There is an important theme you see over and over again in Buddhism, and that is the central importance of cause and effect. All of Buddhism can be said to revolve around the one vital insight that suffering has causes, and that if you take away any necessary...
The Buddha’s teachings on dukkha (suffering) is somewhat more nuanced than we talked about earlier (here). In an important discourse[1], the Buddha clarified that there are three types of dukkha: Dukkha due to physical or emotional pain Dukkha due to...
One theme that consistently comes up in Buddhism is seeing things as they really are.[1] Buddhism is about total liberation from all suffering, and the way to do that is to fully understand cause and effect relating to suffering, and that begins with seeing...
There is an island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean called Easter Island that is famous for having hundreds of statues of giant heads carved from stone. Some of my friends make jokes about them, but I tell them, “Whatever you say, those statues still come out...
Life is hard. But virtue makes it fun. It’s like saying that tennis is hard. But getting better at tennis makes it fun. Virtue is the process of getting better at life, so it makes life fun. This is hard to understand because so often, we think that being better at...
I once walked into a beach house with a stunning panoramic view of the ocean, and I made a joke, “This house is very Buddhist: it possesses right view.” Jokes aside, right view is far more important to the Buddhist path than first meets the eye (yes, pun...
