Of course 2020 has been a very difficult year, but I always ask myself: “What year has not been difficult?” Each year has its own problems. - Telo Tulku Rinpoche
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All beings fear death and they all fear the pain of a club. Think how do they make you feel? Then do not kill and do not club; live peacefully with all beings and do not add to the violence of this world. Harm no one. - Dhammapada
Whether you like it or not, everything that is happening at this moment is a result of the choices you'’ve made in the past. Unfortunately, a lot of us make choices unconsciously, and therefore we don’t think they are choices — and yet, they are.
- Deepak Chopra Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle.... Goats are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions. - B. R. Ambedkar
Every kind word, every smile you offer someone who might be having a bad day, comes back to you in ways you’d never expect. - Yongey Mingyur
“If we look at our lives, we already have a certain amount of patience. We can bear many difficult circumstances quite well. For example, we all have to endure minor illnesses such as colds and headaches. We have to deal with plenty of weather we don’t like. We put up with mosquitoes and mice and many other creatures that cause us minor trouble.
Rather than constantly seeking to eliminate all small irritations from our lives, we can use them as a basis for developing more patience. If you emphasize comfort over the practice of patience, your mind will get weaker and weaker. If you want your life to be free of the challenge of needing patience, your mind will be in constant fear. You will feel increasingly under threat, increasingly provoked, increasingly paranoid. This will lead you to act more negatively and to reject much of the world.” - Dzigar Kongrtrul Rinpoche  (Public domain image from www.pexels.com)
In his book, Meditation For Beginners, Jack Kornfield offers these two tips for a strong meditation practice. First, sit properly. “The sitting of your physical body will help a great deal in the quieting of the mind. Your first step, then, is to find a stable and comfortable posture so that you can become aware of your body in the present moment. You can sit squatting on a cushion, you can sit cross legged; or you can sit on a chair with your feet flat on the floor. What matters is that you have a sense of stability, comfort and ease.” Second, focus on the breath. “Use the natural movement of breath to begin to train your awareness to be in the present moment . . .each time you become aware that you have gone off into thinking or planning or remembering, you let go of the thought and return to the breath . . . if it helps, as you breath you can say softly in the background ‘in’ during the in breath and ‘out’ during the out breath. But let those words be only 5 percent of your attention, and let the other 95 percent be your awareness resting on your breath.” Every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in like kind . . . what we sow is what we reap. And when we choose actions that bring happiness and success to others, the fruit of our karma is happiness and success. - Swami Vivekananda
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ― Maya Angelou
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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
December 2023
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