Freedom of Thought

The freedom of thought allowed by the Buddha is unheard of elsewhere in the history of religions. This freedom is necessary because, according to the Buddha, man's emancipation depends on his own realization of Truth, and not on the benevolent grace of a god or any external power as a reward for his obedient good behaviour.

The Positive

Overcome the anger by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth.

~The Buddha

Buddhism and Animals Documentary

Your Garden

Food prices seem to always go up. Food safety is often a concern. Produce from your own garden is flavorful and healthy. It's organic if you use no chemicals. Nothing is more local than your own garden.

Freedom is Found in Understanding

Storyteller

Your thoughts and your beliefs are stories you've been telling yourself for a lifetime.

Storyteller, who are you?

Without the stories, what are you?

The Tool Box

Don't try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a better Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.

~His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Freedom

As long as we think, act, live via an object, or as an object: that is bondage.

~Wei Wu Wei

Racism

You Shall Awaken

Free from all ties,

free from the bonds of existence,

you shall awaken.

~The Dhammapada 385

The Unicorn

You have the right, as everyone does, to believe in a god or multiple gods. You have the right to any religion you decide best fits you. You have the right to believe a female brontosaurus lives under the Brooklyn Bridge with her fourteen pups. You have every right to believe unicorns live in your shoes. But the day you begin telling me not to wear shoes because I'll upset the unicorn, a problem appears. The day you start involving the unicorns in deciding how I should live my life, a problem appears. The day you begin making decisions for my family and my country based on the opinions of your unicorns, a very large problem appears.

The Buddha-Dharma

In the end, it doesn't matter what school of Buddhism one practices. 

No Person Should Ever Be Coerced Into Accepting Any Religion Or Religious Belief

Old Occam

A Practitioner of the Buddha-Dharma

Budai

A Practitioner of the Buddha-Dharma does not retire from life.
A Practitioner of the Buddha-Dharma retires from unhappiness.

Three Answers

If you understand the answers, you know Freedom.


Q: What is Liberation?
A: Who has bound you?

Q: What is the Pure Land?
A: Who has polluted you?

Q: What is Nirvana?
A: Who has given you birth and death?

The Four Comforts

With his heart thus unhostile and unafflicted by ill will, thus undefiled and unified, a noble disciple here and now acquires these four comforts.

He thinks: "If there is another world and there is fruit and ripening of actions well done and ill done, then it is possible that on the dissolution of the body, after death, I might be reborn in a heavenly world."

This is the first comfort acquired.

"But if there is no other world and there is no fruit and ripening of actions well done and ill done, then here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction and anxiety, and I shall live happily."

This is the second comfort acquired.

"If evil befalls one who does evil, then since I have no evil thought of anyone, how shall evil deeds bring suffering to me, doing no evil?"

This is the third comfort acquired.

"But if no evil befalls one who does evil, then I know myself to be pure in this life on both counts."

This is the fourth comfort acquired.

~The Buddha, in The Anguttara Nikaya

Freedom

At the beginning of the Heart Sutra, the most widely chanted Mahayana sutra, the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, relieves all dukkha by understanding and then sharing all dharmas, all phenomena are empty, without their own self-nature.

Deep practice in the Mahayana tradition is to see that nothing at all has its own self-nature.