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Showing posts from November 14, 2010

Personality and Our Changeable Moods

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Personality is the habitual use of perceptions forming a pattern that defines our individual strategies for interacting with the world. It is interesting that we never tire of using these strategies. In a culture and a world craving change, personality is the craving for pattern. Why don’t we get tired of ourselves? ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~ "Persönlichkeit ist die gewohnheitsmäßige Anwendung von Wahrnehmungen, die ein Muster ergeben, dass unsere individuellen Strategien für die Interaktion mit der Welt definiert. Es ist interessant, dass wir niemals müde werden, diese Strategien anzuwenden. In einer Kultur und einer Welt, die nach Wandel verlangt, verlangt die Persönlichkeit nach Mustern. Warum werden wir uns nie unserer selbst überdrüssig?" - Domo Geshe Rinpoche ---"

How Well Do I Handle Bad News?

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So many complaints flying around about the environment, political leaders, poverty, and more, but it is almost always done from an aggressive self-righteous position. “I’m right and you’re so bad! Those people or that political party, grrrrr…..” It would be more skillful of us to react to disturbing news by thinking, ‘Oh, how terrible! Look how they are suffering and causing suffering to others. I must get rid of my self-absorption. I must eliminate my self-cherishing!’ The longer we act as a symbiotic host for self-cherishing, that will be how long suffering will be alive in the world. All of the suffering we see should be a tremendous embarrassment to ourselves, who are acting as the host for self-cherishing. That is how we do it with dharma! We blame our self-cherishing, and not ourselves. Then we have mind training. ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~ "Es liegen so viele Beschwerden über die Umwelt, über Politiker, Armut und anderes in der Luft

Happiness, Compassion.. Quotes

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Mother is Running Amok!!

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Our precious mother is out there running amok in the world, a danger to others, using guns and weapons of destruction, or to a lesser degree, practicing harmful speech and an inability to care for others properly. All of our precious mothers from so many, many previous lives, are living without us now, doing who knows what? While each one was our precious mother in some previous time, when we had an intimate connection, what did we do to them? Our own self-cherishing instigated their aggression! They hurt us, we hurt them back, but they also developed even worse habits of negative karma, and became more distorted. Not seeing clearly, misinterpreting events and the actions of others, they continue to suffer. They are also causing others to suffer by the change we brought about in them during our personal relationship. Unhappiness, poverty, aggression, and even war: all of these can be placed directly upon our own self-cherishing. ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~~ "Unsere kostbare Mutter lä

The False Friend to a Buddhist Meditator

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We are plagued by problems because our self-absorption is like an oily friend, seeming to care for us, but instead causes harm. Our false friend also prevents us from trying too hard to stop our suffering by only finding the easiest way out of feeling bad, such as thinking, ‘I don’t care.’ This strategy is a kind of lack of suffering, but a poor one since it doesn’t address any of the problems causing suffering. However, if we think about it carefully and unemotionally, self-cherishing is actually a distortion of correct self-preservation. ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~ "Wir werden von Problemen gequält weil unsere Selbstversunkenheit wie ein aalglatter Freund ist, der sich anscheinend um uns sorgt, aber uns stattdessen schadet. Unser falscher Freund hindert uns auch daran, uns mehr Mühe zu geben unser Leid zu beenden, indem wir nur die einfachste Lösung suchen, um uns nicht mehr schlecht zu fühlen, wie z. B. zu denken 'Das macht mir nichts

Understand Self-cherishing and Meditate Loving Kindness

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The placement of understanding self-cherishing, along with meditation of great kindness toward all is unique to Tibetan mind training practices. Although you may have studied, discussed and meditated upon compassion from many different viewpoints, the juncture of self-cherishing and meditating with great kindness perh aps has not been touched yet. Done correctly, these two practices are mutually supportive, with the added benefit of realizing that your self-cherishing is no longer your own business. You are not the sole experiencer of your self-cherishing; all sentient beings suffer because of your own self-cherishing! By utilizing love and concern for others, we will soon reach the conclusion that self-cherishing is not an option. At a certain stage, some meditators will get a “a creepy feeling” to be harboring something so harmful inside their own mind that it is like sleeping with snakes! Later, we will discover that much of the suffering we experience ourselves

What Religion Does for Us

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All living beings need a meaningful explanation to feel safe and it has become the duty of religion to describe in words what is wordless. Because we innately crave a complete concept, the purpose of this important inquiry is to explain our enduring inner being and its place in a greater context. Let's take a deck of cards, marked with meanings instead of numbers and symbols, and mentally reshuffle them from a cohesive explanation of Christan soul to the Buddhist position of the subtle transmigrating inner mind. Some meanings will remain together, while some meaning cards will move to other decks of different general concepts. In the Tantric Buddhist explanation, individual and group karma replaces God as creator. The personal relationship with deity, not as a creator, but as a profound awakened living being who wishes us to be free of suffering, stabilizes our emotional and inner logical needs. The concept of transformation is the same, but Buddhism sees the enduring inner individ

Ego and Pride Are Useful!

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Ego and pride are actually very useful, it’s just that we don’t know which pride is the correct one and what form of ego is the correct one. ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~ Ego und Stolz sind an und für sich sehr nützlich; wir wissen bloß nicht, welcher Stolz der korrekte ist und welche Form des Egos d ie korrekte ist." - Domo Geshe Rinpoche ---

Random Thoughts on You, Change and Bad People

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Don't try so hard to impress, you are already wonderful! ~~~~~ "Versuch nicht so verzweifelt, Eindruck auf andere zu machen. Du bist bereits wunderbar!" DGR Are you the same person you were a year ago? Ten years ago? Do not doubt that you will change..... however, you want those new changes to be positive, isn't that so? Buddhism is a successful program of orchestrated change, which leads to awakening. If we think the good people should be enlightened, we should think again. The bad people need to be enlightened even more! For one thing, they will stop harming others! Western philosophy seems quite good (although I am not studied in it). However, where are the methods to learn transcendence? Seems like psychologists are the only contacts...

Peace is Not a Valid Goal

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Peace is not a valid goal to work toward, we must work instead on obstacles preventing it from arising spontaneously within the mind! Peace is the experience of equanimity that comes from closure; the end of conflict. In a deeper sense, peace is the end of confusion between how we exist and how we think we exist. ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~ "Frieden ist kein gültiges Ziel, auf das man hinarbeiten soll. Stattdessen müssen wir an den Hindernissen arbeiten, die verhindern, dass er spontan in unserem Geist aufsteigt! Frieden ist das Erleben von Gleichmut, der daraus entsteht, mit etwas abgeschlossen zu haben: das Ende des Konflikts. In einem tieferen Sinn ist Frieden das Ende der Verwirrung darüber, wie wir existieren und wie wir glauben zu existieren." - Domo Geshe Rinpoche ---"