DAILY READINGS 3rd May 2008

One strong in faith but weak in wisdom has uncritical and groundless confidence. One strong in wisdom but weak in faith errs on the side of cunning and is as hard to cure as one whose sickness is caused by a medicine. When the two are balanced, one has confidence only where there are grounds for it.


DAILY ENLIGHTENMENT - BEYOND THE HORRIDS OF LIFE

"The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible."

That was a quote by Lord Betrand Russell, dubbed by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. He seems to be referring to the First Noble Truth of life in his own way.

The secret of happiness, according to the Buddha is realising the Four Noble Truths:

1. Life is full of dissatisfactions,
2. They have their causes in our wanting (greed) and not-wanting (hatred), that comes from our ignorance,
3. The end of dissatisfactions is possible, &
4. The way to end dissatisfactions is the Noble Eightfold Path.

I guess that makes Lord Buddha the greatest "philosopher" of all time. And that was 2,540 years ago.


4Repentance

If we were to all be truly repentant, in a flash, Samsara would disappear. Samsara is the manifestation of unrepentant sentient beings' delusions. Yet repentance has to begin somewhere- the individual. True repentance is simply the clear recognition of all of one's misgivings, coupled with sincere resolution not to repeat the same mistakes. Your personal Samsara will start fading, your wheel of life and death start slowing down-slow enough for you to get off. The common mistake of repentance is the heart of repentance being "true" only for a while. We think we learnt when we never really learnt.