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October 29 - November 14, 2019
Lasting happiness cannot be found in pursuit of any goal or achievement.
“Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say,” the Archbishop added, as we began our descent, “save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive.
We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. It simply depends on the attitudes, the perspectives, and the reactions we bring to situations and to our relationships with other people. When it comes to personal happiness there is a lot that we as individuals can do.”
rejoicing (in someone else’s happiness, what Buddhists call mudita)
“He taught that when you experience some tragic situation, think about it. If there’s no way to overcome the tragedy, then there is no use worrying too much.
Tragedy
‘Wherever you have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.’”
Home
“And you realize that in a very real sense we’re meant for a very profound complementarity. It is the nature of things. You don’t have to be a believer in anything. I mean I could not speak as I am speaking without having learned it from other human beings. I could not walk as a human being. I could not think as a human being, except through learning it from other human beings. I learned to be a human being from other human beings. We belong in this delicate network. It is actually quite profound.
Genuine friends.
Cham
Perhaps that is what it means to be fully present, available for each moment and
H
each person we encounter, untethered by the ruminating memories of the past and not lured by the anticipatory worry about the future.
I really hate formality. When we are born, there is no formality. When we die, there is no formality. When we enter hospital, there is no formality. So formality is just artificial. It just creates additional barriers.
Formality
A self-centered attitude brings a sense of insecurity and fear. Distrust. Too much fear brings frustration. Too much frustration brings anger. So that’s the psychology, the system of mind, of emotion, which creates a chain reaction. With a self-centered attitude, you become distanced from others, then distrust, then feel insecure, then fear, then anxiety, then frustration, then anger, then violence.”
selfcenter
You are made for perfection, but you are not yet perfect. You are a masterpiece in the making.”
courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over
Coraje
“Our opportunities are so much greater now, but so, too, are our anxieties.”
“Stress and anxiety often come from too much expectation and too much ambition,”
Ansiedad
“Sadness and grief are, of course, natural human responses to loss, but if your focus remains on the loved one you have just lost, the experience is less likely to lead to despair. In contrast, if your focus while grieving remains mostly on yourself—‘What am I going to do now? How can I cope?’—then there is a greater danger of going down the path of despair and depression. So, again, so much depends on how we respond to our experience of loss and sadness.”
Grief
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.”
Top
The best way is when one is able to approach death with joy; next best way is without fear; third best way is at least not to have regrets.
Death
In the land of Gandhi that we were in, I thought of his totemic words when asked if he was a Hindu: “Yes I am. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, and a Jew.” We were looking for human truth, and we would drink from the cup of wisdom from whatever source it came.
Gandhi
Changing the way we see the world in turn changes the way we feel and the way we act, which changes the world itself.
Overview Effect
Astronautas
Dalai Lama senses this danger, he looks at a bug or some other creature and reminds himself that, in some ways, this creature is better than we are, because it is innocent and free of malice.
Maldad
God uses each of us in our own way, and even if you are not the best one, you may be the one who is needed or the one who is there.”
Noviembre 2019
Acceptance, it must be pointed out, is the opposite of resignation and defeat.
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.
If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it.
Goals
“helper’s high,”
spend so much of our lives climbing a pyramid of achievement where we are constantly being evaluated and judged, and often found to be not making the grade. We internalize these other voices of parents, teachers, and society at large. As a result, sometimes people are not very compassionate with themselves.
So it seems that money can buy happiness, if we spend it on other people.
In generosity, there is a wider perspective, in which we see our connection to all others. There is a humility that recognizes our place in the world and acknowledges that at another time we could be the one in need, whether that need is material, emotional, or spiritual. There is a sense of humor and an ability to laugh at ourselves so that we do not take ourselves too seriously. There is an acceptance of life, in which we do not force life to be other than what it is. There is a forgiveness of others and a release of what might otherwise have been. There is a gratitude for all that we have
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8 pillars of joy
Tibetan endless knots, symbols for the impermanence and interdependence of all life and the union of wisdom and compassion.
Knot
No matter how excellent, no religion can be universal. So we have to find another way to promote these values. “I think the only way really is, as we have said, through education. Education is universal.
Religion
