My Bed of Nails - Page 5
© Yeshe Chodon
It would be mistaken to label this Teaching as 'pessimistic' on the grounds that it begins by centring on suffering. Rather, Buddhism is 'realistic' in that it unflinchingly faces up to the truth of life's many sufferings and it is 'optimistic' in that it shows a final end of the problem of suffering - Nibbana, Enlightenment in this very life! Those who have achieved this ultimate peace are the inspiring examples who demonstrate once and for all that Buddhism is far from pessimistic, but it is a Path to true Happiness.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/79...
Website by the Buddhist Society of Western Australia.
At first this impersonal view is difficult for the depressive. So much has to be taken on faith. But practice yields glimpses of this true happiness that keep us going. We know the old ways did not work; we cannot go back.
A buddha's enlightened mind is omniscient, simultaneously encompassing within its awareness the single, absolute, empty nature of phenomena and the multiplicity of their specific details and patterns of interrelatedness.
So I do not deny my pain or my failures. I see them in more detail than ever before. But they have decreasing power to drag me into the pit because I see them with the eye of compassion and dispassion. Now I have a larger context in which to place them, and the reward of increasing equanimity.
Listen dear friend, this nectar is wonderful,
the very essence of goodness;
My body is the Vajra Body, unsullied and
indestructible.
It has transmuted this nectar into the
wondrous essence of immortality.
Though this purpose of yours has not been
fulfilled,
I have turned it to great fulfillment.
--Verse of Yeshe Tsogyal
The Four Noble Truths
In his first teaching,
the Buddha expounded
the basic doctrine
of the Four Noble Truths.He first declared what he had learned
the day he left the palace;
namely, that suffering
is universal and inevitable.In the Second Noble Truth,
he explains that the immediate cause
of suffering is desire.
The ultimate cause of suffering, however,
is ignorance concerning the true nature of reality.The Third Noble Truth
encourages humanity,
asserting that there is a way
to dispel ignorance
and relieve suffering.
This path is detailed
in the Fourth Noble Truth
in the form of the Eightfold Path.
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