The Dalai Lama's 18 Rules For Living

Buddhism  is not a religion that causes harm but the people themselves. All religions are based on moral lessons of right and wrong. Generally speaking eating meat is against Buddhist teaching because it harms other sentient beings. Having said that there is nothing absolute in Buddhism. Right and wrong is all determined by motivation and purpose and negation. For example nobody wants to loose fingers but if you have to loose it to save your life then it is the right thing to do.

At the start of the new millennium the Dalai Lama issued eighteen rules for living.

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs: 1. Respect for self 2. Respect for others 3. Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.e the gun? I chose to pull the trigger and kill, no one made me do it, I have my own will. It is wrong to make generalizations on things you don't really understand. Humans commit crimes against each other and use religion as a justification because they believe that gives them the 'divine' right to practice their evil. Religion is not the cause.

Where Science and Buddhism Meet: Emptiness

My very first YouTube video, can't bear to watch it, but I thought I'd bring it back !:)

A few key points:

Buddha said that reality was a manifestation of mind, very similar if not exactly like a dream. Mind creates reality, this is what he called the true nature of reality, or emptiness. Nothing exists separate from the mind. "Reality" is an illusion of mind.

Science has found that:
1. Unless being observed reality exists in superposition, or infinite possibility, its not until things are observed that they become "material"ized. There's an inseparable tie between mind and matter.
2. Particles flash in and out of existence from a void. We don't know where they come from or where they go, and we can only predict where they might arise.
3. We cannot know a particles position and velocity at the same time.
4. Atoms consist of 99.9999 empty space.
5. Particles simultaneously exist as waves. The wave/particle duality.

These all point to a very illusory nature to reality. I personally believe there two sides of the same coin.

Thank you for being patient with the video quality, and thanks for watching! :D

Response to comment/question:
Roberto1988:
how can you *flash* in to existence and out of existence? if you are out of existence, then you do not exist. thus, you coming back into existence is in violation if energy laws. one cannot create something out of nothing. i think you exist but undergo some sort of transformation, all the while existing.
Response:

Well particles disappear and reappear in rapid succession, our mind is what "solidifies" and "smooths" out reality. Similar to how our mind turns a movie (many single pictures) into on free flowing series of events. Its not nothingness, but its infinite possibility, "reappearing" randomly when measured, it can be better understood as non material potential. Material reality is a construct of the mind, nothing ever exists or ceases to exist. This is what quantum physics has told us, its very counterintuative, but nevertheless, is the true nature of our reality.

Two sides of the same Coin: Buddhism meets Science.

Contemporary orthodox quantum physics and early Buddhism contains crucially converging and parallel core concepts:

1: Wholeness, oneness, and unity in the sense that all is interdependent and forever entangled. Changing any part entails changing the entire universe!

2: Emptiness and insubstantiality denoting that materiality is a potential of many possible manifestations and not a solid substance or entity.

3: Mind over matter: That expels the fact that mind selects which aspects of many in a probability distribution should manifest during observation.

Thanx to Gerald Penilla, California, USA, innerprisms.com for excellence of presentation. Sorry if infringing any copyright issues.

More on Quantum Buddhism and Participatory Observation:

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/ontology.htm

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/IV/Some_Clues.htm

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/Discrete_States.htm

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/III/Quantum_Buddhism.htm

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/IV/Omniscient_Quantum_Mind.htm

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/No_Substance_'Out_There'.htm

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/library/pdfs/wheeler_law_without_law.pdf

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/IV/Coincident_Cross-Consistency.htm

http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/V/The_Fact_of_No-Self_Anatta.htm

Teachings of the Dali Lama on the Middle Way

The Dalai Lama, a formidable teacher, presents a way that is the middle way, but not necessarily the easy way. Because the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has a natural gift as well as the translating and publishing resources that makes his teachings accessible, it is easy to forget the rigor and depth of those teachings. Too, Buddhism so often appears in the West as a system of daily behavior and practice that it is also easy to overlook the compelling intellectual challenge it presents to the Western understanding of reality.

His Holiness starts on familiar Buddhist ground (morality of action, suffering, compassion) and chapter by chapter adds doctrine and complexity until teachings from the heights of imaginative Tantra and Tibetan deity yoga are being explicated. For the uninitiated the climb is steep, and those seeking general ethical guidance would do better with an easier text (His Holiness has written those, too). For the serious, however, the Dalai Lama offers elegant clarity about the paradoxes at the heart of Buddhism including the central Heart Sutra itself, the teaching of form-is-emptiness and about the intellectual intricacy of Buddhist teachings. Tibetan Buddhism is considered the esoteric wing of Buddhism; this slice shows some layers of its complexity while whetting the spiritual appetite for more understanding, or what Buddhists would call the intention for enlightenment.


How To Practice: The Way To A Meaningful Life - Dalai Lama - AudioBook Mixed With Music From The Artist Bonobo www.bonobomusic.com

As a primer on living the good life, few books compete with How to Practice, another profound offering from the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Westerners may be confused by the book's title, assuming that it focuses solely on Buddhist meditation and prayer techniques. Though it does address meditation and prayer, at its core this is a book that demonstrates how day-to-day living can be a spiritual practice. There are two ways to create happiness:

The first is external. By obtaining better clothes, better shelter, and better friends we can find a certain measure of happiness and satisfaction. The second is through mental development, which yields inner happiness. However, these two approaches are not equally viable. External happiness cannot last long without its counterpart.... However, if you have peace of mind you can find happiness even under the most difficult circumstances.

Yogis Of Tibet (2002)- Full Movie

Yogis Of Tibet (2002)- Full Movie


For the first time, the reclusive and secretive Tibetan monks agree to discuss aspects of their philosophy and allow themselves to be filmed while performing their ancient practices.

Directed by
Jeffrey M. Pill

Famous Buddhist Quotes & Sayings

•             Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.

•             You only lose what you cling to.

•             Fill your mind with compassion.

•             We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.

•             The Four Reliance's. All who comprise the great assemblage of Bodhisattva are equally powerful and equally beneficial to countless beings, so that all things seem to be at their command. Sometimes beautiful lotuses and lotus trees are caused by them to grow from the middle of the ocean, or a teardrop is transformed into an ocean.  

You are all Buddhas. There is nothing you need to achieve. Just open your eyes."

The goal of Buddhism, like any self-respecting spiritual path, is not to have titles or to make distinctions between degrees of holiness; it is to wake up.

Buddha~A Documentary on the Teachings and His Life

One of his students asked Buddha,

"Are you the messiah?"

"No", answered Buddha.

"Then are you a healer?"

"No", Buddha replied.

"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.

"No, I am not a teacher."

"Then what are you?" asked the student, exasperated.

"I am awake," Buddha replied

..

Well, "Buddha" means "the awakened one"--that is, someone who has woken up from the dream of being a separate ego in a material universe.

Gautama Siddhartha taught for forty-five years. In all those years, and in the hundreds of thousands of teaching words that he uttered, his message was simply this:

"You are all Buddhas. There is nothing you need to achieve. Just open your eyes."

The goal of Buddhism, like any self-respecting spiritual path, is not to have titles or to make distinctions between degrees of holiness; it is to wake up.

Dalai Lama

Fear is faith that it won’t work out.

Unknown

Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness.

Thich Nhat Hanh

You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.

Thich Nhat Hanh