From an interview recently published in the French press (continued).
What is your first thought in the morning?
‟May I progress on the spiritual path and be of benefit to others.”
What moral quality do you regard as essential?
Benevolence.
The (modified) Proust Questionnaire — 1
From an interview recently published in the French press.
‟What are the underlying principles of practicing meditation?”
• Give rise to an altruistic motivation: transforming oneself in order to alleviate others’ suffering.
• Try to savor the freshness of the
An Arch of Light
It is not easy to photograph through the window of a commercial airplane, since one must go through a double plastic glass, with a lot of reflections and frequent scratches. It is nevertheless possible as shown on this image taken
Knowledge and Moral Values
The mere accumulation of knowledge is not enough. My teacher, Khyentse Rinpoche said: ‟If you amass intellectual learning just so that you will be influential and famous, your state of mind is no different from that of a beggar sponging
Praise and Criticism
Craving praise and fearing criticism, these only trouble our mind needlessly. Such concerns, each in their own way, promote and reinforce our vulnerability to others’ opinions and remarks.
We yearn for praise because it flatters our ego, and we dread
Each to his own reality
Our perception of an object as desirable or undesirable doesn’t reside in the object itself, but in the way we perceive it. There’s no inherent quality in a beautiful object that does the mind any good, nor anything in an
Fulfilling our deepest aspirations
What might best fulfill human needs? Science? Spirituality? Money? Power? Pleasure? No-one can answer such questions without also asking themselves what mankind aspires to most deeply, and what the very purpose of life might be. Buddhism’s answer to that question
Peace through war?
A few days ago, the International Herald Tribune ran a revealing front page article : ‟Hitting Taliban hard to encourage peace talks.”*
The article reports that from June to September this year, U.S pilots dropped 2,100 bombs during airstrikes against
Liberating the monkey mind
To accomplish this task, we must begin by calming our turbulent mind. Our mind behaves like a captive monkey who, in his agitation, becomes more and more entangled in his bonds.
Out of the vortex of our thoughts, first emotions
A MASTERY THAT SETS US FREE
The way we deal with thoughts in meditation is not to block them or feed them indefinitely, but to let them arise and dissolve by themselves in the field of mindfulness. In this way, they do not take over our