Delusions destroy our peace
Delusions destroy our peaceAll our unpeaceful and unhappy minds are deluded minds. Whenever we are unpeaceful and unhappy, we have a delusion functioning, guaranteed! Our mind at that point is like a monkey scampering all over the place — grasping at things, throwing things. We have no control over it. For example, a negative thought arises about someone, focusing on their faults, and that’s it, we can’t do anything about it, we’re thinking it. We can be blissfully happy one minute, and then a fault-finding thought pops up and we become annoyed and our day is ruined.
When our mind is free from delusions, it is like a clear, peaceful lake that accurately reflects what is going on around it, such as mountains and clouds. When a delusion arises, it’s like a sudden storm disturbing the tranquility of that lake such that everything reflected in it is distorted. There is a saying in the Kadampa tradition, “Always rely upon a happy mind alone,” because we cannot trust any unhappy mind. If we are angry or attached or proud or jealous, we know that we cannot trust that mind because it is reflecting something that is not there. We actually say things like, “You are making me mad!”, or “I’m mad about you!” and we ARE mad. Delusions make us mad. They make us stupid.
From new article on Kadampa Life.
This movie is a good testimony to how animals can share with us the same emotions, feelings, ability to learn, sociability, and even self-awareness. They are in a lower realm, and they don’t have the opportunity to develop spiritually in this lifetime, but they have minds, they think and feel, and their Buddha nature is no different to ours. They are not mere bodies with instincts, devoid of sentience or thought, as many people claim in justification for treating them badly or as less than people.
~ From Chimpanzee, “There is meaning in those eyes.”
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“It is sometimes very difficult to distinguish between our love and our attachment for others, but when we are able to do so, we will see that it is invariably the attachment that is the cause of our suffering. Pure unconditional love never causes any pain or worry but only peace and joy.” —
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso - “Transform Your Life” (via dancingdakini)
More about the subject here too: http://kadampalife.org/2012/02/14/love-attachment-and-desire-according-to-buddhism/
“These appearances are pleasant enough right now, but can and will change on a dime. We need to scratch this random dream while we have some control over the projector of our mind, and project a meaningful, blissful world from wisdom and compassion.”
From Life is stranger than fiction.
Universal Compassion
Inspiring Solutions for Difficult Times
The heart of Buddha’s teachings is unconditional love and compassion. In this inspired explanation of the popular Buddhist poem Training the Mind in Seven Points, Geshe Kelsang reveals powerful and far-reaching methods for us to develop these altruistic states.
(Source: undigenous, via liliezencoach)
Then if you also take into account the lack of inherent existence of all phenomena…!
(Source: blankrorschach, via openwideeyes)
How to handle things falling apart... -
Normally we try to hold tightly onto the infrastructure of our lives – our relationships, our money, our car, our pets, our children, our house, our job, our career, our status, our power, our control. Much of our current self-image is based on these very concrete, solid, pretty much permanent things that seem to define us. The stronger we grasp at this chunky restrictive sense of self, the more attachment we will need to generate for all these things in order to keep the illusion alive, and the more fear we will have of losing them. Like trying to hang onto the deck furniture on the Titanic, or a sandcastle by the rising tide, our desires and efforts are doomed to failure. Every small loss of, say, a turret on our castle is disillusioning for us because we wanted it to be permanent and fixed, and it ended up being the opposite. Then when the whole lot gets swept away at death…
What happens when we think of countless future lives?!