Full and New Moon Reflections
A shout-out today for my friend Betsy who turned me on to this beautiful offering from the Forest Sangha: Reflections on the Dhammmapada, which (if you subscribe) will arise in your email on each new and full moon.
Here is yesterday’s
New Moon Reflection:
No More Thorns
If you walk the path
you will arrive at the end of suffering.
Having beheld this myself,
I proclaim the Way
which removes all thorns.
— Dhammapada v. 275
(from A Dhammapada for Contemplation, 2nd edition, Aruna Publications, 2006)
“It is not necessary to move through life perpetually afraid of being skewered by the barbs of painful human interaction. All beings, including the Buddha himself, are subject to the eight worldly winds: praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, honor and insignificance.
“However, awakened beings are so completely transparent, so completely free from resistance, that they are always able to accord with it. They live unobstructed in their relationship with everything and everybody. Having walked the path to its end, they know beyond all doubt that to cling is to suffer. Wisdom shows them how to hold to life without creating pain, without spoiling it.”
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The Forest Sangha represents the
International Monasteries in the Therevada Buddhist Tradition of Ajahn Chah.
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To view earlier Reflections, click here.