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12 Pieces of
Buddhist Wisdom
That Will
Transform Your
Life
By Matt Valentine
When I was little, my grandma had this little green Buddha statue.
It wasnt a statue of the original Buddha, but rather a statue of whats
generally considered Maitreya, the future Buddha,
usually represented as a hefty man1 sitting with his robe partly opened
and often with beads around his neck. This particular statue was a
pretty common image, one where his belly protruded out to reveal his
belly button.
12 Pieces of
Buddhist Wisdom
That Will Transform
Your Life
1. Live with
compassion
Compassion is one of the most revered qualities in Buddhism and
great compassion is a sign of a highly realized human being.
Compassion doesnt just help the world at large, and it isnt
just about the fact that its the right thing to do. Compassion,
and seeking to understand those around you, can transform your life
for a number of reasons.
First, self-compassion is altogether critical towards finding peace
within yourself. By learning to forgive yourself and accepting that
youre human you can heal deep wounds bring yourself back from
difficult challenges.
Workbook Exercise:
Think of someone you dont like. This could be someone you hate,
someone you generally dislike, or someone whom youve only recently
had an argument with.
Workbook Exercise:
Have one mindful conversation every day for the next 7 days.
To do this, when you have a conversation with, say, your best friend,
be fully present for the conversation by putting down your phone,
turning to look them straight in their eye and turning off and away
from any additional potential distractions.
Be fully present for the words theyre speaking and the thoughts
arising in your mind as a result of their words. If you speak during the
conversation, speak carefully and compassionately, staying mindful of
where you stand or sit and the fact that youre right here in this
moment having a conversation with your best friend.
One of the most powerful things we can do to improve our
relationships is simply to be fully present for the other person.
Attention and awareness are your primary tools in both connecting
with and nurturing others. Use them wisely.
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3. Wake up
One of the most powerful points on this list, the power of simply living
in a way that youre fully awake to every moment of your life pretty
much couldnt be exaggerated even if I tried.
Mindfulness, greater awareness, paying attention, whatever you want
to call it- it changes every facet of your life and in every
way. Its as simple as that.
Strive to live fully awake to each moment of your daily life and
overcome your greatest personal struggles, find a great sense of peace
and joy, and realize the greatest lessons life can teach you as a result of
living fully awake to the present moment.
Workbook Exercise:
Mindfulness is the primary tool used in realizing any level of
awakening. This was the foundation of the Buddhas teaching.
Mindfulness can be practiced any time of day and in any situation. In
the beginning, mindfulness is a rather progressive practice.
By that I mean youll begin with a basic mindful breathing exercise or
something like it and gradually expand to more and different varied
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4. Live deeply
To live deeply, in a way that you become keenly aware of the precious
nature of life, is to begin down the path of true peace and happiness.
Why? Because to live in this way is to gradually become aware of the
true nature of the world. This will happen essentially in sections of
the whole, such as realizing your interconnectedness (you begin to see
how everything is connected to everything else) and impermanence
(you begin to see how everything is ever-changing, constantly dying
only to be reborn in another form).
These realizations are the bread and butter of Buddhism and all
spiritual practice. These sections of the whole are fragments of the
ultimate realization, ways for us to understand that which cant be
fully understood in the traditional sense.
By living in a way that you seek to realize these various qualities of
the ultimate you find greater and greater peace in realizing the
natural way of things. This cultivates in us the ability to savor
every moment of life, to find peace in even the most
mundane activities, as well as the ability to transform your
typically negative experiences into something altogether
nourishing and healing.
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Workbook Exercise:
Pick an object, any object. Preferably an object you have near you and
can sit down and look at.
Think about that object deeply, imagining the huge amount of total
work- of manpower, machine power, technology, knowledge, and
time- that it took to bring that object in front of you as it is in that
moment.
Continue further and imagine what that object was before it was the
object. If its a machine imagine all the various pieces which had to be
created, manufactured, and pieced together in order to create the
object in front of you.
Now imagine what allowed that object to come to be, realize that the
object was a very part of the world around you before it took the form
of the machine in front of you. Take this meditation as far as it will go,
eventually arriving at the realization that this object was once in the
soil, in the sky, and in the ocean in a very real and tangible way.
You can meditate on any object in this way, so go wild! This
meditation can be the source of significant insights which lead to a
great sense of peace, joy, and a reverence for life.
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5. Change yourself,
change the world
Buddhists understand that you can hardly help another before you
help yourself. But this isnt referring to you gaining power or riches
before you can help others, or living in a way that you ignore others.
This is mostly referring to the fact that because were all
interconnected, by you helping yourself you create an exponentially
positive effect on the rest of the world.
If you want to make an impact on the world, dont falsely
convince yourself that its you or them1. You dont need to
drag yourself through the mud to help those around you. If you do
this, youll greatly hamper your ability to create a positive impact.
At the deepest level of understanding, by making it about you youre
also making it about them because you know theres no separating
you and them.
Take care of yourself and seek to be more than just a help, but an
example of how to live for others to follow and youll create waves of
exponential possibility that inspires others to do the same.
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Workbook Exercise:
This entire workbook is about working on yourself, which in turn helps
others in the ways described above. So take a moment to meditate on
exactly how by changing each of these things you change the world
around you.
By living with compassion, how do you help others?
By connecting with others and nurturing your relationships, how do
you help others?
By waking up and realizing your true nature, how do you help others?
By living deeply, seeing the interconnected nature of all things and
how what you do affects all things and how what all things do affects
you, how do you help others?
You get the idea, continue to do this for the remaining points in order
to fully realize just how changing your own life will change the world.
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6. Embrace death
Death is an often taboo topic in Western society. We do everything we
can to not only avoid the subject, but pretend that it doesnt even exist.
The reality is, this is really unfortunate and in no way helps us lead
better lives. Becoming keenly aware of your own impermanence and
deeply understanding the nature of death with regards to our
interconnectedness are both things which can help us find great peace.
In Buddhism, students in many sects at one point or another
meditate on the corpse as it were (a practice which is said to have
originated at least as far back as the Buddhas lifetime).
This is literally what it sounds like. They meditate on the image of a
corpse slowing decomposing and imagine that process through to its
end, eventually resulting in a deep and profound realization on the
true nature of death.
That might sound a little intense to you, but the truth is, if you live
youre entire life acting as if youre never going to die or
ignoring your own impermanence then you wont ever be
able to find true peace within yourself.
You dont necessarily have to meditate on the image of a corpse, but
simply opening up to yourself about death so that youre no longer
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Workbook Exercise:
Im not going to ask you to meditate on the image of a corpse, so dont
worry. But I will ask that you meditate on the idea of death itself.
Imagine youre viewing the events leading up to your own death and
beyond from a third-person perspective, looking down upon the
various events.
Imagine you getting sick, going through treatment, getting worse,
finally passing, your funeral, and then take this as far as it will go. By
that I mean meditate on the idea of being dead itself. Specifically, I
want you to meditate on the idea of going to sleep and never waking
up. When it comes down to it, thats really what were afraid of when
we think of death.
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Workbook Exercise:
For this exercise, you can do very much the same as we did in #4, but
in this case meditating on a piece of food. I tend to pick whole foods
like fruits and vegetables because theyre easier to visualize. You can
pick whatever youd like though.
When it comes to food, imagine where the food came from and what
the food was before it sprouted into the fruit, vegetable, or what it is.
Think about where it came from before then and what made it what it
is.
This can be a rather involved exercise, so you might not want to do it
before every meal, but its very beneficial to do regularly.
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8. Understand the
nature of giving
Giving is more than the act of giving Christmas and Birthday gifts, its
also about those gifts which we give each and every day which we dont
typically see as gifts at all.
Buddhists hold a very deep understanding of the nature of giving,
particularly in that life is a constant play between the act of
giving and receiving. This doesnt just help us find peace in
understanding the way of the world around us, but helps us realize the
amazing gifts we all have within us that we can give others in every
moment, such as our love, compassion, and presence.
Workbook Exercise:
Think about what you do on an everyday basis and how that is a form
of giving:
Work
Home life
Interacting in various ways with friends, family, and strangers
Just being you
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Workbook Exercise:
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Workbook Exercise:
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Workbook Exercise:
Become mindful of how you feel while at work and begin
contemplating how you feel about your work in general and how your
work affects the world around you.
Doing so is the foundation of discovering whether you need to make a
change or not. If something makes you feel uncomfortable, explore the
feelings further.
If you discover that your livelihood is less-than preferable, and that
you can and should make a change, do so carefully. Dont jump to
leaving your job or closing your business though, understand that
whats really important here is understanding deeply how what you do
and what your company does affects all living and non-living beings.
You cant always do something about your position, but you can
become more aware and compassionate and seek to do things to offset
the imbalance.
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Workbook Exercise:
For this exercise, I want you to ask yourself one simple
question: What can I not live without?
And I dont mean what do you need in order to live, the basic
necessities, I mean what are those things you love or like too much
that you could never see being able to give them up or be without.
This is a simple exercise which can help shed light on some of the
attachments you hold.
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Sit
Walk
Stop
Eat
Drive
Arrive
Rest
Love
Communicate
and much more.