Today cities have great environmental greening, the streets are decorated with colourful flowers. Instead of picking the flowers, we can accumulate great merit by visualising offering flowers to buddhas and chanting mantras. Why don’t you do it? Actually, you can offer anything beautiful you see to Buddhas. Thus, accumulating merit is fairly easy by adopting the skilful means of chanting mantras.
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
Death is vital for everyone, because this is the reality everyone is reluctant to face but have to face. For ordinary beings, death is a dark, unknown area, pervaded with despair, mystery, suffering and sorrow. When facing death, almost everyone feels panicked and fearful, these are all due to the misunderstanding derived from not understanding death. If having gained a correct understanding of death, then fear will be dispelled, and preparations for death can be made.
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
In our everyday life, when getting irritated and anxious, we need to stop to investigate what exactly make us upset? Our body is void of thinking, being free from the concept of happiness and unhappiness. It’s the consciousness which give rise to defilements. Then what exactly is consciousness? By reflecting as such, we might reach a state of realisation.
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
Happiness doesn’t stem from high speed and high pressure, rather, it comes from relaxation and freedom. Without developing an understanding of being content and having less desires, we can come to conclusion that the result is bound to be suffering.
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
According to Buddhism, the cause of sentient being’s cyclic existence doesn’t lie in the body, rather, it lies in karma. If karma exists, cyclic existence persists even if the body perishes. Because our alaya consciousness has lots of previous habitual patterns, when these habitual patterns ripen, the body comes into being. We can come to a conclusion that all phenomena is the by-product of alaya consciousness, be it a mountain, river, field, the sun, the moon, the stars or the body of sentient beings.
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
Each time we die, the nature of mind will be revealed, but we never can perceive it. Every night when entering a deep sleep, for a split second we are in touch with the nature of mind, but we never can perceive it. Thus we need our lama’s pith instruction, with which we can attain enlightenment instantly. This is the swift method of the Vajrayana to attain enlightenment.
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
If mastering the mystery of mind, when encountering suffering, one is able, not only to face up with suffering courageously and calmly, but also give rise to joy due to one understanding that it’s a rare opportunity to practice when experiencing suffering and happiness. There is a mundane saying: Transforming sorrow into strength, which means transforming negative emotions such as sadness and sorrow into the progressing impetus on the path.
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
Nobody can vanquish all foes, however if one can eliminate aggression, then it’s the equivalent to vanquishing all foes. The true foe exists in our mind, not outside.
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
Before attaining buddhahood, Vajrasattva made an aspiration: I vow not to attain buddhahood if I cannot enable anyone to chant my name, and supplicate to me for confessing to purify their obscurations. Given Vajrasattva had attained buddhahood, if supplicating to Vajrasattva by chanting the Vajrasattva Mantra or the Hundred-Syllable Mantra of Vajrasattva, one is bound to purify all obscurations.v
~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES
