Tibet Quotes

“Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.”
― Jeffrey Rasley, Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal

“Wherever I live, I shall feel homesick for Tibet. I often think I can still hear the cries of wild geese and cranes and the beating of their wings as they fly over Lhasa in the clear, cold moonlight. My heartfelt wish is that my story may create some understanding for a people whose will to live in peace and freedom has won so little sympathy from an indifferent world.”
― Heinrich Harrer, Seven Years in Tibet

“No sane person fears nothingness.”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Tibetan Book of the Dead

“I meditate, and when I do, Prince Harry appears in my subconscious and meditates with me. It's a little strange but I don't think there's anything I can do about it. Sometimes he's not the only one; the other day it was me, Prince Harry, the Dalai Lama, Mr. Rogers, Coco the gorilla, and George Clooney. We were all floating above the earth looking down at the continents as they passed. George Clooney suggested I visit Providence, Rhode Island. The Dalai Lama sighed deeply and said he'd like to visit Tibet.
Poor Dalai Lama.”
― Kristin Cashore

“Whenever ego suffers from fear of death & your practice turns to seeing impermanence, ego settles down.”
― Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Carefree Dignity: Discourses on Training in the Nature of Mind

“How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.”
― Kathryn Hurn, HELL HEAVEN & IN-BETWEEN: One Woman's Journey to Finding Love

“Achala, worrying and scheming about your next life, before you have even completed this one, is not a good practice." Rinpoche”
― Daniel Prokop, Taking It With You: Everybody knows you can't take anything with you when you die... almost everybody.

“There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. it should be open to the spirit not to lock itself up in the letter. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death.”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Tibetan Book of the Dead

“Humanity Must SAVE Tibet!”
― Timothy Pina, Hearts for Haiti: Book of Poetry & Inspiration

“The flowers in Tibet were always taller, more fragrant and vivid. Her descriptions, imprecise but unchanging from year to year lead me to an inevitable acceptance that her past was unequaled by our present lives. She would tell me of knee-deep fields of purple, red and white- plants never named or pointed out to during our years in India and Nepal- that over time served to create an idea of her fatherland, phayul, as a riotous garden. I pictured her wilderness paradise by comparing them not to the marigolds, daises or bluebells I crushed with my fingers, but to the shape of household artefacts around me: lollipop, broom, bottle. Disparate objects that surrendered to and influenced the idea, space and hope of a more abundant and happy place.”
― Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, A Home in Tibet

“Leftist university professors in Western Europe and the United States have also been agitated about one other country’s wars—Israel’s. Hence the numerous attempts by Leftist professors at Western universities to boycott Israeli professors and universities. But, of course, Chinese professors and universities are not only exempt from boycotts; they are enthusiastically sought after despite the lack of elementary freedoms in China, the Chinese government’s incarceration of dissidents in psychiatric wards, the decimation of much of Tibetan culture, and the increasing Chinese occupation of that ancient country.”
― Dennis Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph

“Our minds have no real or absolute boundaries; on the contrary, we are part of an infinite field of intelligence that extends beyond space and time into realities we have yet to comprehend. The beyul and their dakini emissaries are traces of the original world, inviting us to open to the abiding mystery at the heart of all experience, the inseparability that infuses every action, thought, and intention.”
― Ian Baker, The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place

“Life starts in nature and returns to nature.”
― Xinran, Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet

“The weirdest thing about Tibet is that the most popular beer is Pabst Blue Ribbon. Everywhere, even on the slopes of Everest, cans of Pabst lay alongside the road labeled, 'Established in Milwaukee in 1849'.”
― Scott Stoll, Falling Uphill: 25,742 Miles, 1461 Days, 50 Countries, 6 Continents & 4 Monents of Enlightenment on a Bicycle

“Power deities, for all their strength, are very much like humans, They are subjects to periods of despair and are not free from the crippling consequences of emotions, For over two decades Tibetans were forbidden from holding any religious ceremonies or prayers. No prayer flags, incense or ceremonies were offered to the deities and demi-gods of the region. This neglect broke their hearts and they became bedraggled and weak.”
― Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

“The general kind and soft customs of Mustang were soon to strike me as exceptional. Apart from occasional disputes between husband and wife, which like family rows all around the world bring raised voices, I never heard a person scream or shout; Even the children had very civilised manners. In fact the only person I knew to consistently angry in Lo Mantang was myself, and Tibetans consider bd temper a Western characteristic. Take for example the reactions of European to missing his train; he will invariably swear under his breath. Who in our can stand frustration without giving vent to anger? I soon had to master my own temper, having raised my voice against one of the innumerable people who stopped to stare at me and my smal party, I was told by a peasant: ‘’I cannot understand; you are a great man, how is it that small things like myself deserve your wrath?’’ After that I learned to be tolerant, realising that by getting mad I was only debasing myself, and that it was stupid to be bothered by trivialities.”
― Michel Peissel, Mustang: A Lost Tibetan Kingdom

“Somewhere beyond Tibet, among the icy peaks and secluded valleys of Central Asia, there lies an inaccessible paradise, a place of universal wisdom and ineffable peace called Shambhala . . . It is inhabited by adepts from every race and culture who form an inner circle of humanity secretly guiding its evolution.

In that place, so the legends say, sages have existed since the beginning of human history in a valley of supreme beatitude that is sheltered from the icy arctic winds and where the climate is always warm and temperate, the sun always shines, the gentle airs are always beneficent and nature flowers luxuriantly.”
― Victoria LePage, Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shangri-La

“Where the rivers come, there shall they return.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Its waters yawn with the same fathomless intensity as Rakshas Tal, but the peacock blue has deepened to a well of pure cobalt, edged by snow mountains that overlook it from one horizon to another.”
― Colin Thubron, To a Mountain in Tibet

“Phía Đông của cao nguyên Tây Tạng là chỗ xuất phát của nhiều con sông lớn nữa, trong đó có Hoàng Hà, Trường Giang và Cửu Long. Hoàng Hà và Trường Giang là hai con sông trọng yếu nhất của Trung Quốc, dòng chảy của chúng là quê hương của một nền văn hóa thâm hậu nhất của loài người mà về sau tôi sẽ đi thăm. Còn Cửu Long là nguồn sống của nhiều nước Đông Nam Á, trong đó có Việt Nam. Nếu lấy cao nguyên Tây Tạng làm tâm điểm, vẽ một vòng tròn bán kính chưa đến ngàn cây số thì vòng tròn đó bao gồm tất cả nguồn cội của những con sông nói ở trên. Chỉ điều đó thôi đã gây cho tôi một lòng kính sợ đối với cao nguyên Tây Tạng, "nóc nhà của thế giới". Đúng, không phải là sự ngẫu nhiên khi ánh sáng của minh triết loài người xuất phát từ vùng đất lạ lùng này. Tôi đã đến Cửu Long giang miền Tây Nam Bộ và từng thấy con nước mãnh liệt của nó. Nguồn của nó không phải tầm thường, dòng sông đó là anh em với Hằng hà, Trường Giang, nó mang khí lạnh của Hy Mã, sức sáng của tuyết trắng, sự uy nghi của non cao, cái bí ẩn của các Man-đa-la vô hình. Nếu nó có bị ô nhiễm thì cũng vì con người bạc nghĩa, thế nhưng dù thế nó vẫn nhân hậu sống theo người. Nó vẫn không hế mất tính thiêng liêng của nguồn cội và vì tâm người ô nhiễm nên cảm nhận chúng nhiễm ô. Về sau, tôi còn đến Hằng hà nhiều lần trên bước lữ hành tại Ấn Độ cũng như sẽ có dịp đi dọc Trường Giang qua những vùng linh địa của Trung Quốc. Rồi lại có ngày tôi đã tôi đã đến cao nguyên Tây Tạng, đi dọc sông Tsangpo chảy từ hàm ngựa và thở hít không khí loãng trên miền đất cao 4000m trong Man-đa-la vĩ đại của địa cầu. Một ngày nào đó hy vọng tôi sẽ có dịp đến thượng nguồn Cửu Long, sẽ thấy một màu nước xanh lục như màu nước Hằng hà và sẽ nhớ về miền Tây Nam Bộ của mình.”
― Nguyễn Tường Bách, Mùi Hương Trầm

“Whether this mysterious sanctuary hidden amid Pemako’s mist-shrouded mountains can ever be located geographically is of secondary importance to the journey itself. In the Buddhist tradition, the goal of pilgrimage is not so much to reach a particular destination as to awaken within oneself the qualities and energies of the sacred site, which ultimately lie within our own minds.”
― Ian Baker, The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place

“The Falls of the Tsangpo had offered turn-of-the-century explorers a geographical quest to rival the search for the headwaters of the Nile. But the Tibetans—who knew of it already—did not view the falls as a topographical trophy but as a sacrament, a threshold between the physical universe and the world of the spirit.”
― Ian Baker, The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place

“As I followed the accounts of Tibetan pilgrims, as well as those of Victorian and Edwardian explorers, Pemako became for me a realm of unbounded possibility, a place where geographical exploration merged with discoveries of the spirit.”
― Ian Baker, The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place

“From time to time we see hearthrugs moving over the slopes. With quaintly hunched shoulders and bushy culottes, these are yaks. In their darkly dripping coats they stand out like rocks against the bleached grass where they graze.”
― Colin Thubron, To a Mountain in Tibet

“I was aware that in handing these pictures out I was breaking the law. But what the hell. They had nuisance value. They made the Tibetans happy.”
― Paul Theroux, Riding the Iron Rooster

“I was happier than I had been since starting this trop on The Iron Rooster. I was driving. I was in charge. I was taking my time; and Tibet was empty. The weather was dramatic-snow on the hills, a high wind, and black clouds piled up on the mountains ahead. I also thought: I didn't die the other day.”
― Paul Theroux, Riding the Iron Rooster

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The great eleventh-century Nalanda pandit Lama Atisha understood this well, and with a mighty heart of wise compassion he set out to marshal the Buddha‘s eighty-four thousand teachings – found in hundreds of scriptures and thousands of verses – into a logical, sequential, and practical road map to help guide spiritual seekers on the path, from ordinariness to liberation on to full and final awakening. This unique style of teaching came to be called Lam Rim, or the Gradual Path to Enlightenment, and, attesting to its beauty and effectiveness, has been preserved in all lineages and schools of Tibetan Buddhism for the past thousand years.

One of the unique features of the Lam Rim is that it recognizes an alternative to the path of sudden, spectacular enlightenment and instead proposes a more modest, gradual awakening. From the beginning of Tibet‘s history of receiving dharma transmission from India, with the great debates involving the eighth-century Indian scholar Kamalashila, it was clear that for the masses the gradual process of studying, contemplating, and embodying insights over the course of a sustained, lifelong practice would be most appropriate and beneficial. While all methods have their validity and are useful for practitioners of various dispositions, the gradual approach explained in these pages is as relevant to modern students as it was to Tibetans centuries ago. – Geshe Tenzin Zopa”
― Miles Neale, Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human

“Tibet became a laboratory for the enlightenment movement to create its model society, to evolve into an actual manifestation of a buddha‘s pure universe, a „buddhaverse“. A social buddhaverse is a place where everything is geared toward enlightenment, where every lifetime is made meaningful by dedication to optimal evolutionary development. Because that nation embraced the enlightenment movement for more than a millennium, Tibet is the prime example of a sustained attempt by an entire people to create a society, culture, and civilization that cherish the individual‘s pursuit of enlightenment over the needs of society. Instead of believing that a strong central government can force a group of people into making a better place to live, the Tibetans, influenced by ancient India, saw that helping the individual is what transforms society. Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be; in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises out of their wisdom. Once an individual attains enlightenment, society at large automatically becomes enriched. This was the heart of the Buddha‘s social revolution. (p. 32-33)”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness

“When I was young and living high above the city of Lhasa in the Potala Palace, I frequently looked at the life of the city through a telescope. I also learned a lot from the gossip of the sweepers in the palace. They were like my newspaper, relating what the Regent was doing, and what corruption and scandals were going on. I was always happy to listen, and they were proud to be telling the Dalai Lama about what was happening in the streets. The harsh events that unfolded after the invasion in 1950 forced me to become directly involved in issues that otherwise would have been kept at a distance. As a result I have come to prefer a life of committed social action in this world of suffering.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life

“When India and China became, for the first time in history, next-door neighbours after China’s occupation of Tibet in 1950, neither country had any close familiarity with the other.”
― Shyam Saran, How China Sees India and the World