Loss of faith and Increase in Doubt.

 These are common feelings with which Buddhism deals. Faith and doubt are observable; they are just other names for hope and fear created in the mind. They aren’t you!

 They are temporary appearances
arising in the mind.
The Buddha taught us
how to remain in our true nature
and not get caught up in these appearances.

 The most important thing is to recognise the true nature of our mind, which is pure cognisant essence – pure awareness. Whatever happens externally (which includes concepts in the mind), these are merely the effects of another concept – both ours and others.

 Mud sticks to any thing.
It cannot stick to empty essence,
as there is nothing there to which it can attach.

 Obviously, being in a human body, we become body-obsessed, and there is our dilemma. We can blame others for our environment, but the truth of the matter is (and this always sounds unfair), we chose to to live where we live. This wasn’t really a choice as we are driven by our karma – our chain of reactions! We choose to repeat our karmic patterning, because of a belief in a mistaken self identity. Each one of us has to retrace our own steps.

 It is said that in the period just before taking rebirth, we see out future parents in union. As the sexual desire is so strong, if we are male we will have a strong desire for the female and dislike for the male. If we are female, we will have a strong desire for the male and dislike for the female. And that’s how we start life!

 This can give us an idea of the scale of our problem: the rate of recovery is our responsibility. In general, we are using a contaminated tool to dig up our contamination. That is precisely why we need an open clear mind; this is why we meditate.

We cannot say when this all started, but it is going on right now.

Karma drove us into this incarnation,
which was determined
by last moment of the previous incarnation.

 And that last moment was determined by
how we spent that previous lifetime…
…and so on!

 When a pure heart accepts this,
and stops over reacting,
then everything will work out fine.