Put your identity in something impermanent you will die wanting to live.
Put your identity in something eternal you will live wanting to die.

Identify as nothing. For nothing can contain everything.

Only then can you let yourself relate,
to everything and everyone.
To every passing moment.

Sever the conventionally grasping mind, and all bondage and desperation dissolve.

- Tilopa

"What do we see in these days? Boys and girls, men and women, are drowned in the ocean of impure thoughts, lustful desires and little sensual pleasures. It is highly deplorable indeed. It is really shocking to hear the stories of some of these boys. Many college boys have personally come to me and narrated their pitiable lives of gloom and depression brought about by heavy loss of semen resulting from unnatural means. Their power of discrimination has been lost owing to sexual excitement and lustful intoxication. Why do you lose the energy that is gained in many weeks and months for the sake of the little, momentary sensual pleasure?

My dear brothers! The vital energy, the Veerya that supports your life, which is the Prana of Pranas, which shines in your sparkling eyes, which beams in your shining cheeks, is a great treasure for you. Remember this point well. Veerya is the quintessence of blood. One drop of semen is manufactured out of forty drops of blood. Mark here how valuable this fluid is!"

- Swami Sivananda, Practice of Brahmacharya

Happy Halloween Everyone
-Elders

“There are many who amass negative karma making slanderous remarks against the dharma, eminent persons, and great scholastic traditions. These are the ones who are targets for proper magical assault … To remain set on peace and happiness is to be deceived by the demon Mara. In the face of intensely hostile fury, peaceful action will be of no use. As the natural expression of their wisdom and skillful means, all transcendent Buddhas take action in wrathful form.”

- The Great Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara, to Ra Lotsawa

The All Pervading Melodious Drumbeat

Confidence in the Dhamma begins with a temporary conviction of a morally wholesome object, but gradually it develops to a form of unshakeable trust in the Perfect One, his teaching, and his noble order. The Buddha has denounced blind faith and pointed out that it cannot help his follower in any way in his self-purification. He always emphasized that one should believe in his teaching only after having understood it. He often praised the one who is endowed with confidence based on knowledge. This confidence is called saddhd in Buddhist terminology. The understanding on which it is based may sometimes be weak and sometimes strong. The Buddha has compared saddhd to the confidence which a patient has in his doctor, or a student in his teacher. The more benefits the patient receives from his doctor’s treatment and advice, the more saddhd he has in him. Similarly, the more easily the student learns his lessons and the more successfully he passes his examination, the more confidence he has in his teacher. If the doctor’s prescription does his patient no good, the patient begins to lose his saddha. In his own teaching the Buddha has said:

“As a wise man tests gold on a touchstone, heating and cutting, so you monks should test my words by practice, and not accept them simply due to the reverence towards me.”