Right Intention
Rise above the limited conditions of pleasure and pain, success and failure, happiness and sorrow, that all the countless unenlightened beings in creation are slaves to.
The life of meditation and religious study is absolutely no guarantee of peak moments. Most people involved in religious study and meditation are downright bored, and they're as stuck in what they do as everyone else is.
On the pathway that leads to enlightenment, only your heart can tell you what is right.
Being on the path means we again meditate with joy. We deal with the suffering of life and the pain of existence without perfect enlightenment with a smile.
We could go to monasteries. I could show you people who are very wise and they have great willpower, but they're not happy. They lack balance. They take it all too seriously.
In Buddhism balance is the most difficult thing, because it is overlooked.
Don't think of us as separate beings. Imagine that we are one body and it's been split into millions. When we sit in the mediation hall - that is unity
You human beings think that yoga is in some way going to make everything you want to happen, work out. You are going to be able to avoid what you don't want. That is not yoga. That is desire and aversion.
The pathway to enlightenment is happiness. It doesn't really matter if you are successful, if you are in prison, if you are dying, if you have contact with light.
Intentional suffering and the postponement of happiness is not yoga or Buddhism. It will not lead to a better incarnation.
I learned from my own teachers, a long time ago in another universe, the quality of quiet fortitude that is renewed by a person's love of light.
Don't create a plastic image of what it is to be spiritual and try to become it. You won't be capable of it and that will frustrate you. Even if you could do it, if it's not really what you're like, you'll be miserable.
Learn to accept the transitory nature of existence of the body and the mind; see eternity in everything, this world, the other worlds, and nirvana.
In order not to lose your resolve and purpose, you need to unite with others of like mind and work with an advanced Teacher who is in touch with, and can transfer, knowledge and power.
You have to be a warrior in order to become enlightened. If you think its tough paying the bills, think about being everywhere all at once and doing everything in all the universes, simultaneously, past, present, and future.
Your journey is to see how deeply you can interface your mind with infinity. That's the journey of a monk -- to see.
Gaining energy is accomplished by meditating, by right actions, right thoughts, right deeds, by studying with a real teacher or by just studying the teachings, by creating happiness in your life, and by never giving up.
The purpose of all of this is not to walk around with new vocabulary words, but to cause you to speculate on the marvel of your own being.
Determine where you are and where you wish to be. Then use all of your self-effort to make that happen, following the guiding principles of all the Buddhas and bohisattvas and seekers of the dharma, of enlightenment.
Believe in yourself, step one. Believe in the order, step two. Believe in the teachings, step three.
