“Born a monk,
Died a king —
Such thunderstorm does not stop.
We will be haunting you, along with the dralas.
Jolly good luck!”Chögyam Trungpa

“For Siddhartha, if there is no impermanence, there is no progress or change for the better. Dumbo, the flying elephant, came to understand this. As a youngster he was an outcast because of his enormous ears. He was lonely, depressed, and afraid that he would be kicked out of the circus. But then he discovered that hist "deformity" was unique and valuable because it enabled him to fly. He became popular. Had he trusted impermanence to begin with, he would not have suffered so much in the beggining. The recognition of impermanence is the key to freedom from fear of remaining forever stuck in a situation, habit, or pattern.
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More often than not, many of us choose to stay in the dark. We aren't able to see the illusions that create our everyday life because we don't have the courage to break out of the network that we're plugged in to. We think that we are, or will soon be, confortable enough if we continue on as we are going. It's as if we are entering a maze through which we already have a habitual route, and we don't want to explore other directions. We are not adventurous because we think we have so much to lose. We fear that if we see the world from the view of emptiness, we may be cast out from society, lose our respectability and along with it our friends, family, and job. The seductive allure of illusory world doesn't help; it's packaged so well. We are bombarded with messages about soap that makes us smell like heaven, how miraculous the South Beach Diet is, how democracy is the only viable system of government, how vitamins will increase our stamina. We rarely hear more than one side of the truth, and on the rare occasions that we do, it's usually in fine print. Imagine George W. Bush going to Iraq and proclaiming, "American-style democracy might or might not work in your country".

Like a child at the cinema, we get caught up in the illusion. From this comes all of our vanity, ambition, and insecurity. We fall in love with the illusions we have created and develop excessive pride in our appearence, our possessions, and our accomplishments. It's like wearing a mask and proudly thinking that the mask is really you.

Once there were five hundred monkeys, one of whom thought he was very clever. One night this monkey saw the reflection of the moon in the lake. He proudly informed all the other monkeys, "If we go to the lake and collect the moon, then we will be heroes who saved the moon." At first the other monkeys didn't belive him. But when they saw with their own eyes that the moon had fallen into the lake, they decided to try to save it. They climbed a tree and held each other by the tail so they could reach the shimmering moon, the branch broke and they all fell in the lake. They didn't know how to swim and they all struggled in the water as the image of the moon shattered in the ripples. Driven by the hunger for fame and originality, we are like these monkeys, thinking that we are so clever in discovering things and convincing our fellow humans to see what we see, think what we think, driven by ambitions to be the savior, the clever one, the seer of all. We have all kinds of small ambitions, such as impressing a girl, or big ambitions, such as landing on Mars. And time after time we end up in the water with nothing to hold on to and not knowing how to swim.
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Renounciation: The Sky is the Limit

If we are serious about achieving enligthenment, we need the strenght to renounce the things that are a big deal for us, and we need a great deal of courage to step onto the path alone. Those who do not pursue praise and gain, those who do not shun criticism and loss, may be stigmatized as abnormal or even insane. When observed from an ordinary point of view, enlightened beings may seem insane because they don't negotiate, they cannot be lured or swayed by material gain, they don't get bored, they don't look for thrills, they have no face to lose, they do not conform to rules of etiquette, they never employ hypocrisy for personal gain, they never do things to impress people, and they don't display their talents and powers just for the sake of it. But if it benefit others, these saints will do anything necessary, from having perfect table manners to leading a Fortune 500 company. In 2,500 years of Buddhist history there have probably been countless enlightened beings who were never identified or who were banished for being insane. Very few were appreciated for possessing what we call "crazy wisdom." But when we think about it, we are the ones who are really insane, falling head over heels for echolike praise, brooding over criticism, and grasping at happiness.

Forget about going beyond time and space; even going beyond praise and criticism seems out of reach.
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There is no such thing as an "infidel" or "blasphemer" in Buddhism because there is no one to be faithful to, to insult, or to doubt. However, those who do not believe [in the four seals] are considered by Buddhists to be ignorant. Such ignorance is not cause for moral judgement. If someone doesn't believe that humans have landed on the moon, or thinks the world is flat, a scientist wouldn't call him a blasphemer, just ignorant.”Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, What makes you NOT a Buddhist.

“In a new book, "The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality," the Dalai Lama laments what he calls "radical scientific materialism," warning that seeing people as "the products of pure chance in the random combination of genes" is an invitation to nihilism and spiritual poverty. "The view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is, to my mind, as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intelligence created and controls reality." Both, he suggests, are legitimate interpretations of science.”