“DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY”
Kim-Vu
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A young lady comes to ask me how I
live as a Buddhist. I tell her: DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY.
It’s a pretty simple formula.
Buddhism to me is not something to bind you. It is a way to lead you to
complete freedom. Freedom
from fear, from worry, from suffering, from any kind of bondage.
To be a Buddhist is to be happy all the time. Wouldn’t you want to be just
that?
How do you do it?
DON’T DO BAD THINGS
KEEP YOUR MIND AT PEACE
THAT’S WHAT THE BUDDHAS TEACH.
It is a short poem taken from the Dhammapada, a book of sayings Sakyamuni Buddha taught his students.
Life is full of strife. And thus, full of suffering. People
are driven by craving, anger, hate, prejudice, all due
to ignorance. The world now is
actually at war, not at peace. What you see in the papers, on TV, in movies,
drives you to violence, lust, anger, hate. To make the world a better place for
all, the first thing one can do is to find inner peace. Follow the Buddha’s
advice, and you find just that.
For me, life can be subsumed in vibes. Humans, animals, events, phenomena, are all fields of vibration. Good vibes and
bad vibes. If you are free from fear, worry, pain, suffering, you emanate good
vibes, and affect others around you in a good way. If you are full of bad
thoughts, thoughts of anger, revenge, if you are driven by the urge to inflict
pain and suffering on others, you are full of bad vibes, and affect others
around you in a bad way.
There is inevitability in life. So the situation the world
is in now can plainly be explained in a rational way. And things will go on the
way life has to go for a while yet. But for sure, by and by, life will get
better for humanity. And I’m happy that I can contribute to the final outcome
by trying to be a good student of the Buddha’s.
So I try to make life as simple as I can. First, to keep
myself in good shape, I do slow and
deep breathing, and a simple physical exercise
devised by Bodhidharma, the
first patriarch of the Chinese Zen lineage, called THE BIOLOGICAL
PENDULUM. At the same time,
I try to keep my mind uncluttered with idle thoughts and useless involvements.
To date, the results have been amazing.
Simple, isn’t it? Want to follow my method? Try it out and
see for yourself.
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