We love chocolate. Perhaps so much so that on some level we may believe, “As long as I have chocolate, I’ll be happy.” This is the power of attachment at work. And based on this attachment, we create a chocolate-based philosophy and order our life prioritizing chocolate. But sometimes, we can’t get our hands on [...]
Dharma teachings are not going to be romantic or beautiful – ho no! The teachings are going to be painful, even invoking paranoia. At the same time, we can work with the situation and find something creative in it. Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 7 For many [...]
When you practice zazen you should not try to attain anything. You should just sit in the complete calmness of your mind and not rely on anything. Just keep your body straight without leaning over or against something. To keep your body straight means not to rely on anything. In this way, physically and mentally, [...]
Life has taught me the wisdom of moving toward what scares me. Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you’re sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, [...]
The vow of the Bodhisattva is that she will not go into Nirvana until every single suffering being has entered Nirvana. One has to understand what this means. Our awakening is not a personal triumph. We do not have to win a spiritual sprint. We are one mind. Awakening is to penetrate more and more [...]
Only the quality, that is the social surrounding, the physical appearance and the mental abilities of a person are fixed by the deeds of his previous existences, but in noway his actions. Karma in Buddhism, Hans Wolfgang Schuman If you see that other people are suffering, and you’re in a position to help, you focus [...]
These quotes are the closest we can get to the Buddha: they’re from the Tipitaka, the ancient Pali Buddhist scriptures. I’ve replaced the Pali ‘kamma’ with the more common Sanskrit ‘Karma’. The two words mean the same thing. Monks, these four types of karma have been directly realized, verified, & made known by me. Which [...]
There are a lot of sites online that share Buddha quotes. Unfortunately, many of those quotes cannot be found in the Buddhist scriptures, let alone in the oldest Buddhist scriptures which are most likely to contain the Buddha’s word. In trying to find quotes about happiness in Buddhism, I naturally started with the oldest Buddhism. [...]
