We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.
Interpretation
Freedom is often romanticized, yet our habits can bind us tightly. We may believe we are free, but our routines might dictate our actions.
This quote by Sogyal Rinpoche highlights the paradox of freedom and habit. While people often cherish the idea of being free to make choices, in reality, many find themselves trapped by their established routines and behaviors, which can hinder true autonomy. It emphasizes the need for self-awareness and mindfulness in order to recognize and break free from the habits that control us.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth, you could use this quote to illustrate the impact of habits on one's freedom.
Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to bother it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar
Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.
There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.
{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don't question or doubt whether I am in the "correct" state or not. There is no effort, only rich understanding, wakefulness, and unshakable certainty. When I am in the nature of mind, the ordinary mind is no longer there. There is no need to sustain or confirm a sense of being: I simply am.
Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them.
Normally we do not like to think about death. We would rather think about life. Why reflect on death? When you start preparing for death you soon realize that you must look into your life now... and come to face the truth of your self. Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.
So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.
Though we take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left; you cannot bereave him of his covetousness.
Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.
There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
Techniques employ four qualities that reflect the nature of our world. Depending on the circumstance, you should be: hard as a diamond, flexible as a willow, smooth-flowing like water, or as empty as space.
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