Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

Green Truths Another important measure used to discover what is true or not, is contemporary wisdom. I was living in California where many use strong, politically correct speech, politically correct motivation, as well as environmentally careful words such as green, sustainable living, (and of course, vegetable oil power for cars.) As compassionate caretakers of a troubled world, we certainly are influenced by both current research and contemporary wisdom that reflects new ideas about new problems. However, looking back on contemporary wisdom attitudes of five, ten or twenty years ago, we might feel surprised or even castigate ourselves for how we used to think. Now it is fashionable to castigate second or third world countries for doing the same things that first worlders themselves did earlier, because they do not have money or technology to do things as green as in California. I am not saying that green is bad and wrong. The point here is about the criteria used for discovering...

How you develop strategies in seeking your truth are influenced by criteria already present in your mind that you are able to use as tools for this search. However, if they remain unexamined or you are using faulty premises, you might arrive at some strange ideas about truth and falsity that bear no relationship to reality. Contrary to some pop philosophies, there are actual realities and truths that need to be penetrated in order to evolve. The reason we seek truth is not to have a fancy new way to personalize our life, feel important by creating a new truth or just wanting to be different from everybody else in a faceless world. Other criteria used for understanding truth are books of wisdom or everyday wisdom sayings. I recently read about Benjamin Franklin and some of the books that he wrote. He also himself collected sayings of his time, about crops and about the nature of people, trust, and other interesting topics gathered into regular almanacs to guide others in everyday l...

This series on seeking truth is intended to act as a way for you to meditate on your own methods. The problem continues to be separating influences that are forced on us from those we have discovered ourselves. Then we need to re validate each category to see if the outer or inner influence is valid according to logical standards. However, we do not need to be a scholar to have careful reasoning or to throw away reasoning altogether to free ourselves to think clearly. There are many voices and influences we have outside ourselves vying for our attention to make us believe according to their perceptions, some of which are valid and some are accepted without question. A saying of the Buddha often quoted about not believing him, only believe what you understand is a misunderstanding by many and is regarding this point. However, we have inner criteria and inner influence that are demanding we serve it before others. Some of these might be trauma, anger, jealousy, competitiveness, or ...

Many people sense that something important is missing, a feeling that there is something they should already know. It seems that there occurs for some an awakening desire to break free from the mental constraints that separate them from what is real. There is something that we want to know and we want to rejoice that we understand and possess the big Truth, so we can share it with others. We might experience a desire to search for personal truth from time to time but give it up as being too complicated. And so there must is something about the search itself that needs to be examined in order for us to have a quality result. Rather than trying to find the truth immediately, let us first explore how we go about our search for truth. You know, this subject can be quite romantic, isn't that so? It has feelings of extreme importance, and feelings of gripping determination, " I will not budge from this spot until I know the truth!" To begin, we look at the criteria that...