Imagine a man holding onto a chain attached to a stake in the ground. He has been circling around that stake for years, walking thousands of miles without going anywhere. There is an end to his imprisonment, which will enable him to live a better life: he...
Not everyone can lift a hundred-pound weight. Some people can, and some people can’t. Some people will never be able to, however hard they try. Similarly, some people can lift a ten-pound weight, while others can’t. But everyone can put the weights down....
I tell people that the world isn’t trustworthy, that if you depend on anything external, you will find that it is unreliable and unfulfilling, and if you grasp to it, you will get hurt. I tell people that their inner world isn’t trustworthy either, that whether you...
The story of the Buddha is primarily useful for us as a template to guide us in how to move forward with our own lives. It is helpful to us in the same way that knowing admirable people is helpful to us: we see them live in good ways, watch them make decisions that...
Even when I was ten, I worried constantly about the suffering in the world, but other people didn’t seem worried, and they told me to stop worrying so much. That’s why Buddhism fascinates me. It was the one thing I encountered that didn’t tell me that someone else...
