Tag: Compassion
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More Than a Reward: 5 Radical Ideas Hidden in a 2,000-Year-Old Buddhist Text
For many, religious or spiritual practice is often seen through a transactional lens: perform specific actions, say the right words, do good deeds, and you will receive a reward—a better life, good fortune, or a favorable place in the hereafter. This view presents spiritual development as a kind of karmic accounting, where we steadily accumulate…
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The Sun Don’t Preach
A raw, Delta blues track that wrestles with the difference between trying to fix a broken world with force and finding strength in a quieter, more patient wisdom. “The Sun Don’t Preach” is a story told through a bottleneck slide and a steady foot stomp, contrasting the “power of a God” with the “wisdom of…
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The Dewdrop and the Sea
A stripped-down folk-blues meditation for anyone who’s ever felt the weight of the world on their shoulders. “The Dewdrop and the Sea” is a story about moving from the burnout of trying to fix everything to the quiet hope found in small, meaningful action. It’s a song about a simple truth: our individual acts of…
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5 Surprising Lessons from an Ancient Bodhisattva on How to Face an Overwhelming World
It is a deeply familiar weight in our modern age: we are confronted daily with a seemingly endless tide of global problems, and in the face of such overwhelming need, we feel crushingly inadequate. We look at the scale of what is necessary and, as one ancient text observes, come to “believe that we are…
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The Parable of the Physician’s Ultimate Prescription
In a city plagued by chronic illness, there lived a wise Physician whose knowledge contained “the store of the hidden core of all the Buddhas”. This Physician possessed a single, ultimate Prescription that promised a cure for all suffering and revealed that the inherent nature of every resident was perfect health—a supreme state of “boundless…
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4 Surprising Truths About Why the Buddha’s Most Important Teaching Is Also His Most Hated
Imagine discovering a medicine that could cure every ailment, a universal remedy for all suffering. You would expect it to be met with universal joy and gratitude. Yet, what if the creator of this medicine prophesied that it would attract immense “hatred and jealousy”? This is the profound paradox at the heart of the Lotus…
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The Woman in 4B
A Blues Folk Ballad Three voices, one family breaking apart. A mysterious neighbor with an open door and endless tea. A blues-folk story about the three poisons we carry—greed, anger, and numbness—and the unexpected way we learn to set them down. Told through the eyes of a daughter scrolling her pain away, a son burning…
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The Patient Heart Blues
“The Patient Heart Blues” – A Song About Standing Strong While Walking Away Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is knowing when to stay and when to go. This song came from studying an ancient Buddhist text about patience—but not the kind of patience where you just take whatever comes. Real patience, the kind…
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When Patience Becomes Power: 5 Ancient Lessons for Handling Modern Life
In our modern lives, we’re taught to brace for the constant barrage of criticism, personal attacks, and overwhelming hardship. The struggle is mentally and emotionally exhausting, often leaving us feeling fragile and depleted. But what if there was a different way—a method for cultivating an inner strength so profound it could not be shaken by…
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This 2,000-Year-Old Text Is a Recipe for Life—Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Just Read It
Introduction: The Gap Between Knowing and Doing There’s a well-known gap between knowing something in theory and understanding it through experience. An old metaphor captures this perfectly: you can read a recipe for a meal, memorize every ingredient, and understand the chemistry of cooking, but you will remain completely ignorant of the food’s taste. True…
Mr. Altig’s Overview of the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sutra 