More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
grief is the reminder of the depth of our love. Without love, there is no grief.
"Grief is love with no where to go."
“You show your humanity,” the Archbishop began, “by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.
“We’ve always got to be recognizing that despite the aberrations, the fundamental thing about humanity, about humankind, about people, is that they are good, they were made good, and they really want to be good.
Not the "traditional" Christian church viewpoint. Contrast with the doctrine of "original sin", the Calvinist "doctrines of Grace", the "Five Points of Calvinism", or "T.U.L.I.P.", where the "T" represents the "Total depravity of Man", etc.
The Archbishop was more than a Christian. He was a real Human, and a real child of God!
Now, hope is different in that it is based not on the ephemerality of feelings but on the firm ground of conviction. I believe with a steadfast faith that there can never be a situation that is utterly, totally hopeless. Hope is deeper and very, very close to unshakable.
Resignation and cynicism are easier, more self-soothing postures that do not require the raw vulnerability and tragic risk of hope. To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.”
hope is the antidote to despair. Yet hope requires faith, even if that faith is in nothing more than human nature or the very persistence of life to find a way.
Despair turns us inward. Hope sends us into the arms of others.
“The paradox is that although the drive behind excessive self-focus is to seek greater happiness for yourself, it ends up doing exactly the opposite. When you focus too much on yourself, you become disconnected and alienated from others. In the end, you also become alienated from yourself, since the need for connection with others is such a fundamental part of who we are as human beings.
With too much self-focus your vision becomes narrow, and with this even a small problem appears out of proportion and unbearable.
Openheartedness—warmheartedness—is the antidote to loneliness.
There is a Tibetan Buddhist teaching that says what causes suffering in life is a general pattern of how we relate to others: “Envy toward the above, competitiveness toward the equal, and contempt toward the lower.”
Envy doesn’t leave room for joy.
Buddhism sees envy as so corrosive that it compares it to a venomous snake that poisons us. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, one of the Ten Commandments forbids “coveting” thy neighbor’s house.
a powerful remedy for envy: gratitude.
another remedy: motivation.
motivation to improve our situation is certainly better than envy of someone else’s.
most effective remedy: reframing.
“Often envy comes because we are too focused on material possessions and not on our true inner values. When we focus on experience or knowledge, there is much less envy. But most important is to develop a sense of concern for others’ well-being. If you have genuine kindness or compassion, then when someone gets something or has more success you are able to rejoice in their good fortune.
Mudita recognizes that life is not a zero-sum game, that there is not just one slice of cake in which someone else’s taking more means we get less. Mudita sees joy as limitless.
The path to joy, like with sadness, did not lead away from suffering and adversity but through it.
“In a dark time the eye begins to see…”
— Theodore Roethke
Perhaps death and the fear of death is truly the greatest challenge to joy. Well, when we are dead, it does not really matter, but it is the fear of its approaching, of the suffering that often precedes it, and ultimately the fear of the oblivion and the loss of our personhood that frighten us. Many psychologists say that the fear of death lies behind all other fears, and many historians of religion argue that religion arose to try to solve the mystery of death. Modern life keeps that fear at bay, as we don’t interact with the very old or the very sick, and illness, frailty, and death get
...more
So once we accept that it is normal and that sooner or later it will come, our attitude changes. Some people are embarrassed when asked about their age or pretend that they are still young. This is silly—deceiving oneself. We should be realistic.”
“According to Buddhist Vajrayana psychology, there are different levels of consciousness,” the Dalai Lama said, referring to the esoteric Buddhist tradition, which aims to help the practitioner discover ultimate truth. “There’s a dissolution that occurs as the grosser levels of our bodily and mental states come to an end, and when more and more subtle levels become manifest. Then at the innermost or most subtle level, this state of clear light arises at the moment of dying. Not death. Dying. Physical feeling completely ceases. Breathing ceases. Heart ceases, it’s no longer beating. Brain also
...more
Mirror neurons allow us to imitate others and experience their internal states, and therefore may play an important role in empathy.
The real secret of freedom may simply be extending this brief space between stimulus and response. Meditation seems to elongate this pause and help expand our ability to choose our response.
that pause, the freedom to respond instead of react.
Marriages, even the best ones—perhaps especially the best ones—are an ongoing process of spoken and unspoken forgiveness.
In other words, like so many religious traditions it defines who is part of the group and who is not. This is one of the greatest challenges that humanity faces: removing the barriers between who we see as “us” and who we see as “other.”
eight pillars of joy. Four were qualities of the mind: perspective, humility, humor, and acceptance. Four were qualities of the heart: forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity.
A healthy perspective really is the foundation of joy and happiness, because the way we see the world is the way we experience the world. Changing the way we see the world in turn changes the way we feel and the way we act, which changes the world itself. Or, as the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, “With our mind we create our own world.”
None of us are immune to the all-too-human traits of pride or ego, but true arrogance really comes from insecurity. Needing to feel that we are bigger than others comes from a nagging fear that we are smaller.
“When we realize that we are all children of God,” the Archbishop has explained, “and of equal and intrinsic value, then we don’t have to feel better or worse than others.”
Growth begins first in the low places. So similarly if you remain humble, then there is the possibility to keep learning. So I often tell people that although I’m eighty years old, I still consider myself a student.”
‘Any woman who wants to be equal to a man has no ambition.’”
Once we can see life in its wider perspective, once we are able to see our role in its drama with some degree of humility, and once we are able to laugh at ourselves, we then come to the fourth and final quality of mind, which is the ability to accept our life in all its pain, imperfection, and beauty.
“We are meant to live in joy,” the Archbishop explained. “This does not mean that life will be easy or painless. It means that we can turn our faces to the wind and accept that this is the storm we must pass through. We cannot succeed by denying what exists. The acceptance of reality is the only place from which change can begin.”
Much of traditional Buddhist practice is directed toward the ability to see life accurately, beyond all the expectations, projections, and distortions that we typically bring to it.
The ability to be present in each moment is nothing more and nothing less than the ability to accept the vulnerability, discomfort, and anxiety of everyday life.
acceptance
is not passive. It is powerful. It does not deny the importance of taking life seriously and working hard to change what needs changing, to redeem what needs redemption.
“You must not hate those who do harmful things,” the Dalai Lama has explained. “The compassionate thing is to do what you can to stop them—for they are harming themselves a...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
while each of us should do everything we can to realize the goal we seek, whether or not we succeed often depends on many factors beyond our control. So our responsibility is to pursue the goal with all the dedication we can muster, do the best we can but not become fixated on a preconceived notion of a result. Sometimes, actually quite often, our efforts lead to an unexpected outcome that might even be better than what we originally had in mind.
forgiveness. When we accept the present, we can forgive and release the desire for a different past.
We cannot say of anyone at all that they are totally unable to forgive. I think that all of us have the latent potential, as His Holiness is pointing out, to be sorry for these others who are disfiguring their humanity in this way. Indeed, no one is incapable of forgiving and no one is unforgivable.”
When you have a sense of concern for their well-being, then there is no place for anger and hatred to grow. “Forgiveness,” the Dalai Lama continued, “does not mean we forget. You should remember the negative thing, but because there is a possibility to develop hatred, we mustn’t allow ourselves to be led in that direction—we choose forgiveness.”
Forgiveness does not mean that you do not seek justice or that the perpetrator is not punished.
This is where the power of forgiveness lies—not losing sight of the humanity of the person while responding to the wrong with clarity and firmness.
“Forgiveness,” the Archbishop added, “is the only way to heal ourselves and to be free from the past.”
Of the species that have been studied, only domestic cats have failed to show behavior that reconciles relationships after conflict. (This finding will not surprise anyone who has cats.)
In a review of the research on forgiveness and health, Everett L. Worthington Jr. and Michael Scherer found that unforgiveness seems to compromise the immune system in a number of ways, including disrupting the production of important hormones and the way that our cells fight off infections.
Spiritual disease and physical disease are corollaries. The presence of one suggests the presence of the other. There is a direct positive relationship between forgiveness and health.
