The Buddha’s first doctrine was the Four Noble Truths. The first Truth is that the nature of samsara is dukkha, which is sometimes translated as suffering, but that sometimes is a little bit too strong. People say sometimes, “Well, I’m not suffering.” But it doesn’t really just mean suffering; dukkha is the opposite of sukha, which means ease. So, dukkha is dis-ease: it’s this un-ease, un-satisfactoriness, this sense that everything would be perfect ‘if only’. People sometimes feel totally satisfied and content, but it doesn’t last. Then something is always wrong. There’s always something.
If the Buddha had left it there, it would be a very pessimistic doctrine. But the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are always smiling. They look happy and content. Why? Because of the Third Noble Truth— the fact that there is a cessation to this dukkha. We don’t have to be stuck in it forever. There’s a way beyond dukkha, which in the traditional texts is called Nirvana.
The Buddha didn’t just leave it with that, saying, “Okay, there is a way out of this—it’s called Nirvana.” In the Fourth Noble Truth he gave the path, which includes ethics, how to lead your life, meditation training and so forth; he gave us everything that we need in the path for our daily life, including Right Livelihood. So, he was also thinking in terms of lay people, how to use everything in your life as a means for the path.
– Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
Photo: Jetsunma standing with a fellow nun from Gebchak Nunnery in front of a mud house on a trip to Tibet (2007)
Sometimes we speak clumsily and create internal knots in others. Then we say, “I was just telling the truth.” It may be the truth, but if our way of speaking causes unnecessary suffering, it is not Right Speech. The truth must be presented in ways that others can accept. Words that damage or destroy are not Right Speech. Before you speak, understand the person you are speaking to. Consider each word carefully before you say anything, so that your speech is “Right” in both form and content.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
from the book “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation”
With thanks to Just Dharma Quotes
These basic rules of conduct: not killing, not stealing, being very careful and responsible in our sexual conduct, having ethical speech and not destroying our minds through drugs and alcohol – these are eternal rules of conduct… it’s like a cup: if we want to pour in the elixir of the dharma, we have to have something to support it, we have to have something to contain it…so, it doesn’t just run everywhere and get wasted. It holds it, it contains it. So, likewise, for our spiritual cultivation we need a container. And this is our basic ethical conduct, that we live in this world in a way, that any being, who comes in our presence, knows, they have nothing to fear from us, because we are not going to hurt them, we are not going to steal from them, we are not going to misuse them, we are not going to cheat them… they are safe with us and we are also safe with ourselves, because we know, we are not going to do these things, because we have promised ourselves and the Buddhas not to do that.
There are these two extremes that are not to be indulged in by one who has gone forth. Which two? That which is devoted to sensual pleasure with reference to sensual objects: base, vulgar, common, ignoble, unprofitable; and that which is devoted to self-affliction: painful, ignoble, unprofitable. Avoiding both of these extremes, the middle way realized by the Tathagata — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding.
And what is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding? Precisely this Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding.
– Buddha
Source: Essential | Great Middle Way
Jan 4, 2018
Let us be careful in speech,
be well-restrained in mind,
and physically, too, let us abstain from harm.
Let us purify these three courses of action
and accomplish the practice of the Noble Eightfold Path
made known by all the Buddhas.
—Buddha Shakyamuni, Dharmapada
Sometimes we speak clumsily and create internal knots in others. Then we say, “I was just telling the truth.” It may be the truth, but if our way of speaking causes unnecessary suffering, it is not Right Speech. The truth must be presented in ways that others can accept. Words that damage or destroy are not Right Speech. Before you speak, understand the person you are speaking to. Consider each word carefully before you say anything, so that your speech is “Right” in both form and content.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
from the book “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation”
ISBN: 978-0767903691 – http://amzn.to/17VOZql
“I have noticed that people are dealing too much with the negative, with what is wrong… Why not try the other way, to look into the patient and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?”
~Thich Nhat Hanh~
Zen Flash 
Recent Comments