Always take the lowest place. Wear simple clothes. Help other beings as much as you can. In everything you do, simply work at developing love and compassion until they have become a fundamental part of you. Patrul Rinpoche
While it is easy to love the lovable, it may be the unlovable who need our love more. - Thich Nhat Hanh
If we want to be loved, we are looking for a support system. If we want to love, we are looking for spiritual growth. - Ayya Khema
There’s no problem with being where you are right now. Even if you feel loving-kindness and compassion for only one sentient being, that is a good place to start. Simply acknowledging, respecting, and appreciating the warmth is a way to encourage its growth. - Pema Chodron
"All the data we have on social justice shows that women and girls are the most vulnerable and face the most oppression. Seventy-five per cent of trafficked people are female. Most of the victims of malnutrition, poverty, illiteracy, and domestic violence are women. Women do 60 per cent of the world’s work, but own 10 per cent of its land. There are millions of young girls waiting for a chance to attend school. Addressing poverty and the environment, as well as population growth can all be addressed in a big way by educating female children." - Ayya Yeshe
(*Ayya Yeshe is an ordained Buddhist nun who works with the poorest of the poor in India - primarily women and girls) Buddhism itself is not especially patriarchal. The problem is that the societies in which it developed are patriarchal. Our innate potential to become liberated is the same, male or female. - Tenzin Palmo
There are things that seem to be common to patriarchal traditions. One, they’re body denying, and two, a priesthood interprets rather than there being a direct experience. - Gloria Steineim
If you are angry when you’re doing something, even if you speak of peace, you are actually engaged in war. — Pomnyun Sunim
#1) Meditation is good for mind and body. Ninety cancer patients were taught meditation and then compared to cancer patients who did not have meditation exposure. After seven weeks, those who had meditated reported that they were significantly less depressed, anxious, angry and confused than the control group, which hadn't practiced meditation. The meditators also had more energy and fewer heart and gastrointestinal problems than did the other group. This study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
#2) Meditation reduces anxiety. Anxiety can be described as experiencing overwhelming feelings of fear, worry and tension. Meditation offsets these by slowing down racing thoughts and regulating breathing, which calms the nervous system. People with anxiety who regularly practiced meditation over the course of three years saw positive, long-term impacts on their mental health, according to a study in General Hospital Psychiatry. #3) Meditation eases depression. A study by Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Sara Lazar showed that the brains of meditators had remarkably more "prefrontal cortex gray matter thickness" meaning that the more you practice meditation, the stronger & better your prefrontal cortex, the greater your emotional well-being and balance. Another study done with people who were recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) compared those who were taught meditation with those who did not receive the instruction. The result: Meditators reported better coping skills and less perceived stress, and their symptoms of depression had been reduced,” said Neurologist and Lawson Associate Scientist Dr. Sarah Morrow. The research was done at the Lawson Health Research Institute. If you're local, please join us for group meditation: Wednesday evening 7 - 8 pm Sunday morning 9 - 10 am. The systems that evolved in Tibet were not primarily to make money. They were to make bodhisattvas. That’s a huge difference. They didn’t have universities where people learned how to make money. It was about how to become a bodhisattva, how to tame the ego, how to expand the mind, how to use these incredible techniques, which are way beyond our psychiatric techniques, to go deeper and deeper, ever deeper into mind, to remove all of the poisons. - Richard Gere
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Victor M. Parachin ...is aVedic educator, yoga instructor, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of a dozen books. Buy his books at amazon or your local bookstore. Archives
May 2024
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