- Lama Yeshe said:
Our problem is that inside us there's a mind going, "Impossible, impossible, impossible. I can't, I can't, I can't." We have to banish that mind from this solar system. Anything is possible; everything is possible. Sometimes you feel that your dreams are impossible, but they're not. Human beings have great potential; they can do anything. The power of the mind is incredible, limitless.
- Shantideva (Bodhicaryavatara) said:
If I had not done harm to others, no harm would come to me; I did harm living beings -It is fit that harm returns to me.
- Geshe Chen Ngawa said:
In brief, the Dharma can be divided into abandoning harmful activities and taking up helpful ones. All the teachings of the higher and lower vehicles as well as the teachings of the Three Baskets (Tripitaka) are included within this precept.
- To apply the previous precept, patience is most important. If you are without patience and someone harms you, you will feel vengeful. Should you act on that feeling, you will not cease from harmful activities, much less be helpful to others. Therefore, patience is necessary to begin religious practice.
- To meditate on patience, there are four methods: setting up a target for the arrow; love and compassion; teacher and disciple and meditation on the nature of existence.
- Setting up a target for the arrow means that if you have not set up a target, it cannot be hit by an arrow. The arrow of harm strikes in this life because we have set up a target by the bad karma we accumulated in previous lives. Thus it is not right to be angry with those who harm us.
- Next is love and compassion. When a lunatic harms one who is sane, the sane person should not return the harm by fighting him, but should say "How sad!" One who harms you is also insane, possessed by the madness of powerful fettering passions.
- Teacher and disciple refers to thinking about how if there is no Lama, no teacher to explain the Dharma, there can be no realization. Similarly, if there is no enemy who harms you, there can be no practice of patience, then feel that those who abuse you are the teachers of patience. Be happy at this opportunity and concentrate on repaying their kindness. Meditate on you being the disciple who was being taught patience, do not be angry.
- To meditate on the nature of existence as voidness, contemplate that all three aspects of harmfulness, the agent of harm, the recipient of harm and the act of harming, are all void of self-nature. As all these things which you now see as opposing you are erroneous creates of your mind, like dreams and illusions, it is not right to be angry.
- Shantideva said:
- From being praised,
- What do you gain, what do you lose?
- In being despised,
- Why be happy, why be sad?
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