Buddhist Wisdom

[Pravin Kumar]

View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.

- Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"


How to cope with wavering thoughts? Versatile are flying clouds, Yet from the sky theyre not apart. Mighty are the oceans waves, Yet they are not separate from the sea. Heavy and thick are banks of fog, Yet from the air theyre not apart. Frantic runs the mind in voidness, Yet from the Void it never separates.

- Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa


Where is thought? It can never be seen or even apprehended. It is like a magical illusion, for with imagination it colors the world. Searching for thought, unable to see it, a person looks for its origin. And it seems to be that where there is an object thought arises. Thought does not arise without an object. Can thought look at thought? No. Just as the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, or a fingertip touch itself, so thought cannot see thought.

- Sikshasamuccaya


Through the round of many births I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house-builder. Painful is birth again & again. House-builder, you're seen! You will not build a house again. All your rafters broken, the ridge pole destroyed, gone to the Unformed, the mind has come to the end of craving.

- Dhammapada, 11, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.


And better than a hundred years lived without seeing the Deathless state, is one day lived seeing the Deathless state.

- Dhammapada, 114, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

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