Once the Buddha Shakyamuni was teaching on the famous Vulture Peak, a low mountain in Bihar that has the shape of a vulture. Today there are the ruins of a monastery on that location and the stone road built by the king so as to be able to visit the Buddha is still walkable. At the time of the Buddha’s teaching, there appeared in the sky above innumerable Buddhas sitting on lotus flowers all aglow. Although the lotus flowers were incredibly beautiful and fragrant, giving off rays of light, in an instant they all withered, blackened, smelled like rotten vegetation and completely enclosed the Buddhas and all their glory.

This is the opening image from the Tathagatagarbha Sutra to illustrate the fact that you, with all of your supposed impurities, with impure body and mind, are really the glorious Buddha full of wisdom and compassion. The rotten flowers did not hinder in any way the glory of the Buddhas inside. Just like your body and mind, even if impure, does not hinder your real Buddha nature.

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You are all slaves. You, each and everyone, are enslaved by your thoughts and emotions. Do you think not? Let us try an experiment. You only have to sit there and stop thinking for one minute. Ok now just don’t think. Try it now.

How many made it fifteen seconds? How many twenty? I know none of you made it a minute. You are trapped by your own mental activity. Your thoughts and emotions — for after all emotions are just thoughts too.

Because you are enslaved by your mental activity, you are not free and thus you constantly have many trials, tribulations, consternations, and more. Your life is like a roller coaster that you can not get off. Your reach great heights when you accomplish something that your ego determined was needed or desired and great lows when you do not. Click to continue »