The Feeling Buddha Quotes

“Modern society tends to operate in ways that isolate us in our littleness. We are encouraged to be consumers and economic units. We are assailed by advertising which carries the constant message that individual indulgence is all that matters. All this serves to weaken our spirit and put our world at risk. As our society becomes more and more spiritually impoverished, it is like a forest drying out in the heat of summer. The danger of a forest fire grows.
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If the story we are living is not important, then our life will peter into apathy and we will be defenceless against tyranny and oppression.
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There will always be bad big stories waiting to sweep us away. Indeed, we are already involved in them. By being consumer citizens we collude with all manner of ill: factory farming, armaments production, environmental damage, wars to protect oil supplies, third world debt, to name but a few. It is important to do better than this, to find a more noble story.
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The Buddha enabled many people to see possibilities for their lives that they had not perceived before they met him. That is the function of a sage. He was able to speak the other person's language and to see their life in terms of the bigger picture how new meaning could be injected into the person's little story so that it began to serve the great story of peace and compassion in the world. He was an inspirer.”
― David Brazier, The Feeling Buddha: A Buddhist Psychology of Character, Adversity and Passion

“Attachment and aversion are two short term strategies. There is a third. Some people reach for the bottle. It may be a bottle of alcohol or a bottle of pills, but the effect is much the same. Quite a large proportion of the population find it difficult to bear even one day without the effect of alcohol. Much of the agricultural land in the world is devoted exclusively to the production of alcohol — and this while others starve. Yet alcohol does much physical damage to our bodies and leads to socially destructive behaviour. Of course, oblivion is not sought solely through drinking. Many other drugs are used many of them nowadays prescribed by doctors. Oblivion is an accepted 'solution' for many people. The ultimate oblivion-seeking behaviour is suicide. Where hateful behaviour can do massive damage in a short time and greedy behaviour has a slow undermining effect upon our lives, behaviour based on the desire for oblivion does both. We suffer in the short run and we suffer in the long run. This is the most extreme form of escapism. The attempt to destroy suffering in this way, however, destroys us.”
― David Brazier, The Feeling Buddha: A Buddhist Psychology of Character, Adversity and Passion