Peace Begins Here

“I see the path quite clearly. If you want to live, live in a beautiful way, with a lot of meaning, and surely you will be successful. Living for the sake of compassion, understanding, and nonviolence is very beautiful. I tread this path and I will never renounce it. If I were in your situation, I would follow this path. I learned this lesson in my home country. Hundreds of thousands of people died in frustration, because they embraced the path of violence. They killed each other, brothers and sisters, and I don’t want you to do the same. Peace is possible. We are not talking vaguely, we mean concrete action. That action is directed to ourselves and to the world at the same time. It is a process of transformation, healing, and peace. The spiritual power of such action can change the world.”

Embracing Strong Emotions

“Buddhist psychology offers a model of the mind that divides our consciousness into two layers: the upper layer is ‘mind consciousness,’ our waking mind, and the lower layer is ‘store consciousness,’ similar to the concept of the unconscious in Western psychology. It is called ‘store consciousness’ because it stores the potentialities of our mental states, which are described as seeds, sleeping in the depths of our mind. There are many kinds of seeds in our store consciousness, some wholesome, like mindfulness, generosity, and forgiveness, and some unwholesome, like greed, ignorance, and hatred. All of us have all of these many types of seeds.”

Strong Back, Soft Front—Equanimity and Compassion

”All too often, our so-called strength comes from fear, not love. Instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front, shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, and develop a spine that’s flexible but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that’s soft and open.”

6 Elements of True Love

Cultivating the Six Elements of True Love in ourselves is the most concrete practice that enables us to fulfill a lifelong commitment first to ourselves, which in turn enables us to understand, love, and live in harmony with our beloved and all others as well.