«This book is about an awareness that goes beyond the conceptual mind. As such, it speaks to practitioners of many contemplative traditions, from Zen to Sufism, from Lao Tzu to Meister Eckhart. If you think this awareness will make you a better person or improve your life, then I suggest you close this book now and throw it away.

[…]

Whether this awareness is described as an awakening or as a deep peace, it opens up a profound freedom. It changes our relationship with what we experience, and it changes our relationship with life. Yet, if we look past the elaborate metaphors, the enigmatic stories and the naïve fables, we see from the lives of teachers and masters through the ages that this knowing does not necessarily make life easier. In more than a few cases, it made life considerably harder. Buddha Shakyamuni died largely abandoned by his followers. Milarepa, the great Tibetan mountain hermit renowned for his teaching songs, was assassinated by an envious scholar. Taranatha, one of the greatest scholar-masters of the Tibetan traditions, was implicated in a political plot, his monasteries confiscated and his writings proscribed for centuries. Nevertheless, few who seek this knowing have any regrets about their decision to pursue it. The knowing is meaningful, intensely meaningful, to them on its own.»

— Ken McLeod. A Trackless Path: A commentary on the great completion (dzogchen) teaching o Jigmé Lingpa's Revelations of Ever-present Good