Keep the lamp of friendship
burning with oil of Love,
because Sun rises in the east
and set in the west
but the Friendship rises in the Heart
and sets after death.
~Best Message
From left: Novice Ananda and Novice Kyle.
“Good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge”
May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind quickly be freed from their illnesses.
May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free.
May the powerless find power and may people think of befriending one another.
May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wildernesses – the children, the aged, the unprotected – be guarded by beneficent celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood.
~A Buddhist Prayer for Peace
You cannot touch all of your teeth with your tongue.
After reading this message, try it if you are my true friends!
Well, you are smiling now, because you are my most wonderful friends!
Flowerful morning, colorful noon
joyful evening, and a peaceful night.
It’s going to be a fantastic day for you!
A relaxed mind, a peaceful soul, a joyful spirit, a healthy body,
and a heart full of love… All these are my prayers for you.
~sms4smile
Sorry I have been busy. Will stop by later…
You cannot touch all of your
teeth with your tongue.
After reading this message,
try it if you are my true friends!
Well, you are smiling now,
because you are
my most wonderful friends!
http://leelavadeeflower.blogspot.com/2015/01/this-message_22.html
+458 This post has been reshared 15 times on Google+
Flowerful morning, colorful noon
joyful evening, and a peaceful night.
It's going to be a fantastic day for you!
A relaxed mind, a peaceful soul, a joyful spirit, a healthy body, and a heart full of love… All these are my prayers for you. ~sms4smile
http://leelavadeeflower.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-heart-full-of-love.html
+192 This post has been reshared 19 times on Google+
Maha Ghosananda in Cambodia.
by Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda
To take revenge on trouble-makers is only to create more problems and disturbances. You must realise that negative feelings and hostile actions could only bring harm and suffering to both you and the trouble-makers. In order to take retaliatory action, you have to harbour intense hatred in your heart. This hatred is like a poison. Since the poison is initially in you, surely it will harm you before it can harm anyone else. Before you can throw a blazing iron at another, you get burned first. Your action merely goes to show that there is no basic difference between you and your opponent. By hating others, you only give them power over you. You do not solve your problem. If you become angry with a person who simply smiles back at you, then you will feel defeated and miserable. Since he did not co-operate with you to fulfil your wish, it is he who is victorious. The Buddha teaches us how to live happily when we are faced with disturbances.
‘Ah happily do we live without hate amongst the hateful. Amidst hateful men, we live without hate’. — Dhammapada. We can live happily without fanning the fires of hatred. Perhaps you may not be strongh enough to extend compassionate love to your enemies; but the sake of your own health and happiness and that of everybody else, you must at least learn how to forgive and forget. By not hating or crushing your trouble-maker, you act like a gentleman. To act in this manner, you must understand that the other person has been misled by anger, jealousy and ignorance. He is therefore no different from all other human beings who have also at one time or another been misled by the same negative states of mind.
The Buddha says: “Evil-doers are not wicked by nature. They do evil because they are ignorant”. Therefore they need guidance. We should not curse them. It is not justifiable for us to say that they should be condemned to everlasting suffering as it is still not too late to correct them. We should try to explain to them in a very convincing way that they are in fact in the wrong. With this understanding, you can treat the evil-doer as you would a patient who is suffering from a sickness and in need of treatment. When the sickness is cured the ex-patient and everyone else will be well and happy.
The ignorant must be guided by the wise. “Good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge”. If a man does something wrong to you of ignorance or misunderstanding, then that is the time to radiate your compassionate love towards the evil-doer. One day, he will realise this folly and relent on his evil habits. So it is better to give him a chance to be good. Repentance of his past misdeeds will change him into a better person and in the end he will truly appreciate your kind thoughts.
Meditating Buddha statue at the Meditation Center in Leverett, MA.
by Thich Nhat Hanh
You don’t discriminate between the seed and the plant. You see that they ‘inter-are’ with each other, that they are the same thing. Looking deeply at the young cornstalk, you can see the seed of corn, still alive, but with a new appearance. The plant is the continuation of the seed.
The practice of meditation helps us to see things other people can’t see. We look deeply and we see that father and son, father and daughter, mother and son, mother and daughter, corn seed and cornstalk, have a very close relationship. That is why we should awaken to the fact, to the truth, that we inter-are. The suffering of one is the suffering of the other. […] When we see that we and all living beings are made of the same nature, how can there be division between us? How can there be lack of harmony? When we realize our ‘interbeing nature’, we’ll stop blaming and exploiting and killing, because we know that we inter-are. That is the great awakening we must have in order for the Earth to be saved.
We human beings have always singled ourselves out from the rest of the natural world. We classify other animals and living beings as ‘Nature’, a thing apart from us, and act as if we’re somehow separate from it. Then we ask, “How should we deal with Nature?” We should deal with Nature the same way we should deal with ourselves: nonviolently. Human beings and Nature are inseparable. Just as we should not harm ourselves, we should not harm Nature.
Causing harm to other human beings causes harm to ourselves. Accumulating wealth and owning excessive portions of the world’s natural resources deprives fellow humans of the chance to live. Participating in oppressive and unjust social systems creates and deepens the gap between rich and poor, and aggravates the situation of social injustice. While the rest of the human family suffers and starves, the enjoyment of false security and wealth is a delusion.
It’s clear that the fate of each individual is inextricably linked to the fate of the whole human race. We must let others live if we ourselves want to live. The only alternative to coexistence is co-nonexistence. A civilization in which we must kill and exploit others in order to live is not a healthy civilization. […] To bring about peace within the human family, we must work for harmonious co-existence. If we continue to shut ourselves off from the rest of the world, imprisoning ourselves in narrow concerns and immediate problems, we’re not likely to make peace or to survive. The human race is part of Nature. We need to have this insight before we can have harmony between people.
~Thich Nhat Hanh in “Nature and Nonviolence”
My past says you met me.
My future says you will
always remember me.
My dream says you care for me.
But my heart says this
friend is born for me.
~sms4smile Link to Google+
Sometimes your existence gives hope to one person,
Your smile may be a pearl for someone,
Your presence might be the desire of the one
who loves you dearly. So value yourself.
~sms4smile
