptual Giving

Good dharma is good unconscious gossip Good money flows through generosity Let us be truly non-conceptual and truly dharmic Let us have non-conceptual money-making and

Read More

What Do We Do with That?

Onto the disk of the autumn moon, clear and pure, you transplant a seed syllable. Cool blue rays of the seed syllable radiate immense, cooling

Read More