"You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way."HAGEN
/////////////////////All the qualities that the great masters found, we can attain as well. It all depends on our own efforts, our diligence, our deeper knowing, and our correct motivation.
—Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Calm Abiding”
///////////////////////Travel the river of the mind to the vast ocean.
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"We are travelers on a cosmic journey,
stardust swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity.
Life is eternal.
We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other,
to meet, to love, to share.
This is a precious moment.
A little parenthesis in eternity."
~Paulo Coelho
"We forget that nature itself is one vast miracle transcending the reality of night and nothingness.
We forget that each one of us in his personal life repeats that miracle."
~Loren Eiseley
World Pantheist Movement
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Death is like being suddenly evacuated with no time to pack your bags. You find yourself swept to a new land, a new place, and all you have are your skill sets. So what skills sets have you been collecting?"
~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pissing on Palaces" (Meditations6)
One is to make sure that your intention is skillful in what you do, say, and think. This is why we recite those passages on the brahma-viharas every evening. It’s not that we’re praying to some god to make these things happen, that everybody be happy. And it’s not that we believe that simply by wishing it, it’s going to be so. As the Buddha once said, if things could be made true simply by wishing and praying, there wouldn’t be any poor people, any sick people, any ill people in the world. Actually, the good things there are in the world are there because people have had good intentions and acted on those intentions.
When I was in New York last month, I gave a series of talks on not-self. In one of the talks I focused on the whole issue of rebirth and how rebirth was an important teaching on not-self. Everyone looked kind of puzzled, because most people think of the idea of rebirth as the ultimate form of selfing: not only do you have a self in this life, but it also extends into the next. But the connection between rebirth and not-self comes in the sutta where Ven. Ratthapala’s talking to King Koravya. The king had asked him, “Why did you ordain? Your family’s healthy, you’re healthy, you haven’t suffered any loss. What would inspire you to go forth?” And Ratthapala said, among other things, that “The world has nothing of its own; one has to pass on leaving everything behind.” And the king said, “Well, how can you explain that? I’ve got lots of wealth and I can take it wherever I go.” And Ratthapala replied, “Can you take it with you when you die?” And the king had to admit, “Well, no. When I die, I have to leave everything behind.” That’s how death teaches not-self.
But it also teaches you that there are some things that do carry over, that you do take with you. You take your kamma; you take the qualities of mind you’ve developed. So you need to make sure that you’ve got some good qualities to take with you. What we’re living for as meditators is to develop the qualities—in some cases they’re called the noble treasures—of conviction, virtue, a sense of shame and compunction over the idea of doing something harmful, the willingness to learn, generosity, and wisdom. These are qualities of mind you can take with you, and you don’t want to scrounge around for them at the last minute. Death is like being suddenly evacuated with no time to pack your bags. You find yourself swept to a new land, a new place, and all you have are your skill sets. So what skills sets have you been collecting?
Focus in on that, listen to that question, keep that question in mind because that’s what enables you to hear the Dhamma in the other things you notice around you. You see other people and some of them are working on good skill sets, while others are working on who knows what: the skills of impatience, entitlement, overweening pride. When you look at them, you should ask yourself: “Is this something I want to take as a model for my behavior or is this something I have to learn from as a lesson in precisely what not to do?” When you do this, you’re not passing judgment on the value of the person; you’re looking at the person as a possible guide and deciding whether you want to take that person’s actions as a guide to your own. It’s not harsh and judgmental to look at people in this way. It’s common sense.
And the Buddha never said that it was wrong to judge other people. I was reading a book recently that contained a supposed quote from the Pali Canon where the Buddha says that if you judge other people, you destroy yourself by the root. This statement was even addressed to Ven. Ananda, to give it an air of truthiness. But the whole passage was an interpolation. The Buddha never said that. He actually said that you have to learn how to judge people wisely in terms of the skill or lack of skill in their actions. You need to do this for the purpose of deciding whether you want to take them as an example or not.
When you see other people who, through their greed and heedlessness, have destroyed their wealth, destroyed their status, destroyed the company they work for, you can take it as a warning signal: That’s a Dhamma lesson right there. When you see someone who’s found peace of mind: There’s a Dhamma lesson right there, too.
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