This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Time passes unhindered. When we make mistakes, we cannot turn the clock back and try again. All we can do is use the present well.
To be aware of a single shortcoming in oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in someone else.
To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible. If the goal is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant. What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up.
Too much self-centered attitude brings isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.
True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed.
Ultimately, humanity is one and this small planet is our only home. If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism
We all want to live a happy life, so we have to learn to live together in trust and mutual respect. We do have differences of race, nationality, religious faith and so on, but these differences are secondary in comparison to our equality in being human.
We are intelligent, we have seed of compassion from birth. Using reason and intelligence we can enhance our sense of compassion and come to understand how its opposite, anger, is harmful.
We can achieve peace of mind if we tackle our destructive emotions, so the goal of making the 21st century an era of peace and compassion is feasible. It will involve finding solutions to problems in dialogue, not the use of force.
We do not necessarily need to become religious, nor even believe in an ideology. We need only to develop our good human qualities and know that love and compassion are the most essential concepts for human survival.
We human beings are all the same in wanting to be happy and not wanting to suffer and yet many of the problems we face are of our own making.
We need to be determined to achieve positive change, but also need to be able to take a long view of what needs to be done.
We need to discover not only what disturbs our minds, but also what the antidotes to those factors are.
We need to learn to want what we have, not to have what we want, in order to get stable and steady happiness.
When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities, and so on.
When our intentions toward others are good, we find that any feelings of anxiety or insecurity we may have are greatly reduced. We experience a liberation from our habitual preoccupation with self and paradoxically, this gives rise to strong feelings of confidence.
When we are caught up in a destructive emotion, we lose one of our greatest assets: our independence.
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