In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
In the past, destruction of your neighbour might have been considered a victory, but today we are all interdependent. We live in a global economy; we face problems like climate change that affect us all. The 7 billion human beings alive today belong to one human family. In the context that others' interests are in our interest and our interest is in their interest, the use of force is self-destructive.
When we are motivated by compassion and wisdom, the results of our actions benefit everyone, not just our individual selves or some immediate convenience. When we are able to recognize and forgive ignorant actions of the past, we gain strength to constructively solve the problems of the present.
The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.
We may now have reached a point where this gap in our make-up has become unsustainable; partly because what in the past would have counted as material plenty has become the norm for the majority in much of the world; and partly because the slow retreat of religion that coincided with the spread of a capitalist economy has left a gaping hole in millions of people's lives. (Geoff Mulgan)
Attention-yes! That's present! And present, you see, makes past and future.
Because past environmental destruction was the result of ignorance, we can easily forgive it. Today, we are better informed. Therefore, it's essential that we make an ethical examination of what we have inherited, what we are responsible for, and what we will pass on to coming generations. Ours is clearly a pivotal generation. We have global communication and yet confrontation is more common than dialogue.
The immediate source of a mind... must be a mind which existed before the conception took place; the mind must have a continuity from a previous mind. This we hold to prove the existence of a past life.
In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.
There is nothing that does not get easier through cultivation. The buddhas of the past started out as ordinary beings. They were not buddhas in the beginning. The path to buddhahood is traversed only through gradually developing more and more courage and DETERMINATION -then it is attained.
If you wonder what you were doing in the past, look at your body; to know what will happen to you in the future, look at your mind.
