Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.
Our problem mostly in our abuse of each other and the planet is greed. Just the rampant, incredible greed that people have partly because they're empty and they can't get enough because they're - you know, it's that Buddhist thing about the hungry ghost with the little mouth and the big belly.
Love yourself and be awake- Today, tomorrow, always. First establish yourself in the way, Then teach others, And so defeat sorrow. To straighten the crooked You must first do a harder thing- Straighten yourself. You are your only master. Who else? Subdue yourself, And discover your master.
From eating meat arrogance is born, from arrogance erroneous imaginations issue, and from imagination is born greed; and for this reason refrain from eating meat.
Let go the past, let go the future, and let go the present (front, back, middle). Crossing to the farther shore of existence, with mind released everywhere, do not further undergo birth and decay.
If the situation was such that there was only one learned lama or genuine practitioner alive, a person whose death would cause the whole of Tibet to lose all hope of keeping its Buddhist way of life, then it is conceivable that in order to protect that one person it might be justified for one or 10 enemies to be eliminated if there was no other way.
One who does not rouse themself when it is time to rise, who, though capable, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle person will never find their way to true knowledge.
Solitude is happiness for one who is content, who has heard the Dhamma and clearly sees. Non-affliction is happiness in the world - harmlessness towards all living beings.
Long is the night for the sleepless. Long is the road for the weary. Long is samsara (the cycle of continued rebirth) for the foolish, who have not recognised the true teaching.