"Despite this massive and nearly all-pervasive denial of its existence, we still sometimes have fleeting glimpse of the nature of mind. These could be inspired by a certain exalting piece of music, by the serene happiness we sometimes feel in nature, or by the most ordinary everyday situation. They could arise simply while watching the snow slowly drifting down, or seeing the sun rising from behind the mountain, or watching a shaft of light falling into a room in a mysteriously moving way. Such moments of illumination, peace, and bliss happen to us all and stay strangely with us.
I think we do, sometimes, half understand these glimpses, but modern culture gives us no context of framework in which to comprehend them. Worse still, rather than encouraging us to explore these glimpses more deeply and discover where they spring from, we are told in both obvious and subtle way to shut them out. We know that no one will take us seriously if we share them.
We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do we will be in danger of madness." –from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
