I stopped committing acts that cause suffering to other living beings. All living beings want to live. All fear death. We must nurture a heart of compassion and protect the lives of all beings.
Listen Bhikkhus, just as a buffalo boy recognizes each of his own buffaloes, a bhikkhu recognizes each of the essential elements of his own body. Just as a buffalo boy knows the characteristics and tendencies of each buffalo, a bhikkhu knows which actions of body, speech, and mind are worthy and which are not. Just as a buffalo boy scrubs his animals clean, a bhikkhu must cleanse his mind and body of desires, attachments, anger, and aversions.
If monks and nuns do not cherish their time of practice, they will have nothing to offer the world.
Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love.
Whether you can see the Buddha or not depends on you, on the state of your being.
Love, respect, and friendship all need food to survive.
It is only when we stop that we can encounter life.
We’re all searching for a place where we feel safe and comfortable, a home where we can be truly ourselves. As we become more skilled in mindfulness and lay down the roots of fidelity, we can truly relax with our partner. All the restlessness and searching inside dissipates when we find our true home.
Many people still believe that we can only be happy when we have a lot of money and power. Looking around, we see many people who have plenty of money and power, but who still suffer very deeply from stress and loneliness. So power and money are not the answer. We have to educate ourselves in the art of living mindfully.
When we look deeply and honestly at our own suffering, energies, and views, we find a peace that comes from being comfortable in our own bodies. But our true home is not only inside us. Once we have become comfortable in ourselves, then we can begin listening deeply to the suffering of our loved ones, and begin understanding their experiences and views. Then we can become a true home for each other.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. I cannot keep anything. I come here empty-handed, and I go empty-handed. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
When Jesus said, “I am the way,” He meant that to have a true relationship with God, you must practice His way.
You are part of the universe; you are made of stars.
We must practice living deeply, loving, and acting with charity if we wish to truly honor Jesus.
When we recognize that we have a habit of replaying old events and reacting to new events as if they were the old ones, we can begin to notice when that habit energy comes up. We can then gently remind ourselves that we have another choice. We can look at the moment as it is, a fresh moment, and leave the past for a time when we can look at it compassionately. We.
When we read a magazine, we consume. When we watch a television program, we consume. Whatever we consume affects our body and mind. If we consume toxic magazine articles, movies, or video games, they will feed our craving, our anger, and our fear.
It’s like when you climb a ladder. When you get to the fourth rung, you may think you are on the highest step and cannot go higher, so you hold on to the fourth rung. But in fact there is a fifth rung; if you want to get to it, you have to be willing to abandon the fourth rung. Ideas and perceptions should be abandoned all the time, to make room for better ideas and truer perceptions. This is why we must always ask ourselves, “Am I sure?
Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, how much merit he had earned by building temples all over the country. Bodhidharma said, “None whatsoever.” But if you wash one dish in mindfulness, if you build one small temple while dwelling deeply in the present moment – not wanting to be anywhere else, not caring about fame or recognition – the merit from that act will be boundless, and you will feel very happy.
The past no longer exists, and the future is not here yet.
You have to realize that happiness is not something you find at the end of the road. You have to understand that it is here, now.