Ling Gesar (gLing ge sar / གཉལིང་གེ་སར་) and Natural Heroism

Ngak’chang Rinpoche wrote: ‘We all suffer from cowardice, even if only fractionally.
We all have to learn to recognise its loathsome countenance – because there are times when we have to take action.
We sometimes have to step in, even when we know that the outcome is going to be hideous in some respects.

Knowing that we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t, can come as a relief.
Cowardice is the illusion that avoidance is possible – and that we can pretend that we have not engaged in avoidance.
Cowardice is the idea that pain and death can be forestalled.
One simply cannot live like that. It is not worth being alive, if one lives as a coward.
It’s not just physical pain and death that cowards try to avoid – it’s every kind of pain or ‘death’ in the field of the emotions.
Courage is merely the acceptance that nothing is avoidable.
Courage is not necessarily free of fear – but courage is not embarrassed by fear.
It is sometimes intelligent to feel some degree of fear – because some situations are fearful.
Courage is the simple acceptance of fear – and the determination not to be compromised by it.
No one gets out of this alive.
We can go whimpering, or we can go yelling with fierce glee – but go we must.
Tantrikas are heroic because Vajrayana is not for the timid.
Vajrayana is not for idiots either. There are chest-beating idiots who imagine they are not timid – but only because they come equipped with physical assurance.
Heroes and heroines can be physically weak and limited – it is not a question of an archetypal athlete.
Heroism is simply the will to move into the unknown – outside the realm of security.