Not believing in rebirth, we would not appreciate our present life. If we believe in rebirth, that we can be reborn in other life forms, that “I’m not always me,” we ease into emptiness. But when we feel, “I’m always going to be who I am now,” we grasp at…

Look at our precious human life. Look at how we have human intelligence, and how spectacular it is if we direct it in a valuable way. If we do not ethically direct our human intelligence, then we become worse than animals. Animals will only kill and harm others if they are…

Death will definitely come. True. It is what we see all around us, and what we see in our own lives. But still, we have some resistance to this. Or we say, “Well, maybe it’ll come, but quickly? Absolutely impossible. I have too many things I want to do. There are so many things going on…

It is interesting sometimes to ask ourselves what we are looking for in the teachings. Are we looking to hear teachings so that we feel good afterwards? If that is your motivation for listening to teachings, you are not going to feel good. When I teach you about the precious…

Death is definite. We first begin recalling that everybody must die, and it does not matter who you are. Throughout history people have died, so there is not going to be any reason why we are going to be exceptions. Even people who were holy beings in previous lives died.

We have our altar, we have our Dharma books, and we have notebooks full of notes, but we never read any of them. We never sit down on the cushion. We have all the medicines, but we do not take them, so we do not get well. We fill the prescription and…