"When the great universal teacher Shakyamuni Buddha first spoke about the Dharma in the noble land of India, he taught the four noble truths: the truths of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the path to the cessation of suffering."
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1. The truth of unsatisfactoriness

The First Noble Truth is awareness of the universality of the feeling of unsatisfactoriness, and the way in which it eventually undermines every achievement. The Sanskrit word mostly translated as 'suffering' is 'dukkha'. 'Du' means worthless, and 'kha' means hollow. So 'dukkha' actually encompasses much more than the misery of life not going well, the experience of pain and personal catastrophe. It points to the illusory nature of the dukkha itself. In some way we create the unsatisfactoriness.

2.The truth of the cause of unsatisfactoriness

The truth of the cause of the experience of unsatisfactoriness is suggested to us through experiencing the form & emptiness of unsatisfactoriness. We realize that there is something about both the way we in which we view phenomena, and how we experience phenomena, which causes unsatisfactoriness.

3.The truth of the cessation of unsatisfactoriness

The cessation of the experience of unsatisfactoriness is the truth that if there is a cause of dukkha, then there must be a way in which we can stop creating the cause of dukkha. We can cut the cause at the root. We actively create samsara by continually defining our existence according to form ideas of how things should be. We refuse to let the ebb & flow of our existence be what it is. But we can stop 'doing' samsara and allow a view and experience to emerge in which form & emptiness define each other.

4.The truth of the path to the cessation of unsatisfactoriness

The path of the cessation of the experience of unsatisfactoriness is the Eightfold Path. It is important to notice the word used here. We are not talking about a remedy or a cure it is a path. The word 'path' suggests something which has been found or laid down by someone who has gone this way before. A path is something which has been trodden and tested. It is purposely designed to get us from where we think we are to where we actually are. It is the path of the middle way: free from referential extremes; free of the four philosophical extremes;(3) and free of addiction to self-justification or self-denial. The path is taught as eight stages, but the totality of Buddhist method can be extrapolated from this simple structure.

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget." - Arundhati Roy

The truth will bear scrutiny.

Never allow yourself to be silenced. For if you stay silent when you know you should speak out your heart will be haunted by it.

However destructive this engaging culture may be, however unimaginable man's deeds may become, we must remember that one life, sometimes one deed can change the course of history.

Be a source of love, forgiveness, and compassion. This is the most powerful antithesis to the destructive forces in our world. Honor life itself. Maintain under threat of death this antithetical stance. But do not let it prevent you from protecting children, elderly, or any other helpless innocents in mortal danger, with your life.

Imagine a small portion of people devoting themselves to love and forgiveness. If you feel resistant you must ask yourself why. Fundamentally it is what we have to do to correct our course of hate, violence, and our negligent value for life, in order to tip the scales in the other direction. And it must be done on the most basic level as one interaction at a time.

Lets face it - it is the individual choice en masse that engages war. It is the conduct of an individual that is destructive or creative. Create goodness. And decency. And respect for all life.

This will be our revolution.

More than to devour you or be devoured by you, I long for our souls' release. More than I long to embrace you, I long for your happiness, your peace.

Be true to what you hold dear, my soul. I honor you, I honor your life. May we stand strong in truth. May we know love and never know hunger. May we live well in our convictions and never know a day of violence or suffering. May our every gesture show our gratitude and be our offering for a better world.

May we stand strong in truth. May we know love and never know hunger. May we live well in our convictions and never know a day of violence or suffering. May our every gesture show our gratitude and be our offering for a better world.

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

I offer that building alternatives is the greatest form of resistance.

Build then live in a manner that benefits us all rather than the pockets of a few.

"Mara, the God of Confusion, realized this was his last chance to stop Siddhart...ha from attaining enlightenment and spreading wisdom throughout the world. Mara summoned armies, filled with fearsome creatures from other realms, and caused a terrible storm in order to distract Siddhartha from meditating. Mara is said to have ten armies - sensual desire, boredom, hunger & thirst, craving, sloth, terror, uncertainty, hypocrisy, undeserved notoriety, and pride. The contrasting solo sections in this piece represent attacks by the armies of sensual desire and terror respectively, while the main theme represents Mara's malevolence followed by Siddhartha's peaceful reply. Eventually, Mara realized that it was impossible to distract Siddhartha from his task, so he demanded that Siddhartha move from his place underneath the tree, asking Siddhartha what right he had to sit there. Siddhartha replied that he had earned the right to sit there because he had practiced the "Ten Perfections" of generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, effort, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness and equanimity. Mara accused Siddhartha of of lying and asked him who had witnessed him practicing these perfections. Siddhartha replied by lowering his right hand and touching the earth, in a gesture referred to as "Calling the Earth To Witness". The earth's response, represented by the gong hits, was a huge earthquake which caused the ground to split open and swallow Mara up along with all his armies."

THE TEN ARMIES OF MARA

In Pali, Mara means killer. He is the personification of the force that kills virtue and also kills existence. His armies are poised to attack all yogis; they even tried to overcome the Buddha on the night of his enlightenment.
Here are the lines the Buddha addressed to Mara, as recorded in the Sutta Nipata:

Sensual pleasures are your first army,
Discontent your second is called.
Your third is hunger and thirst,
The fourth is called craving.
Sloth and torpor are your fifth,
The sixth is called fear,
Your seventh is doubt,
Conceit and ingratitude are your eighth,
Gain, renown, honor and whatever fame is falsely received (are the ninth),
And whoever both extols himself and disparages others (has fallen victim to the tenth).
That is your army, Namuci [Mara], the striking force of darkness.
One who is not a hero cannot conquer it, but having conquered it, one obtains happiness.
To overcome the forces of darkness in our own minds, we have the wholesome power of satipa hana vipassana meditation, which gives us the sword of mindfulness, as well as strategies for attack and defense.
In the Buddha’s case, we know who won the victory. Now, which side will win over you?


BUDDHISM'S TEN PERFECTIONS AND NIRVANA

Giving. As a full jar overthrown pours out the liquid and keeps back nothing, even so shall your charity be without reserve - as a jar overturned.

Duty. As a yak-cow, when the hairs of her tail become entangled in anything, would rather suffer death than injury to her tail, even so should you keep to your duty - as the yak to her tail.

Renunciation . As a man in prison, suffering pain for long, knows that there is no pleasure for him but only to await release, so shall you look upon your existences on earth as in prisons, and turn your face toward renunciation and await release.

Insight. As the beggar-monk shuns no families from whom he begs, whether lowly or high or in between, and acquires his daily fare, so shall you at all times question the wise and gain insight.

Courage. As the lion, king of beasts, whether when lying down or standing up, lacks no courage, but is ever light-hearted, so also shall you in each of your individual-existences hold fast to your courage.

Patience. As the earth bears all that is cast upon it, both the pure and impure, and feels no resentment nor rejoicing, so also shall you receive favors and rebuffs alike with indifference.

Truth . As the star of healing is balanced in the heavens, and swerves not from its path in its time and its season, so shall you remain fixed on your path of truth.

Resolution . As the stone mountain, firmly based quails not before the tempest, but abides in its place, so shall you abide in your resolution once resolved.

Loving-kindness. As water quenches the thirst of the good and the bad alike, and cleanses them of dust and impurity, so also shall you treat your friend and your foe alike with loving-kindness.

Serenity. As indeed the earth looks with serenity on all the pure and impure that are cast upon it, even so shall you approach with serenity both joy and sorrow - if you are to attain wisdom.

Thus many are the things which in this world make wisdom perfect; beyond these there are no others.

When he gains perfect wisdom and becomes master of himself, it is the belief of the Buddhist that he has gained salvation and is ready to enter Nirvana.

Nirvana is probably one of the most difficult concepts to define in a way comprehensible to the Western mind. Some have defined Nirvana as the state of Not-being. This is both correct and incorrect. For Nirvana is a release from the cycle of reincarnation and the end of individual existence. Nirvana is also the blissful state in which all suffering ceases and the individual is joined with the World-Soul.