MENTAL BURNING

Examining the understanding of heat in Vajrayana gives insight into tantra’s somewhat different embrace of classical Buddhist imagery. From this perspective, the experience of mental burning is indeed the central suffering of our lives. It is the experiential dimension of the intensity of our obscurations, whether emotional, conceptual, or habitual. But rather than attempting to put out the flames with meditation methods, it is important to allow the burning to occur during practice. Certainly in the foundational stages of the path we must learn not to become engulfed in the flames, to tame the wild mind and emotions, and to train ourselves to open further to experience. Finally, however, through Vajrayana practice under the guidance of a guru, the burning we experience becomes a great teacher and a great blessing.

Excerpted From: Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism by Judith Simmer-Brown.

http://www.shambhala.com/dakini-s-warm-breath.html

Words

The Rules for Being Human
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a fulltime informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works."
4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive there are lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better than "here." When your "there" has become a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie inside you. The answer to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. This will often be forgotten, only to be remembered again.
    ~ Cherie Carter-Scott

• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi



• When we practice looking deeply, we realize that our home is everywhere. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh



• Experience has taught me that the greatest inner tranquility comes from developing love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts our mind at ease. It helps remove our own fears and insecurities and gives us strength to face obstacles - it is the ultimate source of success in life. ~ Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama



• The greatest achievement is selflessness.
  The greatest worth is self-mastery.
  The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
  The greatest precept is continual awareness.
  The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
  The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
  The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
  The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
  The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
  The greatest patience is humility.
  The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
  The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
  The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.
  ~ Atisha



• Breathe and you know…that you are alive.
  Breathe and you know…that all is helping you.
  Breathe and you know…that you are the world.
  Breathe and you know…that the flower is breathing too.
  Breathe for yourself…and you breathe for the world.
  Breathe in compassion…and breathe out joy.
  Breathe and be one…with the air that you breathe.
  Breathe and be one…with the earth that you tread.
  Breathe and be one …with the fire that glows.
  Breathe and you breathe…the thought of birth and death.
  Breathe and you see…impermanence is life.
  Breathe for your joy...and to be steady and calm.
  Breathe for your sorrow…to flow away.
  Breathe to renew…every cell in your blood.
  Breathe to renew…the depth of consciousness.
  Breathe and you dwell…in the here and now.
  Breathe and all you touch…is new and real.
  ~ Thich Nhat Hanh



• There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. ~ G.K. Chesterton



• A wise man does not accumulate for himself. The more he uses for others, the more he has himself. The more he gives to others, the more he possesses of his own. The way of heaven is to benefit others and not to injure. ~ Lao Tzu



• He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye. ~ Buddha

Dalai Lama to resign as Tibetan political leader
The Bangkok Post, March 10, 2011

Dharmsala, India -- The Dalai Lama announced Thursday he would step down as political head of Tibet's exiled government, but continue to push the Tibetan cause in his key role as its spiritual figurehead.

In a speech on the anniversary of a failed uprising in 1959 against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama said he would seek an amendment allowing him to resign his political office when the exiled Tibetan parliament meets next week.

"As early as the 1960s, I have repeatedly stressed that Tibetans need a leader, elected freely by the Tibetan people, to whom I can devolve power," he said in Dharamsala, the seat of Tibet's government-in-exile in northern India.

"Now, we have clearly reached the time to put this into effect."

Read more at BuddhistChannel.tv.

BREATHING PRACTICE

Find a place where you are alone and train yourself in this way:

When you breathe in, experience breathing in.
When you breathe out, be fully conscious that you are breathing out.
If you cherish and practice this, it will bear great fruit.
Whatever you are doing and wherever you are,
you will find steadiness, calm, and concentration
if you become conscious of your breathing.

From "Majjhima Nikaya" of the Buddha

Audio Dharma Talk: Instead Of Attachment

Ajahn Brahm talks about enjoying our possessions like family,
relationship and identity without being attached to them.
Attachment comes from fear and enjoyment comes from letting go of fear.

Click here for audio Dharma Talk.

It's Important

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come. ~Dalai Lama

It’s very important not to misunderstand what is meant by the idea of overcoming our self-cherishing attitudes. We are not saying that a spiritual practitioner should completely ignore or abandon the goal of self-fulfilment, rather we are advising him or her to overcome that small-minded selfishness that makes us oblivious to the wellbeing of others and to the impact our actions can have on them. ~Dalai Lama

The Nature of Things

Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was again stung. The other monk asked him, "Friend, why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know it's nature is to sting?"

"Because," the monk replied, "to save it is my nature."

   (Another version of this story describes a fox who agrees to carry a scorpion on its back across a river, upon the condition that the scorpion does not sting him. But the scorpion does indeed sting the fox when they are in midstream. As the fox begins to drown, taking the scorpion with him, he pleadingly asks why the scorpion has jeopardized both of them by stinging. "Because it's my nature." This story sometimes is attributed to Native Americans lore.)

Click here for more Zen stories.

Happiness comes through taming the mind; without taming the mind there is no way to be happy. 
~ The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso