On Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche is the quintessential spiritual guide. His teachings—steeped in ancient tradition and presented with relaxed fluency in western language and culture—are profound, accessible, and fresh. In addition to the buddhadharma, he offered the secular path of Shambhala, cultivating an appreciation of inherent bravery, dignity and goodness beyond cultural and religious bounds. Through his many books, Trungpa Rinpoche continues to be an incomparable source of wisdom and courage in the world. The Chronicles is an ongoing celebration of his profound teachings and life example.
Copyright Diana J. Mukpo. Used here by arrangement with Diana J. Mukpo and Shambhala Publications, Inc.
These teachings by Chögyam Trungpa are selected at random from Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: the email service that brings Trungpa Rinpoche’s dharma to your inbox several times each week. For more information, or to add your name to the list, visit OceanofDharma.com.
Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week is edited and produced by Carolyn Rose Gimian. Thank you to Lady Diana Mukpo, Mrs. Gimian, and Shambhala Publications for making these teachings available on the Chronicles.
tradition has taught us that we have a tremendous personal dignity and confidence. The distortion of this is to feel that if anything goes wrong, we can find a scapegoat somewhere outside of ourselves. We say, “This went wrong; it must be somebody’s fault.” When people do that consistently, then it can lead to demands for rights, riots, and all sorts of complaints, which are always based on blaming somebody else. But we never blame “me.” The extreme outcome of this approach is that we feel we want to rule the world, and in doing that, we display a tremendous personal ego.
Ultimately, we could become someone like Hitler or Mussolini. These people represent the ego of an entire nation, which says, “It’s not our fault. It is our nation’s pride; we have our pride and glory and dignity. We are in the right.’ It is a gigantic ego world based on a fundamental separation from our environment. This is an extreme example, but distorting dignity into egotism can have these results.
















