#buddhism.

Idk if this has been discussed before, but are there any Buddhists around here who notice those not so subtle racist things being taught about karma and incarnation? My mother and friends at the local community use Buddhism as an excuse for racism. They says if our skintone in this life is dark it means you did a lot of bad stuff back in your previous life. Fuck she even refers Africa to Naraka, like how bad people who died in their past life reincarnated into poor black people in the slums.

Listen, our Dhamma journey is not to become enlightened, it is to let go of what we carry, that old story that dominates every part of our life. By letting go of our emotional relationship to the past we open ourselves to the limitless possibilities of the future. Enlightenment is not the goal of our practice, it is only the consequence of it.

Why do we do shamatha or mindfulness meditation? It’s said to increase two things. One is vividness. Our experience becomes much more vivid as detail and subtlety emerge in all the things we usually miss when we’re speeding through life. The other is stability. We train our mind to be less thrown around by the ups and downs of life. These two qualities mix well with anything we do and permeate and radiate out into our lives.

If we cannot understand and love ourselves, how will we have the energy to love and understand others.

Sometimes people will say, "This meditation thing isn't working at all. I'm not getting calmer, I'm getting more neurotic!" But our neurosis is not increasing - it's the awareness of our neurosis that is increasing. This is actually progress!