I’m Chase Hughes. I’ve spent most of my life studying people — not the cute, Instagram version of “behavior,” the real stuff:
the fear under the confidence,
the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day,
the patterns we don’t even know we’re running.
I’ve worked with the kind of truths that don’t make the sweater-vest TED Talks, the kind that make you sit alone in your car afterward for a few minutes, staring at your hands.
I used to think the goal was mastery. Control. Influence.
Now I think it’s something quieter:
seeing clearly,
without flinching, and
maybe helping someone else see clearly too, without getting swallowed by noise.
I write books for people who are starting to unzip the costume -- and some who have stripped it off., people who want to understand others, but also want to understand the thing inside themselves that keeps steering their life when they’re not looking.
If you’re here, you’re probably one of those people. Good. We need more of you.
The Story of MILAREPA: The SINGING SAINT who healed Tibet (Part 3)
(Buddha's Wisdom) Aug. 23, 2025: 🔍 THE MOMENT A KILLER'S VOICE BECAME TIBET'S MOST SACRED SOUND
What if a mass murderer could transform into Tibet’s greatest yogi? This is the story of Jetsun Milarepa, the sorcerer who killed 35 people with black magic…only to become one of Buddhism’s most beloved enlightened masters.
In this episode, we witness his final test in the cave of nettles, where supernatural demons appeared, and how his spontaneous songs of realization dissolved fear, healed trauma, and reshaped Tibetan Buddhism forever.
Part 1: • The Story of MILAREPA: The Sorcerer Who B...
Part 2: • The Story of MILAREPA: The Cave Where a Ki...
DISCOVER:
The night Milarepa’s demons transformed into wisdom beings
How his Hundred Thousand Songs began in the cave of nettles
His reunion with family and songs of forgiveness
Why villagers who once feared him became his followers
How Milarepa’s voice spread across Tibet, creating a Buddhist lineage
Ready to witness the impossible Buddhist transformation?
If inspired by Buddhist teachings, Tibetan masters, karma, enlightenment, and redemption, subscribe now to explore more life-changing stories.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 The Enlightened Voice That Echoes Through Eternity
02:19 Chapter 1: When Demons Become Buddhist Teachers
06:44 Chapter 2: Songs of Buddhist Forgiveness and Family Healing
11:48 Chapter 3: The Wandering Years
15:55 Chapter 4: Sacred Songs That Transform Mountains
(Dechen wangdi 🇨🇦) H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama has an important message for all religions, a message of love and unity (mutual respect, tolerance, celebration, amity, peaceful coexistence). #tibetanvlogger #tibetanyoutuber June 21, 2025. Background music: "Tears" (Produced by MX Audio Library)
Link: • Tears - No Copyright M...
(Holy Koolaid) It's no secret that there are many versions and denominations of Christianity, but there's one belief that they all have in common. And this verse completely destroys that shared belief.
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Connect: linktr.ee/holykoolaid.
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Please subscribe to channel: goo.gl/ie3EZh. Thanks so much for ongoing support. Science is greater than Dogma. Dare to be curious, but don't drink the Koolaid!
"You know how us Catholic girls can be," states Catholic Canadian cool hippie gal Alanis Morrissette, who became famous in the U.S. when she released Jagged Little Pill.
The CD had hit after hit, particularly "You Oughta Know." "Ironic" is dumb. "Head Over Feet" is so heartfelt. The seventh single should have been "Forgiven." It was a long run with millions of copies sold, making it double diamond (rather than mere gold or platinum).
Her ironic sass and probing irreverence are cool
How this song didn't get promoted, we'll never know. It's like P!nk, who's not that good but heck a popular. She had one pretty good song no one seemed to think that much of about her dysfunctional family.
"We all had our reasons to be there. We all had a thing or two to learn," Morrissette and Ballard explain. "My brothers, they never went blind for what they did, but I may as well have. In the name of the Father, the Skeptic, and the Son, I had one more stupid question.... If I jump in thisfountain, will I be forgiven?"
The first question we might ask is, Is reincarnation real? Yes, but "reincarnation" is a very misleading term for it. It is better to call the process rebirth, reappearance, rearising, reunion or relinking, not much better, but at least one moves away from all the wrong assumptions by the loaded term. Re-incarnation literally means "incarnating again," reentering flesh (carne). That certainly seems to be what is happening, but it is not what is happening in an ultimate sense. It presupposes a thing (soul, self, spirit, entity) putting on flesh over and over.
I hope in my next lives I never see Drake again.
This is not what is happening, but it may be better to leave it there. For one thing, many rebirths are not physical, that is, one is not going from flesh to flesh (re-incarnating). A lot of the time the impersonal process (anatta) is moving from flesh-body to spirit-body or spirit-body to spirit-body. "Spirit" (gandhabba) is misleading because of the natural tendency to assume and insist, "Of course I'm a spirit!" But that "spirit" is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal. We are not flesh, AND we are not spirit. That's impossible! It sounds impossible, but it's really not. If we were flesh, wouldn't we be in control of it? When something belongs to me, I decide what it does, where it goes, and what happens to it. Do I control "my" spirit (subtle light body)? If I did, it would feel what I want it to feel, not feel what I want it not to feel, come up with genius ideas, creativity, and inspirations on demand... We have no such control over things. Why? It is because they are not really ours in our normal sense of using the word ownership.
Well, whose are they then? (One might as well insert "God" here like your aunt would because the idea that "they are neither ours nor someone else's" is just too much for most to fathom. So if we imagine they belong to some omniscient, omnipotent, all-good being with some grand plan, then religions and our aunts can get us to do whatever they tell us.
Whose are they? The five parts of an impersonal process are identifying and clinging with the functional whole (the five all together: (1) Form (body, materiality) is forming; (2) feeling is feeling, (3) perception is perceiving, (4) mental formations are mentally forming, and (5) consciousness is being conscious. That is what is really happening.
Read the Heart Sutra for a poetic (or HEAR THE RAP VERSION) of this subtle but unbelievable Truth. That's all one thing, that there isn't really what seems to be at the heart of this entire impersonal process. And it is ignorance, greed, and aversion (hate and fear) that keep the process going, mostly ignorance because by not seeing the harm, assumptions keep happening. And based on these wrong assumptions, actions (karmas) keep happening. And karmas have the power to bring about their natural results.
I can't wait to be a boy again in a man's world.
GENDER NEWSFLASH: Sorry if you are about to hear this for the first time and it violates the "identity" you cling to, but no one is strictly male or female insofar as one person might be 100% male and hetero and macho, but in past and future lives, that person was and will be a female. We can be reborn as either sex or as intersex or as asexual. This means, among other things, that a bad boy can and will find himself being reborn as a poor girl sometime down the line for his oppressive behavior toward girls. Be forewarned and maybe knock it off. We'll find ourselves on the other end of it. And for all those girls who think being a boy is so great, you've been it and will be a boy again. We aren't really either because in the course of things (the working out of karma and vipaka and phala), we play both roles. We are not what we identify as and cling to as our identity, no matter how much we cling to it.
We can be reborn any race? - Yes! So be nice.
RACE NEWFLASH: We are not the race we are now. It is a temporary assignment brought about fortuitously by karma. Before we know it, we are on the other end of it. That's not all that happens. By oppressing others, we are reborn in worlds unimaginable. Then after that, if we are ever so fortunate to be reborn in the human plane again, karma keeps producing its resultants (which are exponential not one for one). To say "cause and effect" is very misleading, as if there were one cause and then sometime later one effect. This may sound fair, and we wish it were this way, but it is completely wrong. One intentional act (karma, volition, motivated deed) produces many, many results.
A person must be "born again" to be saved: reborn
REBIRTH IN CHRISTIANITY? Know what else is strange? Most Black people in America believe in rebirth. They don't realize they do, but they do. How so? Most are Christian, and every Christian is taught that we are alive now, we will die soon, we will rise from the dead, be judged, and then live again -- for eternity -- in heaven or hell. At least Catholics have some other options (purgatory and limbo). These are rebirth teachings, just very impoverished ones, true in their own way or possessing nuggets of truth. Does Islam believe in rebirth? Yes, in just the same way. That's how the Abrahamic religions believe. Judaism is strange because it does not seem to believe in karma, preferring instead a very popular alternative (that YOU probably believe in, too) called kismet or fate, destiny, predetermination. And most Jews are taught that the afterlife is the same for everyone, a trip to Sheol or Hades or a dull place where not a lot happens so that it's very important to live now and not waste time worrying about the hereafter. This may be why they achieve such great things in this world while having miserable futures to deal with because, if this is all there is, then who needs mitvahs(meritorious credits or "good deeds")?
The other thing is that, now that we understand that rebirth IS real, we can ask, How long has this been going on? In other words, how many past lives have I (or you or they) lived? An uncountable number, too big to count. Okay, and how many future lives do I (or you or they) get? An uncountable number, too big to count. Okay, and how long does each last, and who or what will I be? It depends. (What does it depend on? Karma/deeds/what we do, say, and think). Who decides? It's an impersonal process with no one "deciding," no one "rewarding" or "punishing." How is that possible? Like this:
When you stick your hand in a fire, who decides to burn your hand?
No one "decides."
When you stick your hand in, do you get a reward or a punishment?
A pun -- neither, actually, it just happens. It's a natural but very regular result, like a rule of the universe. Fire just burns; get close and get burned; stay back and be warm.
No, no, no, someone has to decide, someone has to be rewarding you and punishing you for putting your hand in fires. It must be a father figure, a Sky Father who knows and sees everything, and He's punishing you for our stupidity of putting your hand that-thing-that-burns (the fire), and He sends scars and blisters and redness, you know, so we don't do it again, even when it's an accident because He works in mysterious ways, and also because He's mad that we killed His son.
I get it, I get it. In some cases, it's possible that no one is deciding, rewarding, or punishing.
Right.
But other times, aren't we kind of deciding? And aren't we kind of rewarding ourselves and punishing ourselves by what we do?
Right, yes, kind of. But we didn't decide that fire burns or that it should burn, right?
Right.
And if it were our choice, we'd always reward ourselves and not punish ourselves, right?
Right, I mean, I know I would. I might punish myself, too, a little, you know, for contrast.
Right, a little -- not the amount of "punishing" we actually get. Who would choose that?
No one, I guess.
We do kind of do it to ourselves, not by conscious active choice. We do it by karma (our deeds) that, naturally by impersonal rules of the universe, bring about certain results even when we didn't know they would bring about those results because if we had known, we wouldn't have done it.
Right.
That reminds me. This is called Wisdom Quarterly, yeah? What is "wisdom"?
I'dunno, knowing?
The best definition we ever heard for "wisdom" came from Sir Winston Churchill (this fat British warmongering politician with a great wit who is very beloved). He defines "wisdom" as "that thing you get just after you need it."
Has Kendrick gone cray-cray? Sing about sex*
In this song, Kendrick has a past life regression that causes him to remember 100+ past incarnations (physical rebirths in the human world). He has no idea about the spirit-worlds or the immaterial-worlds. He's only going on the Western Hindu idea that the reason for rebirth/reincarnation is to learn lessons then go to heaven for ever and ever, which if you think about it is the Christian idea, too. Jesus lived in India for 18 years, so it's no surprise that he brought back all those Eastern ideas. Our whole society, thanks to the New Age, knows we suffer "lessons" and learn and evolve and then never have to be reborn again. This is not true in an ultimate sense, but it's what we all believe in this society. When we get enlightened, we'll see that it wasn't true, but until then, this is how we operate.
In the meantime, mind your karma (deeds, physical actions, verbal actions, and thoughts/beliefs/views). "Karma, it's everywhere you're going to be."
Why does everybody love Kendrick (and hate Drake)? It's because he's deep and confessional. Think of his first hit, which is still may one of his best songs, "Swimming Pools (Drank)."
Strangely, it is not good to think and wonder about rebirth because it leads to foolishness. How? We ask all the wrong questions about it, which boil down to four things. Instead, we could be spending all that time and mental energy asking four other questions that would lead us out of this mess, that would make us wise, that would make us compassionate, that would deliver us, emancipate us, liberate us because, as we all know by now, "The Truth shall set you free." The four foolish questions are constantly asking, Was I? Who was I? Will I be? Who will I be? (Did we exist in the past? As what? Will we be reborn? As what?) What are four much better questions to spend our lives asking? The Buddha, who himself found enlightenment and spent the rest of his life (45 years) teaching everyone how to become enlightened, taught living beings to ask these four good questions that lead to wisdom and freedom: What is suffering? What is the cause of suffering? What is the end of suffering? What is the way to the end of suffering? (The answer in a nutshell is penetrating, not memorizing, the Four Enlightening Truths).
LYRICS: "Reincarnated"
"Another life had placed me [and I was reborn] as a Black woman," Kendrick, "Reincarnated"
[This Spanish line can mean, "As it mirrors your look/The night, you, and I" but it seems to actually be saying, "That reflect your gaze, the night, you and I," which makes little sense out of context. Lamar uses this singer elsewhere on the album, so the theme is probably linked in those songs of his. See Genius Lyrics for the latest interpretations. But we found these two clips, and Reddit has come to the rescue:]
This makes much more sense. Kendrick hired Deyra to sing this for his album; he did not sample it. Mexican culture is very romantic and sentimental, particularly Mariachi music, which is something only Morrissey (of The Smiths) and Kendrick understand. ;) So we think the lines mean, "that reflects your gaze/the night you and I [did something]."
My instincts sent material straight to the charts, huh
My father kicked me out the house
I finally forgive him
I'm old enough to understand the way I was livin'
Ego and pride had me looking at him with resentment
I close my eyes, hoping that I don't come off contentious
I'm yelling, "Father, did I finally get it right?
Everything I did was selfless
I spoke freely,
When the people needed me, I helped them
I didn't gloat
Even told 'em, 'No' when the vultures came
Took control of my fleshly body when the money changed"
"Son, you do well, but your heart is closed
I can tell residue that linger from your past creates a cell"
"Father, I'm not perfect,
I got urges, but I hold them down"
"But your pride has to die"
"Okay, Father, show me how"
"Tell me every deed that you done and what you do it for"
"I kept 100 institutions paid"
"Okay, tell me more"
"I put 100 hoods on one stage"
"Okay, tell me more"
"I'm trying to push peace in L.A."
"But you love war"
"No, I don't"
"Oh, yes, you do"
"Okay, then tell me the truth"
"Every individual is only a version of you
How can they forgive when there's no forgiveness in your heart?"
"I could tell you where I'm going"
"I could tell you who you are
You fell out of Heaven 'cause you was anxious
Didn't like authority,
Only searched to be heinous
Isaiah 14 was the only thing that was prevalent
My greatest music director was you
It was colors, it was pinks, it was reds, it was blues
It was harmony and motion
I sent you down to earth 'cause you was broken
Rehabilitation, not psychosis
But now we here now
Centuries you manipulated man with music
Embodied you as superstars to see how you moving
You came a long way from garnishing evilish views"
"And all I ever wanted from you was love and approval
I learned a lot, no more putting these people in fear
The more that word is diminished, the more it's not real
The more light that I can capture, the more I can feel
I'm using words for inspiration as an ideal"
"So can you promise that you won't take your gifts for granted?"
"I promise that I'll use my gifts to bring understanding"
"For every man, woman, and child, how much can you vow?"
"I vow my life just to live one in harmony now"
"You crushed a lot of people, keeping their thoughts in captivity"
"And I'm ashamed that I ever created that enemy"
"Then let's rejoice where we at"
"I rewrote the devil's story just to take our power back, 'carnated"
It's interesting that he ends with "'carnated" rather than reincarnated, which is not necessary for the beat or meter. It's as if he's saying that now he is being "born for the first time."
Hey, Kendrick, you call yourself a "rapper," musing about all this deep stuff. Why don't you sing us a party song, an explicit anthem about sex, like these guys?
A$AP Rocky (ft. KL) "F*cking Problems"
*WARNING: Explicit content, especially Shorty at Minute 2:41
According to Judaism, today is the birthday of Adam and Eve, who were created 6,000 or so years ago by Gods (Elohim or the Gnostic's Demiurge) when this world was created. Adam's first wife was actually Lilith, say Jewish texts, and Eve is Adam's younger replacement wife. Happy birthday, Adam and Eve.
A "JuBu" or "Jew-Bu") is a Jewish-Buddhist. There are many, Asher, Noah, Michael, Sarah, Shauna, Sheldon, and it's time to celebrate the cultural inheritance. One can be two things. Judaism isn't much of a "religion" to most American Jews. It's an identity, a connection to family, a sense of a tie to humanity, plus a business network of helping each other to make mitvah$.
We must always remember that Zionism is not Judaism. Judaism is a relatively young religion drawing on much more ancient local traditions (Sumerian, Akkadian, Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Bedouin, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Byzantine, Ancient Greek paganism, and Roman Mithraism).
Who Rewrote the Bible? (Dr. Day)
We are told the popular myth that Jews existed from the beginning of the world, 6,000 years ago in mythical Eden (somewhere in Mandatory Palestine), and Christians came later with the arising of the semi-historical Nazarene Yeshua, who as Issa traveled to Buddhist Tibet and India with a Jewish merchant caravan, who became "Caesar's Messiah" by the Flavian rulers of Rome dipping into the ancient Greek writings of the Bible telling a tale of this tribe from Israel.
Bibi thinks he's the Messiah, but I am.
That's Judaism (with a remarkable parallel to the oldest religion in the world, Hinduism, which isn't but is by embracing the ancient Indus Valley Civilization and acting as a continuation of the super-ancient "Knowledge Books" called the Vedas. A religion can begin tomorrow then claim a lineage going back to Gobekli and Karahan Tepe -- and instantly, in a day, it suddenly becomes the "oldest religion in the world"?
No, of course not; yet, both Judaism by claiming all old stories from that region of the world and Hinduism claiming all ancient Sanskrit, Vedic, and Brahmanical texts as their own, they retroactively extend their lineage by thousands of years; Hinduism began with Sri Shankara centuries back systematizing many diverse and unrelated practices in India and around the Indus River Valley).
Zionism is a crazy movement regarded almost universally as crazy until recently, which seeks to seize a homeland through genocide or any means necessary as long as the USA provides diplomatic cover, illegal arms, and military protection on the world stage. To get a homeland in the geopolitical Middle East, it made a "deal with the Devil" and the devil is the West, namely the UK, US, and now EU. This position has become the norm because of Christian Zionists being convinced that we need to send the Jews away from the West back to the Old World locations of their joint Bible to bring about the Second Coming of nobody Jesus, the Jew Yeshua a failed messiah/Jesus the Christ the Creator of the Universe, depending on which lens one looks at him, a Christian or Jewish one).
Judaism may have its problems as a patriarchal, old-school, Sumerian and Mesopotamian appropriating Abrahamic religion, but many modern secular Jews from Europe and the West have little to do with the Old World religion and more to do with an ethnic identity and cultural history.
Scholars says Bible stories have their parallels or origins in similar Sumerian stories, but this researcher says that's not true. What to do? We must read the translations or texts ourselves to know. Of course, no one says they are exact. The stories differ but with so many striking details that match that they could not have arisen independently or by chance. That is the point. The stories handed down to us have been altered and inspired later writers with themes and their takes on those themes. Few scholars confirm Zecharia Sitchen's views, but that is not to say that he had no basis for what he was claiming about the Anunnaki and Nirbiru, gold mining and enslaved humans genetic engineered to work.
Jesus Live in India (Kersten)
Spirituality is so missing from the way they were raised in cosmopolitan liberalism, science, academia, and left leaning politics that Buddhism (particularly Tibetan lore, Zen ritual, and vipassana meditation) makes a lot of sense and has a lot of pull. Just as Issa, Isa, or Y'shua of Yudea (aka "Jesus of Nazareth") had spiritual longings and sought their fulfillment in the mysterious East, so many secular Jews today feel called to Tibet, Ladakh, Dharamsala, the Himalayas, India (the real "Holy Land"), and the Far East in search of spirituality and fulfillment.
Issa in India (Holger Kersten)
The Jews, tapping into anything that could be subsumed under the rubric of "Books of the Bible" (apocryphal texts, canonical texts, Old Testament, Septuagint, Torah, Talmud), most of which never made it to the KJV or canonical Christian scriptures. Judaism kept many writings, fortunately. Unfortunately, since the ancient past, it re-wrote them to be about themselves.
We find ancient Sumerian and Akkadian texts, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, speaking of a guy we now call Noah of Noah's Arc fame. The story is much older.
So few people doing so much harm in the world
Agganna Sutta as allegory
The Buddha spoke of this phenomenon of mythology, history, and racial or collective memory carrying on long after people remember the original story. In the Agganna Sutta ("A Buddhist Genesis") the Buddha speaks of modern people in his time using expressions and customary sayings not seeming to have any idea how the sayings originated.
Similarly, the stories told in our (hegemonic) American are rooted in stories we do not even understand. We think we do. We have heard of them and read versions of them poorly translated from "The Bible" -- whatever collection of books, linguistic translation, and interpretation of terms we have decided that means -- and we now repeat them while scratching our heads at how stupid and nonsensical they sometimes seem outside the context of their Sumerian and Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Persian, Zoroastrian and Kabbalistic roots.
How did life on this earth begin?
Noah's Ark is one story we misunderstand and argue about, but a much sillier misinterpretation we bandy about is the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the creation myth of the beginning of this world and our soured place in it.
Jews today, reading this archaic story reinterpreted from lifted sources by writers who that remade it about them, think today is Rosh Hashanah (New Year's Day, the "Head of the Year") and also Adam and Eve's birthday.
But I can't forgive, Buddha, I just can't! Do you think I should pay Vishen $299 to be able to?
.
Did the Buddha teach forgiveness?
Anger seems good but feels terrible.
My Catholic mother once asked me, "Does Buddha recommended forgiveness the way Jesus Christ [Saint Issa] did?
I was stymied. I couldn't think of that as an emphasis or exact teaching, but I assured her the Dharma, as the Noble Eightfold Path, was suffused with such ideas.
I asked a monk, and he immediately said, "Yes." I said, "What do we call it, what's the word for it?"
Who's that under that tree?
"Khanti," he answered, "is the Pali word, long suffering patience and forbearance," pointing out that it is one of the Ten Perfections (pāramīs).
Those ten are what made the wandering ascetic Siddhartha the Buddha, the "Awakened One."
There's also a popular Buddhist saying in this regard:
"Forbearance is the highest virtue."
Ven. Khantipalo (Laurence Mills) had khanti
When I told my mom there was a specific teaching of forgiveness, she asked, "Oh, where do you suppose Buddha learned that?" implying that Buddhism borrowed the idea from Christianity (or Yazooism).
"Oh, I don't know, Mom, given that the Buddha was born and taught at least 500 years before God ever even thought of begetting Himself as Son." That shut that line of inquiry down. I followed up, "Mom, do you suppose God made the Buddha?"
Truth will out, like sun and moon.
"Well...."
"Didn't He make everything and everyone -- the Devil, evil, Mohammed, rebellious Jews, and atheists? And didn't you once say, 'God don't make no junk'?"
"That's just a saying to make kids feel better about themselves."
"Sure it is, Mom, sure it is."
It is the advice of three of India's Dharmic religions to be like the sandalwood tree, who when felled by the lumberjack's axe does what to that lumberjack and that axe? It sprinkles them with perfume.
I forgive you. - Me, too. - I feel much better.
Either way, the Buddha told us where he got his Teaching, his Dharma, this Doctrine-and-Discipline we follow in his footsteps, where he everything he taught from: He realized it as a natural law, a fixity, an impersonal orderliness of the universe he called karma-vipaka or "action and its results." (We always state "result" as plural because there's no action or deed that has only one result or fruit. The resultants are exponential:
It's mindboggling. Even one tiny good deed (free of greed, hatred/fear, delusion) redounds with many, many results. Sadly, the same can be said about tiny bad deeds (those motivated by greed, aversion, or delusion).
While it sounds unfair, it is explained in the Abhidharma (the "Dharma in Ultimate Terms"). Each intentional action (karma) is preceded by an intention (cetana) that colors it, underlies it, motivates it, and gives us the ability to name it as "good" or "bad," "skillful" or "unskillful," "profitable" or "unprofitable."
One action, one deed, one karma, however small -- even just verbal or mental -- lays down a track in the mind. The tracks are called cittas, the "mind-moments," producing it, the impulsions or javanas, the cittas and cetasikas (or moments and mental concomitants).
These each have the power to come to fruition when they find the opportunity (like seeds waiting to sprout and bear fruit), yielding welcome and unwelcome resultants.
This is why the Buddha over and over again made much of "karma," so much so that in his day he was never called a "Buddhist." He was called a Karmavadin, "a teacher of the efficacy of deeds."
What deeds did he commend, advise, and praise? Those actions free of traces of desire, aversion, and delusion (lobha, dosa, moha).
This is true even for bad people, who will enjoy good or mixed results when those deeds ripen. It is said that even success in crime is due to skillful karma of the past, not present unskillful karma like the crimes being committed. So even if one keeps doing bad, one is wise to do much good as well.
To forgive others is to be good to yourself.
Why? Imagine "bad" is like harsh salt in a container of fresh water. How will we ever get it all out? Even if most settles, there's still much in suspension. It will be hard to remove or swallow. BUT if we add more clean water, it will dilute that saltiness and make it bearable. Just so, a little bad and much good will be sufferable, bearable, maybe even not so unpleasant.
"To do all good (kusala),
to refrain from all bad (akusala),
this is the advice of all buddhas."
Vishen, MindValley.com; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) collecting fake and real Buddha quotes, all of them good if not exact quotes
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I write books for people who are starting to unzip the costume -- and some who have stripped it off., people who want to understand others, but also want to understand the thing inside themselves that keeps steering their life when they’re not looking.
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