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Excerpts
Effects Of Ten Unwholesome (Evil) Karmic Paths (十恶业道)
Nov. 13 | Those with great greed become hungry ghosts.Those with great hatred become hell-beings.Those with great delusion become animals. Of the Ten Unwholesome Karmic Paths, the most severe are causes for the hells, the average degrees are causes...
Arrange Things Simply To Simplify Your Mind
Nov. 6 | When getting what needed, you only need to get what is good enough, and it is good enough. – Shilashanti The relationship between the mind and the body is like that between the chicken and the egg. If you cultivate a simplified mindset, your body, too,...
Eat Clean With Your Whole Heart
Oct. 30 | Consume mindfully with compassion and wisdom or consume mindlessly with greed and delusion. – Shilashanti Do not neglect your meals: Make your meals about the eating When you eat, are you focused on the act of eating? Breakfast is something you race...
Discard What You Don’t Need
Oct. 19 | What you do truly not need is so, even if you do not think so. What you do truly need is so, even if you do not think so. – Shilashanti When things aren’t going well, we tend to think we are lacking in something. But if we want to change...
Mindfulness Without Being Mindful Of Core Ethics & Its Ultimate Goal
Oct. 2 | Mindfulness is good – but what guides your mindfulness, if not sound ethics, and where does it lead to, if not true enlightenment? – Shilashanti The conspicuous absence of a path for ethical development in the secularized mindfulness movement creates...
Wake Up Earlier To Be Less Busy
Sep. 25 | Find more time to live a more meaningful life – before you run out of time. – Shilashanti When we are short on time, this scarcity extends to our heart as well. We automatically say, ‘I’m busy – I don’t have time.’ When we...
How To Reset & Recalibrate Your Mind
Sep. 18 | Be with yourself as you are, but without haste, without impatience. – Shunmyo Masuno In our everyday lives, do any of us have time to think about nothing? I imagine most people would say, ‘I don’t have a moment to spare for that.’...
How To Rise From Rock Bottom
Sep. 4 | When you hit rock bottom, the only way is up – or to stay sunken. – Extended saying I’ve been a Dharma teacher for twenty years, and I’ve observed that prisoners, war veterans, refugees, and others who have been through extreme difficulties...
Friends, Not Food
Aug. 28 | If you’re eating animals please understand that they do not want your metta; they want you to not eat them. – Bob Isaacson If you stopped people on the streets of Chicago or London and ask them if Buddhists are vegetarian, the most likely...
The Three Kinds Of Patience
Aug. 21 | There is no evil like hatred, And no fortitude like patience. Thus I should strive in various ways To meditate on patience. – Shantideva (Guide To Bodhisattva’s Way Of Life) [1] Not Becoming Upset with Those Who Do Harm The first type of patience...
We Have No Time To Be Evil
Aug. 14 | There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels. – The Buddha (Dhammapada Verse 6) Let’s get rid of anger’s evil; let’s purge the mind, tear out by the roots that...
Are You Causing Suffering With Speciesism?
Jul. 31 | If you believe plants are also sentient, you should not eat animals’ meat and such, as they eat much plants to grow them, while vegans directly eat the least plants. – Commonsensical [T]he Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer wrote a book...
A Stoic’s Daily Zen-like Self-Review
Jul. 24 | Our spiritual health demands that we let go of anger, or else it will never let go of us. – Seneca Seneca, to judge by his self-presentation in his writings, was a self-reflective and inward-looking man. He describes, in one of the passages...
What Is In Your Circle Of Control?
Jul. 17 | Mind your mind mindfully, or it will be ‘minded’ by its negative habits of greed, hatred and delusion. – Shilashanti ‘We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on that moral will. What’s not under our control are...
