Category Buddhism

You only have to know what you are, how you exist; that’s all. Just understand your mind: how it works, how attachment and desire arise, how ignorance arises, where emotions come from. -Lama Thubten Yeshe, “Chocolate Cake”

Because we don’t know who we are, we feel separate from everybody else. There’s this sense of “me” that creates all our fears, angers, attachments, jealousies, and uncertainties. But the Buddha said that it doesn’t have to be like that.…

Don’t feel disturbed by the thinking mind. You are not practicing to prevent thinking, but rather to recognize and acknowledge thinking whenever it arises. —Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “Observing Minds Want to Know”

As with many deep truths, people tend to look at the death awareness meditations and say, Yes, I know all of that. I know I’m going to die someday. I know I can’t take it with me. I know my…

When I teach meditation I emphasize the importance of watching the mind. While doing this you will see a lot of defilements. In their grosser manifestations, the defilements are anger, greed, and delusion. And they have plenty of friends and…

The quality of your action depends on the quality of your being. Suppose you’re eager to offer happiness, to make someone happy. That’s a good thing to do. But if you’re not happy, then you can’t do that. In order…

During a lecture while I was interpreting for the Dalai Lama, he said in what seemed to me to be broken English, ‘Kindness is society.’ I wasn’t smart enough to think he was saying kindness is society. I thought he…

The seeds of anger are always there. But when you notice, when you keep alive your understanding, they have no chance to manifest. Understanding is something that stays with you, and practicing the precepts, practicing meditation, helps you deepen your…

Just as a person mired in quicksand cannot help another until he has himself reached firm ground (to cite another analogy from the Pali texts), our ability to help others depends chiefly on keeping our own balance. As the flight…

When you sit down to meditate, you never know what’s going to come up. Some days you’re hammered by relentless trivia; other days you’re caught in storms of anger or grief or fear. What’s important is just to keep coming…