Normally we divide the external world into that which we consider to be good or valuable, bad or worthless, or neither. Most of the time these discriminations are incorrect or have little meaning. For example, our habitual way of categorizing people as friends, enemies, and strangers depending on how they make us feel is both incorrect and a great obstacle to developing impartial love for all living beings. Rather than holding so tightly to our discriminations of the external world, it would be much more beneficial if we learned to discriminate between valuable and worthless states of mind.


Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Most of us think we're too busy or too important to rest for a day.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
To be or not to be. That's not really a question.
JEAN-LUC GODARD
To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.
TOM ROBBINS
Do I have the courage of being a ruthless man to myself with the complete knowledge on my manner or ...
FEREIDOON YAZDI
Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls i...
JOSEPH CONRAD
It's completely irrelevant whether something is good or bad or valuable or worthless.
MARC ABRAHAMS
To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be.
GOLDA MEIR
To be mad is worse than not to be if this is what it is.
JOHNNY RICH
Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy

"To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to re...
HENRY N. BEARD
Our life is composed of events and states of mind. How ewe appraise our life from our deathbed will ...
STEPHEN LEVINE
The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surpr...
C.S. LEWIS
For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or th...
GEORGE ORWELL
Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which ...
AZAR NAFISI
We can’t control the things or people that are external to us, that happen to us, but we can contr...
GYALWA DOKHAMPA
Be it in the West or the developing world, we are confronting grave problems in the violation of chi...
CAROL BELLAMY
We know only that we are living in these bodies and have a vague idea, because we have heard it, and...
TERESA OF AVILA
We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all...
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an...
LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD
Most often we keep looking for external things to make us feel better. It maybe a new gadget, clothe...
AVIJEET DAS
Most often we keep looking for external things to make us feel better. It maybe a new gadget, clothi...
AVIJEET DAS
Most often we keep looking for external things to make us feel better. It maybe a new gadget, clothi...
AVIJEET DAS
I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
My life will be what I make it," he told her. "That is true for all of us all the time. We cannot kn...
MARY BALOGH
It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON
To date or not to date that is the question. It's almost as important as Shakespeare's to be...
AL GOLDSTEIN
For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who wi...
DONALD WILLIAMS
If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that sometimes our assumptions and preconceived no...
ELIZABETH THORNTON
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It...
GEORGE ORWELL
I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who ...
NEIL GAIMAN
Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it make...
HENRY MILLER
Walter Lippmann suggests that the United States behaves like a society which thinks it is complete w...
GORE VIDAL
Isn't friendship amazing? At one time, our friends were just strangers to us. However, there was som...
JAMES A. MURPHY
I believe we are more ready to embrace our lives in the here and now when we are able to recognize t...
MARK SCANDRETTE
Once we stop “searching” for joyful feelings in people and things, no matter what polarity the e...
CHRISTOPHER DINES
We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I gu...
LIBBA BRAY
Anyways, that very same night there was a fight in the casino on B Deck. Some of the passengers got ...
CHRISTINA ENGELA
No, the secret is that there's no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as bes...
SáNDOR MáRAI
Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ...
GERMANY KENT
We are susceptible to heretical teachings because, in one form or another, they nurture and reflect ...
C. FITZSIMONS ALLISON
The external tanks are okay. The initial assessment is good for them. Just one of them had a little ...
HARRY WADSWORTH
We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the wor...
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
Every child comes into this world as a gift to humanity. It is up to us, as adults, to see that they...
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
We must know that when we invite people into our lives, we are not just inviting people; but we are ...
C. JOYBELL C.
If human pleasure did not have both a lid and a time limit, we would not bestir ourselves to do thin...
THOMAS LIGOTTI
Shaq pe hai yaqeen unko,
Yaqeen pe hai shaq Mujhy.....
.....Kis ka jhoot jhoot hai,
K...
VISHAL BHARADWAJ - HAIDER FILM
This coherence of the Bible itself, and of the Bible and the Church, is a coherence and a unity set ...
E. C. HOSKYNS
When we ask for love, we don't ask others to be fair to us-but rather to care for us, to be cons...
MORTIMER ADLER
It seems our fate to be incorrect (look where we live, for example), and in our incorrectness stand.
ALICE WALKER
I can't say when you'll get love or how you'll find it or even promise you that you will. I can only...
CHERYL STRAYED
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain f...
WILLIAM HAZLITT
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain f...
WILLIAM HAZLITT
We may all be inclined to think of man's countless foolish and selfish intentions, his twisted and m...
KARL BARTH
The more we claim to discriminate between cultures and customs as good and bad, the more completely ...
CLAUDE LéVI-STRAUSS
We all need to accept that everybody is different and that we cannot control the feelings, beliefs o...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA
We are born into a world that is much bigger than ourselves, one that is both enormously frightening...
KATARINA CLAIRE ENGLAND ROSS
I always thought time was the most valuable currency, but I realized the people we spent our time on...
HUBERT MARTIN
NOT UNTIL YOU LOSE WHAT YOU CONSIDER TO BE WORTHLESS WILL YOU REALIZE HOW VALUABLE IT IS.
JOB LAZARUS OKELLO.
We talk about social service, service to the people, service to humanity, service to others who are ...
THICH NHAT HANH
But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel...
WENDELL BERRY
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or...
ANONYMOUS
Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people,” I say. “Maybe we’re accumulating these ...
JANDY NELSON
To be, or not to be: what a question!
E.A. BUCCHIANERI
Life is similar to a bus ride.
The journey begins when we board the bus.
We meet people a...
CHIRAG TULSIANI
We all have original ideas. Even if we don't see ourselves as supercreative or as wild nonconfor...
ADAM GRANT
All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or receiving help, each one of u...
FRED ROGERS
We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a gre...
ANGELINA GRIMKE
However much we obfuscate or ignore it, we know that the factory farm is inhumane in the deepest sen...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
We're all on our own, aren't we? That's what it boils down to.

We come into this world o...
LOIS LOWRY
It used to be that you would hunt on the weekends. Nowadays, we love it so much and it's our little ...
BRIAN GLENN
In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessiona...
E.M. FORSTER
There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to li...
JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS
How much do you love me?' and "Who's in charge?" ....these two questions of LOVE and CONTROL undo us...
ELIZABETH GILBERT
If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistan...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable...
CECELIA AHERN
I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we c...
ALICE HOFFMAN
Gratitude is a state of mind that inherently recognizes interdependence with the external world, whe...
CAROLYN BAKER
Our human laws are more or less imperfect copies of the external laws as we see them.
JAMES A. FROUDE
The 'Star Trek' future, to me, is where we are headed. Everything is automated, and we are f...
GRAY SCOTT
If God give you strength and courage, don't use it to intimidate people or overpower them, rather us...
ANTHONY LICCIONE
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The...
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The...
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable...
CECELIA AHERN
Much as we complain about our condition or feel victimized by fortune or fellow humans, we simply lo...
JOHN LACHS
We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—a nation of bullies and bastards who ...
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Five billion people have played Hamlet. 'To be or not to be.' And how do you do that and fin...
ANNETTE BENING
We do not perceive what is "out ther," rather we perceive what is "in here." Our senses can only inf...
STANLEY COREN
We do not perceive what is "out there," rather we perceive what is "in here." Our senses can only in...
STANLEY COREN
We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. Bu...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
In the beginning, there’s a blank mind. Then that mind gets an idea in it, and the trouble begins,...
GEORGE SAUNDERS
We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they ...
JOSEPH ADDISON
The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they...
JOSEPH ADDISON
Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicin...
SHARON SALZBERG
To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, esc...
OLIVER SACKS
The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't mind some people dying all the time or m...
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI
The world is a beautiful place to be born into - if you don't mind some people dying all the time - ...
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI
For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hun...
HENRY MILLER
Some misapprehension, I say, some obliquity, or some slavish adherence to old prejudices, may thus c...
GEORGE MACDONALD

More Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. We all wish for world peace, but world peace will ne...
GESHE KELSANG GYATSO
Our mind is like a cloudy sky: in essence clear and pure, but overcast by clouds of delusions. Just ...
KELSANG GYATSO
Usually, we find it difficult to control our mind. It seems as if our mind is like a balloon in the ...
KELSANG GYATSO
The purpose of meditation is to make our mind calm and peaceful. If our mind is peaceful, we will be...
KELSANG GYATSO
We will discover through our own experience that this precious mind of love is the real wish-grantin...
KELSANG GYATSO
Every living being has the potential to become a Buddha: someone who has completely purified his or ...
KELSANG GYATSO
Due to mistakenly believing that outer problems are their own problems, most people seek ultimate re...
KELSANG GYATSO
You are just as attached to what you hate as what you love
DOMO GESHE
Love is a complex cocktail of states of mind.
DOMO GESHE
Compassion is wisdom experiencing craving for the welfare of another.
DOMO GESHE
Creativity is the nature of the great Dharma, ever evolving in accordance with the needs of living b...
DOMO GESHE
Now we must make effort to return to the effortless state.
DOMO GESHE
The Tin Rule is me first. The Silver Rule is you first. The Golden Rule is all of us first!
DOMO GESHE
“Beyond our own personal perception of the world existing or not existing - the world does exist" ...
DOMO GESHE
“When I sit for meditation, I am standing for what I believe in” Domo Geshe Rinpoche
DOMO GESHE
Getting what we want is much easier than caring for what we get!
DOMO GESHE
“Everyone is looking for happiness and avoiding suffering. This is the purpose of philosophy, the ...
DOMO GESHE
Yes, life is illusory, but the lessons are real
DOMO GESHE
Teaching the wise is like dancing with a sleepwalking angel!
DOMO GESHE
We overcome anger by disrespecting it as the solution to our problems.
DOMO GESHE
Everything you are now is the raw material needed to produce the result of the fully awakened state.
DOMO GESHE
I am at my best when I am not looking at myself but at others.
DOMO GESHE
The manure of everyday life is the rich soil to nurture the full flowering of our compassionate natu...
DOMO GESHE
Maintaining patience will helplessly generate equanimity, even in the face of difficulties!
DOMO GESHE
No matter how easy others make it for us to give up on our love for others, do not do it! Be kind!
DOMO GESHE
Ultimate reality cannot be made to be a co-dependent construct of fantasy in the form of cheese, mil...
DOMO GESHE
We could not be alive without identity; it seems that even in a coma, identity is still there.
DOMO GESHE
As for the way the inner inhabitants are created, if the obliteration [of sentient beings] occurs th...
PEMA LUNGTOK GYATSO
If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.
TENZIN GYATSO, THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
When things are desperate, there is no need to pretend that everything is beautiful.
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
We also often add to our pain and suffering by being overly sensitive, over-reacting to minor things...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
The main difference between us, Buddhism and other philosophies, is that we do not accept the notion...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
The essence of Buddhism is if you can, help others. If not, then at least refrain from hurting other...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
The foundation of the Buddha's teachings lies in compassion, and the reason for practicing the teach...
TENZIN GYATSO, THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Our enemies provide us with a precious opportunity to practice patience and love. We should have gra...
TENZIN GYATSO, THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
All the problems of the world - child labor, corruption - are symptoms of a spiritual disease: lack ...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Do not confuse peace of mind with spaced-out insensitivity. A truly peaceful mind is very sensitive,...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
I believe if we human beings keep our self-confidence and determination and use wisdom properly, I t...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
People are too serious. All the time, too serious.
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
The true antidote to greed is contentment. If you have a strong sense of contentment, it doesn't mat...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
We also often add to our pain and suffering by being overly sensitive, over-reacting to minor things...
TENZIN GYATSO, THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or c...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Dangerous consequences will follow when politicians and rulers forget moral principles. Whether we b...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Personally I'm quite jovial with not much worry. I do my best, which is moderation, and failure does...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Afflictive emotions - our jealousy, anger, hatred, fear - can be put to an end. When you realize tha...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
There can be no peace as long as there is grinding poverty, social injustice, inequality, oppression...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
From a certain point of view our real enemy, the true troublemaker, is inside.
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Some consider me as a living Buddha. That's nonsense. That's silly. That's wrong. If they consider m...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
If you lose your temper, your sound sleep will go, and you will have to use a tranquilizer or sleepi...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Dialogue is the most effective way of resolving conflict.
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Who provides the opportunity to cultivate patience? Not our friends. Our enemies give us the most cr...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
The way to overcome negative thoughts and destructive emotions is to develop opposing, positive emot...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Our enemies provide us with a precious opportunity to practice patience and love. We should have gra...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Time is always moving. The important thing is to learn from the past and then look forward to the fu...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
Compassion, forgiveness, these are the real, ultimate sources of power for peace and success in life...
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
If others are happy, we will be happy. If others suffer, ultimately we all suffer.
TENZIN GYATSO THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
The main difference between us, Buddhism and other philosophies, is that we do not accept the notion...
TENZIN GYATSO, THE 14TH DALAI LAMA