365 Buddha PA - Jeff Schmidt [1]
Chapter 297.
Chapter 298.
Chapter 299.
Chapter 300.
Chapter 301.
Chapter 302.
Chapter 303.
Chapter 304.
Chapter 305.
Chapter 306.
Chapter 307.
Chapter 308.
Chapter 309.
Chapter 310.
Chapter 311.
Chapter 312.
Chapter 313.
Chapter 314.
Chapter 315.
Chapter 316.
Chapter 317.
Chapter 318.
Chapter 319.
Chapter 320.
Chapter 321.
Chapter 322.
Chapter 323.
Chapter 324.
Chapter 325.
Chapter 326.
Chapter 327.
Chapter 328.
Chapter 329.
Chapter 330.
Chapter 331.
Chapter 332.
Chapter 333.
Chapter 334.
Chapter 335.
Chapter 336.
Chapter 337.
Chapter 338.
Chapter 339.
Chapter 340.
Chapter 341.
Chapter 342.
Chapter 343.
Chapter 344.
Chapter 345.
Chapter 346.
Chapter 347.
Chapter 348.
Chapter 349.
Chapter 350.
Chapter 351.
Chapter 352.
Chapter 353.
Chapter 354.
Chapter 355.
Chapter 356.
Chapter 357.
Chapter 358.
Chapter 359.
Chapter 360.
Chapter 361.
Chapter 362.
Chapter 363.
Chapter 364.
Chapter 365.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Copyright © 2002 by Jeff Schmidt
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
365 Buddha : daily meditations / Jeff Schmidt.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-585-42143-5
1. Buddhist devotional calendars. 2. Buddhist meditations.
I. Title: Three hundred and sixty five Buddha.
BQ5579 .T
294.3’4432—dc21
http://us.penguingroup.com
May all beings be happy.
May they be healthy.
May they be free from suffering!
PREFACE
Nothing new will be said here, nor have I any skill in composition. Therefore I do not imagine that I can benefit others. I have done this to perfume my own mind.
ŚĀNTIDEVA; Bodhicaryāvatāra 1.2
My life is harder than other people’s; at least it seems that way to me. I know it is easier than most people’s lives, but it often doesn’t feel like it. Even when I get the things I want or situations turn out the way I had planned, these victories are fleeting, since nothing is constant. Life is rarely convenient and never certain. Birth is unpleasant. Old age is unpleasant. Sickness and death are unpleasant. Being with things we dislike and being without the things we do like are both unpleasant. Suffering is the unfailing nature of all unenlightened experience. We expect the world to satisfy our desires, clinging to the idea that “someday everything will be as it should be.”
Wanting things to be different from what they are is suffering. Attraction and aversion, greed and hatred, lust and ill will: These are the attachments that cause suffering. “I like that; I want more”—“I dislike this; make it stop”: Letting go of these attachments is the end of suffering. Release from this unsatisfactory predicament is the goal of life, whether we are aware of it or not.
The Buddha found that the root cause of our dissatisfaction is ignorance. It is the ignorance of having the mistaken view that we exist in a dualistic world—a world in which we treat the abstract illusion of an individual self, and its dependent and equally abstract illusion of an external world, as though they are concrete realities. We believe that we can repair this illusory world, even with all its failings and constant change, and that then we will be happy. Buddhist practice shows us that this is not so. The only way to eliminate our suffering is to eliminate the underlying ignorance that is its cause.
The true nature of our experience is empty of enduring reality, and it is through the unmediated vision of this emptiness that we correct our mistaken views. Our experience