Top Highlights

• What happens psychologically is that if one indulges in false and harmful speech, these become little circuits that feed back on themselves. If one has to misrepresent reality to others, then one ends up misrepresenting reality to oneself. Then after a while we become uncertain about what reality is. It no longer becomes a story; we genuinely get l...
• we’re telling ourselves some very brave and clear messages. That your inner life is important, that the quality of your life is paramount, and that your life is made within you, it’s not an external feature. And you are also committing to the results that come from practice and work on the mind itself.
• If we decide not to do these things, we give up, we feel lethargic, we don’t have hope, and that is exactly the reality we will create.
• it’s not the mind alone; that’s not really the important part. It’s the emotional life, the emotional quality of our life. And all the teachings of the Buddha are about that. They are not about ideas. Ideas are only useful if they lead to the end of suffering. And the end of suffering is just one way of putting it; it’s the negative way of putting ...
• So this is a transformation of emotions. You have to understand a little bit about how they work. Those are the “ideas” in the suttas, the discourses of the Buddha.