Desire is a mainly a drive. You may desire to save the planet or to free all sentient beings from suffering. But when desires become entangled with craving and powerful attachments, our experience shows that they lead to suffering. Desire usually starts with an image. If the image is enticing and promises pleasure, it triggers a chain rea...

Recently, I met an elder person who was expressing her sadness that many of her friends where so attached to their money, even as death was coming near. She concluded: ‟What is the point? One has never seen a safe on a coffin. » What would we like to leave to our children? An embellished image of ourselves? Material possessions about whic...

In France, according to a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 26% of the breeding birds (568 species) are considered to be endangered. Urban concentration and the massive use of pesticides are deemed to be the main causes. Due to a careful study that was conducted by a thousand ornithologists, the ‟Suivi tempo...

I recently visited a friend who lives in Franche-Comté and whose parents, now retired, were the last independent farmers of that region. Now, there are no more. As we travelled across the countryside, my friend told me, ‟In the past, during the cherry-picking season, we were all in the trees feasting. Now, cherries remain on the branches. Tod...

A 14-year-old Thai girl student fell onto a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) track in Singapore on the morning of April 3. Nitcharee Peneakchanasak, also known as Nong Than, lost both her legs below the knees. One of her legs was severed by the train as it came into the station, and the other was so badly mangled that it had to be amputated by surgeo...

Please try to contemplate the following: No matter what, Buddha-nature is always present in all sentient beings. Therefore, there is nothing in any human being, you or anyone else, which is fundamentally wrong. This is not just some naïve belief. Think about the basic nature of mind. It is even more fundamental than happiness or sufferin...

Feeling guilty does not help. Regret does. Guilt creates the impression in the mind that one is forever and intrinsically unworthy, which is not true of anyone. It is more productive to regret negative things that you have done with the wish to not repeat the same mistakes, to do better in the future and, if possible, to repair the harm ...

Dark times can be a source of progress in our spiritual practice, since they allow us to see clearly the difference between what truly matters in life (inner peace, altruistic love and compassion for instance) and what is just the unavoidable upheavals of any life. Having confidence in an ethical or religious system that has at its core c...

Meditation, or more accurately mind training, helps to cultivate the inner resources that give us confidence to deal with the ups and downs of life. These inner resources include inner freedom that makes us less vulnerable to ever-changing outer conditions. Here, inner freedom means being free from the influence of automatic mental processes ...