Humor enables us to deal with and overcome many of the most painful and difficult situations in our lives.
From my own personal encounters and studies with both Tantric and Zen Buddhist monks, I have found them to be humorous, warm, charming, and compassionate.
The Buddhist message is a message not of the negation of life, but one of affirmation.
Buddhism is simply a methodology, a way of becoming one with the part of ourselves that is happy.
Buddhism is the study of how to be immeasurably happy.
In Buddhist practice a great deal of time is spent practicing mandala meditation. You learn to visualize and hold simultaneous concepts in the mind during meditation.
Computer science is fascinating. As you study computer science, you will find that you develop your mind. It is literally like doing Buddhist exercises all day long.
Career success means making enough money to lead the kind of life you would like to lead as a practicing Buddhist.
Buddhism is a practice in which we learn to avoid injuring others, and ourselves. It's a practice in which we learn to respond to beauty, and to respond to difficult circumstances with patience, with a sense of calm, with clarity.
What matters is that you meditate, you're seeking enlightenment, you're on the pathway to enlightenment, and you're having fun. Don't look for reassurance in the eyes of others. Look for reassurance in your own eyes. Only you know if Buddhist practice is improving the quality of your life.
Spiritual Balance is the obvious answer to the obsession that sometimes accompanies religious practice, occult practice, philosophical understandings - the assertion that one is right - that something that you're doing is better than something somebody else is doing, the way you're doing it is better than the way someone else is doing it.
You've gained some powers by your entrance into other dimensions and you use them to attack others or to make others miserable, then power reverses on you and it pulls you apart because it's not supposed to be used that way.
I have a great deal of spiritual dignity. It's on loan from eternity, and you do too, and we have to use it in our relationship with each other.
Spiritual dignity says that I don't have to compete with anyone; I don't have to do what my friends do. All I have to do is be myself and be dignified in my meditation and my lifestyle.
Humility simply means that you do a great job at everything and it isn't really a big deal.
That's what self-discovery seems to mean to most people. You're going to beat yourself up. You're going to reduce what you're supposed to be and do to a set of rules so you can defy them, or so you can perform them and feel smug.
We seek to unify ourselves with the endless light of truth, of God, of nirvana. We recognize the infinite playing through all beings and all forms, but we only have to concern ourselves with ourselves.
It's considered very, very bad karma, if I can cut to the chase, to take power from a teacher and not use it for something very positive.
A Buddhist monk has a responsibility first and foremost to themselves, and that's to find the truth each day in every part of their life.
Don't care what anybody says about enlightenment, except the enlightened and those who seek it.
Are you still carrying everyone who's insulted you, injured you or interfered with you? That's a lot of weight. I'd let it go, personally, and just move on and forget. Be in the moment. Don't even notice.
Put the mind in alignment with the ten thousand radiances of enlightenment and experience them in various gradations forever. That's the total purpose of a monk.
Self-hate doesn't create enlightenment. It just causes you to not enjoy the current moment.
The way you succeed at all this stuff is by stopping trying to succeed and just working very hard without thinking about it, just trusting, completely. It's that faith that creates the bridge on which you walk across to eternity.
Do not feel that you are destined not to make that final liberation in this life. This is egotism in a reverse form. Don't be concerned one way or the other.
