Rev. Danny Fisher

Today’s dharma quote is yet another from the Vidyādhara, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche(1939-1987), whom I first quoted and wrote a little bio for here.  I know I said I would keep the kyping/re-posting of quotes from other sources to an absolute minimum, but this one was too good to pass up.  It’s from the chapter “Helping Others” in his book Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala, page 180, and it comes to us via James Shaheen at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog (via Ocean of Dharma):

When you are trying to help someone, you have to have humor, self-existing humor, and you have to hold the moth in your hand, but not let it go into the flame. That’s what helping others means. Ladies and gentlemen, we have so much responsibility. A long time ago, people helped one another in this way. Now people just talk, talk talk. They read books, they listen to music, but they never actually help anyone. They never use their bare hands to save a person from going crazy. We have that responsibility. Somebody has to do it. It turns out to be us. We’ve got to do it, and we can do it with a smile, not with a long face.