Friday, August 05, 2016

10 rules of life

Mom emailed me this today 
 
Subject: The ten commandments to follow in life
   Someone has  written these beautiful words. Must read and try to  understand the deep meaning of it.  They are like the  ten commandments to follow in life all the time.  
       
   1.    Prayer is not a  "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble, but it is a  "steering wheel" that directs the right path throughout.  
     
   2.    So why is a  car's windshield so large and the rear view mirror so small?  Because our past is not as important as our future.   So, look ahead and move on. 
     
   3.    Friendship is  like a book.  It takes few seconds to burn, but it  takes years to write. 
     
   4.    All things in  life are temporary.  If it's going well, enjoy it, that  won't last long.  If it's going badly, don't worry,  that won't last long either. 
     
   5.    Old friends are  gold!  New friends are diamond!  If you get a  diamond, don't forget the gold!  Because to hold a  diamond, you always need a base of gold!  
     
   6.    Often when we  lose hope and think this is the end, God smiles from above  and says, "Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the  end!" 
     
   7.    When God solves  your problems, you have faith in His  abilities; when  God doesn't solve your problems, He has faith in your  abilities. 
     
   8.    A blind person  asked St. Anthony, "Can there be anything worse than losing  eye sight?"  He replied, "Yes, losing your vision!"  
     
   9.    When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses  them; sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that  someone has prayed for you. 
     
   10.    Worrying does  not take away tomorrow's troubles,  it takes  away today's peace   .  


Here I am with my new friend Sherwin Kim , of Skim Dynamics, who has been helping me reach my fitness goals 

Saturday, June 13, 2015

How to Love by Thich Nhat Hahn

Awesome article for all to read

Here's some snippets 
If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.

Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.


If our parents didn’t love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? … The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all.

 

When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence. Love without trust is not yet love. Of course, first you have to have trust, respect, and confidence in yourself. Trust that you have a good and compassionate nature. You are part of the universe; you are made of stars. When you look at your loved one, you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside. Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence. True love cannot be without trust and respect for oneself and for the other person.

The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person.

[…]

If you have enough understanding and love, then every moment — whether it’s spent making breakfast, driving the car, watering the garden, or doing anything else in your day — can be a moment of joy.

wounds the person we love. To know how to love someone, we have to understand them. To understand, we need to listen. 

When you love someone, you should have the capacity to bring relief and help him to suffer less. This is an art. If you don’t understand the roots of his suffering, you can’t help, just as a doctor can’t help heal your illness if she doesn’t know the cause. You need to understand the cause of your loved one’s suffering in order to help bring relief.The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand. They are two sides of one reality. The mind of love and the mind of understanding are the same.

Often, when we say, “I love you” we focus mostly on the idea of the “I” who is doing the loving and less on the quality of the love that’s being offered. This is because we are caught by the idea of self. We think we have a self. But there is no such thing as an individual separate self. A flower is made only of non-flower elements, such as chlorophyll, sunlight, and water. If we were to remove all the non-flower elements from the flower, there would be no flower left. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with all of us… Humans are like this too. We can’t exist by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be. I am made only of non-me elements, such as the Earth, the sun, parents, and ancestors. In a relationship, if you can see the nature of interbeing between you and the other person, you can see that his suffering is your own suffering, and your happiness is his own happiness. With this way of seeing, you speak and act differently. This in itself can relieve so much suffering.

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/31/how-to-love-thich-nhat-hanh/

HOW TO  LOVE BY zen Buddhist thich nhat tran

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Blame

Blame...
   All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.

― Wayne W. Dyer 

Growing Old

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.

― Gabriel Garcia Marquez