Naropa Quotes
Naropa was an eleventh-century Indian Buddhist tantric master, abbot of the great monastic university of Nalanda before he renounced his post in search of his teacher Tilopa, and one of the most important figures in the history of late Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. The twelve trials by which Tilopa, in the traditional accounts, brought him to awakening became the model of the Vajrayana relationship between teacher and student, while the Six Yogas of Naropa, transmitted through his pupil Marpa to the Tibetan Kagyu lineage, remain among the central practices of Tibetan Buddhism. The quotes below are attributed to Naropa, organized by topic.
Naropa on Freedom
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Attributed to Naropa:
“The Six Yogas are not six paths, but six aspects of one liberation.”
Naropa on God
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“The scene in the buffalo range—the "scamper" after those huge animals—is a truthful picture from the quick and fertile imagination of Chapman . Scenes of a similar nature were of almost daily occurrence while the Santa Fé pioneers were in the buffalo region, and the artist seems to have caught the spirit of the exciting chase.”
p.iii-iv
Naropa on Knowledge
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Attributed to Naropa:
“The teacher is the ground on which the student awakens.”
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Attributed to Naropa:
“Tilopa speaks not in syllables but in the silence between them.”
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“While canvassing the chances and merits of a trip of this kind, I met with Major George T. Howard, then in New-Orleans purchasing goods for the Texan Santa Fé Expedition .”
p.14 -
“Major Howard informed me that it was commercial in its intentions, the policy of the then President of Texas , General Mirabeau B. Lamar , being to open a direct trade with Santa Fé by a route known to be much nearer than the great Missouri trail. To divert this trade was certainly the primary and ostensible object; but that General Lamar had an ulterior intention—that of bringing so much of the province of New Mexico as lies upon the eastern or Texan side of the Rio Grande under the protection of his government—I did not know until I was upon the march to Santa Fé.”
p.14 -
“The idea... that the first Texan Santa Fé pioneers were but a company of marauders, sent to burn, slay and destroy in a foreign and hostile country, is so absurd as not to require contradiction; the attempt to conquer a province, numbering some one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants within its borders, was a shade too Quixotical to find favour in the eyes of the three hundred and twenty odd pioneers who left Texas, encumbered with wagons, merchandise, and the implements of their different trades and callings.”
p.16
Naropa on Life
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“In the early part of April, 1841, I determined upon making a tour of some kind upon the great Western Prairies, induced by the hope of correcting a derangement of health, and by a strong desire to visit regions inhabited only by the roaming Indian, to find new subjects upon which to write, as well as to participate in the wild excitement of buffalo-hunting, and other sports of the border and prairie life.”
p.14
Naropa on Mind
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Attributed to Naropa:
“What I sought outside, I had only to recognize within.”
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“Another word or two and the author will throw himself upon the kindness of his reader. His attempt has been to interest and amuse; should it be thought that he has thrown too much levity amid scenes of suffering and of gloom, his excuse must be that he belongs rather to the school of laughing than crying philosophers—to a class who would rather see a smile upon the face of melancholy than a tear in the eye of mirth .”
p.iv
Naropa on Politics
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“In whatever light a government or an individual may choose to "sit for a portrait," it is certainly the duty of every honest artist to give it with scrupulous fidelity.”
p.iii -
“He [Lamar] was led to conceive this project by a well-founded belief that nine tenths of the inhabitants were discontented under the Mexican yoke, and anxious to come under the protection of that flag to which they really owed fealty. I say a well-founded belief; the causes which influenced him were assurances from New Mexico—positive assurances—that the people would hail the coming of an expedition with gladness, and at once declare allegiance to the Texan government.”
p.14-15 -
“Texas claimed as her western boundary, the Rio Grande ; the inhabitants within that boundary claimed protection of Texas. Was it anything but a duty then, for the chief magistrate of the latter to afford all its citizens such assistance as was in his power?”
p.15 -
“On its arrival at the destined point, should the inhabitants really manifest a disposition to declare their full allegiance to Texas, the flag of the single-star Republic would have been raised on the Government House at Santa Fé; but if not, the Texan commissioners were merely to make such arrangements with the authorities as would best tend to the opening of a trade, and then retire.”
p.15-16
Naropa on Virtue
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Attributed to Naropa:
“Bear what is hard to bear; the diamond mind is not made any other way.”