Often we feel our everyday secular lives are in conflict with our pursuit of
the teachings. How possible is it really for one who goes to work every day,
has demanding familial obligations, lives among countless distractions?…
If somebody renounces the world, lives in a monastery, and studies the
Buddhist teachings, they become learned and a very gentle, accomplished
person; that’s… not very surprising. That’s their job; that’s what they
spend all their time on. But if a layperson receives the pithy instructions
on how to be able to practice the heart of the Buddha’s teachings during
daily life situations, and then with sincerity and perseverance practices
that, in every single moment, with mindfulness and with some kind of real
integrity, and then achieves awakening while taking care of obligations,
one’s duties, and one’s family, and so forth, that is truly surprising,
because that’s difficult. And yet there are the profound instructions of
Mahamudra and Dzogchen that are designed in such a way so that this is
possible. As a matter of fact, there have been a huge number of laypeople in
India and in Tibet who not only attained levels of enlightenment, in other
words, became really accomplished, but also some who, at the time of death,
left behind what is called the “rainbow body” as a manifest sign of complete
enlightenment.
– Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, “Keeping a Good Heart