Visualise does not mean you should try to paint a picture.

Concentrate instead on evoking complete confidence that Guru Rinpoche or Vajradhara is present before you, vivid and vibrantly alive, surrounded by all the buddhas and bodhisattvas.

I must stress here that visualise does not mean you should try to paint a picture of the refuge tree in your mind; that would be impossible. Visualisation is very like thinking about the person who is closest to you in this life—your mother, for example.

Try imagining her standing in front of you right now. As you do so, I’m quite sure you are not thinking about the exact shape of her ear. Or whether or not her toes curl. Or how many moles she has on her back. In fact, that kind of detail has probably never even occurred to you. At the same time, I am equally sure that you have created a strong sense of your mother in your mind and that you are completely confident it really is her.

This is how you should visualise the objects of refuge, and the confidence you feel in your visualisation is of utmost importance.

~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche 

Appearances are not real!

This is what the dharma practitioner needs to understand — that the whole of samsara, or nirvana, is as essenceless or untrue as that film. Until we see this, it will be very difficult for dharma to sink into our minds. We will always be carried away, seduced by the glory and beauty of this world, by all the apparent success and failure. However, once we see, even just for a second, that these appearances are not real, we will gain a certain confidence. This doesn't mean that we have to rush off to Nepal or India and become a monk or nun. We can still keep our jobs, wear a suit and tie and go with our briefcase to the office every day. We can still fall in love, offer our loved one flowers, exchange rings. But somewhere inside there is something telling us that all this is essenceless.

~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

It's all a matter of motivation!

Be ambitious about the magnitude of the motivation you arouse. Don't settle for simple kindness when nothing less than the fully-fledged mind of bodhicitta is what is needed. Kyabje Dudjom Rinpopche said that dharma practice is really not that difficult, it's all a matter of motivation. So never forget to arouse the motivation of wanting to bring all sentient beings to complete enlightenment. And the more magnanimous your motivation, the more merit you will accumulate, even when all you do is light a candle. If you light a candle merely as a decoration for the living room, your motivation is that of an ordinary person. If you light it with the wish to accumulate merit and eventually destroy samsara, you share the attitude cultivated by shravakayana practitioners. To light the candle with the wish that any merit attained be dedicated to the enlightenment of all sentient beings, your attitude is the same as that of bodhisattvayana practitioners. To consider the candle to be the light of wisdom that ilmuinates all sentient beings, with the aspiration that wherever its light falls becomes the mandala, is the attitude of a tantric practitioner.

~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Being in the present

Being in the present is so important in buddhism. It is the core strategy of buddhism to do whatever it takes to keep the mind present, to have ones mind from going astray. Every single method that exists in buddhism is for that result.

~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Viewing our experience in this world as a dream

Viewing our experience in this world as a dream, Siddhartha found that our habit of fixating on the mere appearance of our dreamlike relative world, thinking that it is truly existing, throws us into an endless cycle of pain and anxiety.

We are in a deep sleep, hibernating like a silkworm in a cocoon. We have woven a reality based on our projections, imagination, hopes, fears, and delusions.

Our cocoons have become very solid and sophisticated. Our imaginings are so real to us that we are trapped in the cocoon. But we can free ourselves simply by realizing that this is all our imagination.

~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

You are not a Buddhist!

If you cannot accept that all compounded or fabricated things are impermanent, if you believe that there is some essential substance or concept that is permanent, then you are not a Buddhist.

If you cannot accept that all emotions are pain, if you believe that actually some emotions are purely pleasurable, then you are not a Buddhist.

If you cannot accept that all phenomena are illusory and empty, if you believe that certain things do exist inherently, then you are not a Buddhist.

And if you think that enlightenment exists within the spheres of time, space, and power, then you are not a Buddhist.

~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche - "What Makes You Not a Buddhist"