Buddhism in the Balance, Aware and Mindful… 

You don’t have to fight for your religion, like Christians do. You don’t have to surrender to your religion, like Muslims do. You can just be, right in the center, with eyes open or closed, aware and mindful, with no particular judgements to make either way, good or bad, offensive or non-offensive. This is the way Buddhism works, simple yet effective, with no ribbons or bows, and no deep bows, except the ones you make to the senior monk when in his presence.  

Christianity is a religion of passion: weeping, wailing and all that gospel. Islam is a religion of submission. Buddhism is a way of life dispassionate, quiet, serene, full of passion only in the original sense of passion as suffering, the stuff of life in this material world, long before someone decided that it could be fun, as long as someone else was suffering more or worse than you. Because suffering exists, whether we are in the throes of it or not, and the only way out is to give it no quarter.  

So, the way to deal with suffering is to remove its source of sustenance, the craving and lust which it consumes for breakfast and lunch, hunger and thirst of the craven kind, crude and rude, cowardly and unforgiving in its lack of moral distinction. But this kind of turpitude depends on negligence for its survival, inattention to all detail and the passive acceptance of all things most easily proffered. Buddhism has no such luxury. Buddhism demands awareness, and mindfulness, and wakefulness to the sleepy dream that is all too often the standard for life. It’s never too late to meditate…