Bhante Quote

"Some religious texts talk about the need to give up worldly pleasure or happiness, but I would personally like to see people give up their attachment to worldly misery. I would like to see them enjoying more of the simple pleasures of life. Many of those who are supposed to be wallowing in worldly pleasures, are who have everything at their command, tend to look miserable, gaunt and even miserable."

p. 90-91 Living Wisely: Further Advice from Nagarjuna's Precious Garland

Bhante Quote

"We need to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that we are accepting Mara's daughters as Vimalakirti did when we are really only succumbing to them like an ordinary person." p. 79 of The Inconceivable Emancipation

Choose the world you build

P. 42 Inconceivable Emancipation:

"We can create a world of the gods, a world of refined, sensuous, intellectual, aesthetic, but rather selfish, self-indulgent pleasure;  or a world of human beings, a world of ordinary domestic, civic, political, and cultural obligations and activities.  We can create a world of asuras or anti-gods, a world of jealousy, excessive sexual polarization, over-aggressiveness, ruthless competition, and overt or covert conflict; or a world of hungry ghosts, a world of neurotic craving, intense possessiveness, and relationships characterized by extreme emotional dependence.  We can create a world of tormented beings, a world of pain and suffering, of intense physical and mental distress; or a world of animals, a world of straightforward food, sex and sleep.

Or, turning our back on all these, we can devote ourselves to developing as individuals.  We can devote ourselves to the Budhisattva ideal.  We can devote ourselves, direcetly or indirectly, to building the Buddha-land."

Bhante quote on Buddha-land

P. 40 Inconceivable Emancipation:

"Zen is a well-known example of the application of spiritual meditation to various otherwise mundane activity in such a way as to bring them into harmony with that realization.  In this way, Zen is applied to architecture, to landscape gardening, to archery or swordsmanship, to flower arrangement, and to everyday manners and customs.  The Zen approach, in which the human subject is creative in relation to it's object, is akin to the building of a buddha-land, in that it transforms various aspects of the world."

And later,

"If you don't have the power to build a Zen temple, you can at least paint your room, or even just tidy up a bit."

Bhante Quote

"To begin with, when we come - I might even say staggering along - to out first meditation class, maybe from the office, maybe from home or wheresoever, we don't have any real individuality. We are usually just a bundle of conflicting desires, even conflicting selves, loosely tied together with the thread of a name and an address! Desires and selves, both conscious and unconscious, so what does mindfulness do? Even the very limited mindfulness that we practice when we practice Mindfulness of Breathing, it helps bring them together to bind them together; it at least tightens the string a little bit, so that they aren't so loose in the middle; it makes more of a definite bundle of these different cravings and selves, more of a recognizable identifiable bundle. And if we practice it a bit more, carry it a bit further, the practice of mindfulness helps to create real unity and real harmony between the different aspects, as they have now become, of our self. In other words, it is through mindfulness that we begin to develop, begin to create, true individuality."

(from A System of Meditation)

Bhante quote

"A single smile of Beauty can bring about greater transformation than all the frowns of Righteousness."

P.292 The Essential Sangharakshita, (from The Religion of Art, p113).