“Thousands Of Candles Can Be Lit From A Single Candle, And The Life Of The Candle Will Not Be Shortened.

Tulku Lobsang 

Art: @plumvillagefrance

"Being rude is easy. It does not take any effort and is a sign of weakness and insecurity. Kindness shows great self-discipline and strong self-esteem. Being kind is not always easy when dealing with rude people. Kindness is a sign of a person who has done a lot of personal work and has come to a great self-understanding and wisdom. Choose to be kind over being right, and you’ll be right every time because kindness is a sign of strength." U.N. Owen.

“Educate yourself. When a question about a certain topic pops up, google it. Watch movies and documentaries. When something sparks your interest, read about it. Read read read. Study, learn, stimulate your brain. Don’t just rely on the school system, educate that beautiful mind of yours.”

— Unknown

Four Noble Truths

Life on planet Earth will always have an element of unsatisfactoriness. This may range from full-blown hellish suffering to simply wanting more despite having so much already. There is no creature on this Earth that is without some form of suffering.

The cause of the unsatisfactoriness is existential confusion. Because we don’t know what we are, we take ourselves to be what we are not: a body, a mind, an agenda, a history with an intended future, a personality. All creatures seek happiness and avoid suffering. But what we think will bring us happiness and what we think will cause us suffering both depend on who we think we are. If we do not know who and what we actually are, we will never know how to really be happy and how to truly be free from suffering.

Existential confusion is not permanent and can be ended. Over the millennia, there have been humans who have realized enlightenment and became free. There is nothing preventing you from doing the same.

There is a path available that features deliberate practice to end existential confusion: the Dharma. Dharma is the no-nonsense, just-the-facts approach to finding insight into your existential condition and enjoying freedom from its limitations. More information and guidance is available today than any other time in history.

Some people suffer too much and it makes it almost impossible to practice the path. If you are one such person, do not give up. There are adjustments you can make to support you. And it is our job to find ways to help reduce your suffering so that you can practice.

Other people suffer too little. Due to their privilege and/or immense good fortune, they have not suffered enough in this life to allow them to realize something is wrong. They haven’t noticed this sense of unsatisfactoriness even though it drives much of their daily activity.

However, the majority of humans fall in-between those extremes. So why are they not on the path?

Either they haven’t encountered clear and true teachings, they were never told freedom is possible, they have yet to see clearly their own suffering, or they have yet to clearly discern the cause of their own suffering.

These Four Noble Truths of the Buddha are The Good News that buddhists offer the world. Contemplate each for yourself:

Are you suffering? Are you unsatisfied? Do you feel a lack of wholeness? What elements of your daily life trouble you? Why?

Regarding your answers to #1, ask yourself how your identity plays a role. How might your sense of self, your sense of being an individual, be a cause behind your suffering?

Have you ever tasted freedom from your sense of self? Or tasted a freedom that is beyond this human world and its unsatisfactoriness? Think about what that was like and how it differs from your ordinary feeling of pleasure or happiness from daily life.

Ask yourself what you are doing to free yourself. Is it working? Does it make sense in light of the contemplations of #1-#3? Are you feeling enthusiastic about your path and practice? If you lack energy or motivation, it can help to return to these contemplations.

The Noble Truths were the first teaching of the Buddha and you can see why. It establishes the reasons to practice the path in earnest. 🙂

May all beings be free.

LY

Recently I've really had strong urges to drink and smoke. By telling you I guess I'm hoping you have a little advice or something insightful to say, and hopefully it will help anyone else who might have similar urges. Btw I don't have any addictions to either one, just new and strange urges to indulge.

“Where attention goes, energy flows.”

I’m not sure who said that, but it’s a poeticparaphrasing of what many sages have been saying for years; and it can help toexplain how any thought or urge, indeed any movement of the mind, gets itspower. At the point a thought or urge arises it’s powerless and, bereft ofattention, it will quickly dissipate;however, when given attention, energy pours into it and then it’s going to be hard to get rid of.

What usually happens is this: an urge arises for analcoholic drink and we react to it, and think, ‘that would be nice, it’s a warmday and a cold beer would be good, I’ve not had one for a while, and on andon…’ or, we might think, ‘where’s this coming from, I don’t want alcohol, it’snot good for me, where is this urge coming from..?’ Either way, we’ve engagedwith it, we’ve given it attention and our energy is pouring into it, as eachthought gives rise to another, and then to another, and so on…

Instead, what we can do is acknowledge the urge as it arises,without engaging with it: an analogy we can use for this, is to imagine theurge comes in the form of a text message to your phone; so, a notification popsup, which allows you to see a part of the message, and you can see it says,‘lets have a drink’ but you can’t see all the whys-or-why-nots. Now, the moment you open that message you are engaging with it, the sendercan see you opened it and so a response is needed; however, if you don’t openit, you’re not engaging with it and so no response is needed and it can beignored and eventually be forgotten about. And if the urge to open it comes in,we again just see the notification, but don’t open the message…

If we engage with the urge, it will quickly bring thoughtafter thought, which are the whys-and-why-nots, which are mostly unconscious thought;by not engaging with it, we take away it’s power and create a space in which wecan consciously think about whether we really do want to drink and smoke. Andin that space, we’re less likely to be influenced by outside factors, such aspeer-pressure, and so make a conscious decision.

I hope that helps. Namaste, Dave

A philosopher and a scientist come to the same, beautiful conclusion.

Today, I found myself heading to a Buddhist temple for an addiction recovery meeting and meditation session. Initially, I was overwhelmed with anxiety, my mind racing with all the ways things could go wrong. Why? Because the mind, though a powerful tool, is just that—a tool. It should be used only when needed; otherwise, it will create problems simply to justify its own activity, becoming an addiction in itself.

As I made my way there, I became aware of the vibrations of the music resonating in my ears, the wind brushing against my face, the comfort of my seat—each moment was rich with joy. Yet, we so rarely tap into the immediate joy available to us in the present.