How to See Yourself As You Really Are

by Dalai Lama XIV

According to Buddhist psychology, most of our troubles stem from attachment to things that we mistakenly see as permanent.

from that misconception, we see aggression and competitiveness as helpful in the pursuit of what we imagine and desire.

love toward your husband, wife, children, or a close friend is often mixed with attachment, and when your attachment changes, your kindness may disappear.

If we allow love and compassion to be dominated by anger, we will sacrifice the best part of our human intelligence—wisdom, our ability to decide between right and wrong. Along with selfishness, anger is one of the most serious problems facing the world today.

conflicts arise from a failure to understand how much we have in common.

What is required is an emphasis on what we share,

Hatred and fighting cannot bring happiness to anyone, even to the winners

The ignorant mind does not question appearances to determine if they are correct; it merely accepts that things are as they appear.

Does the attractiveness of an object obscure its faults and disadvantages?

Since accepting appearances as truth is the basic problem, the antidote is to come to realize the falsity of appearances through reasoning.

When there is long, there has to be short. They do not exist through their own nature.

reflecting on dependent-arising, you will lose the belief that things exist in and of themselves.

emptiness and the consciousness perceiving it are like water put in water, undifferentiable.

“Whatever depends on conditions Is empty of its own inherent existence,

understand your own plight and develop a strong intention to transcend this dynamic of recurring problems.

If your mind has not been affected by thinking about the way you yourself wander in an uncontrolled cycle of self ruin, then when you reflect on the process of suffering in other sentient beings, you will not find their suffering so unbearable that you would feel the need to help extricate them from this morass.

it takes great exertion to draw the bucket up but it descends easily, so I have to expend great effort to draw myself upward to a happier life but easily descend to painful situations.

You should make preparations so that, even if you did die tonight, you would have no regrets.

although all these beings are impermanent, they are thinking, “I want to be happy,” “I must do this job,” “I must get this money,” “I have to do this.” They are mistakenly imagining themselves to be permanent.