Changing Ourselves Changes the World

Spoken by Master Ching Hai
December 4, 1993
Portland, Oregon

We are stepping into the Golden Age, so we have to change. We have to leave behind all these old useless conceptions of how a Saint should be; or we should leave behind the dark thinking, the negative expectation of the world and ourselves. Do something!

We start from ourselves – we clean our house. If our house looks filthy, we clean it first. If there’s anything we don’t like about ourselves, change it! Replace it with more positive, more virtuous qualities. For example, before, when we saw any homeless person we didn’t bother about him. He could stand there on the highway for hours under the sun, wanting to work for food. You’d say, “Oh! No! I cannot take a stranger into my house. That’s dangerous!”

Yes, but we could give him food. We don’t need to ask anything from him. Then sometimes we pass by a homeless person, we feel nothing. We don’t want to help because of our slow reaction, habits, so we don’t help him. When we get home, we feel something is wrong, “I should have helped.” But then we cover it up quickly, “No!” and watch television or do other things.

We don’t want to listen to our conscience, that’s why the world will never get better. If it is the case, whatever we think makes the world better, at least a more comfortable place for ourselves and neighbors, we can share. Begin with sharing, then we will feel a subtle change in ourselves, more love will pour into our consciousness. We will be aware of something that is the beginning.

That’s why the five precepts are just a suggestion that we should change some of the corners of our lives which we do not like. It’s not that we should feel so guilty or blame ourselves, should we fail some of it. But it is a goal so that we go forward. For example, we try to be more loving instead of violent or angry; be more giving instead of trying to take; we should be more faithful to our partner instead of having another mistress, or it could be mister. [everyone laugh]

You always blame the man, I don’t know why. There are women also, who want to play Madam Butterfly [Laughter], flying from one “flower” to the next. There are two kinds of “flowers” – male and female flowers. You know that! These brighten our world more and create a calmer atmosphere around us so that makes us better. That is all good, also a kind of meditation.

We meditate anytime anyhow in our lives. We just meditate mostly on the wrong things. So now, we just use that meditation Power, switch to the right thing, that’s all. When we think too much about how to make money at the expense of others, that is also meditation; we meditate on money. [everyone laugh] We use all our concentration power, or our mighty thinking power in order to get that piece of paper, and on that piece of paper is printed “In God we trust.” [Master and everyone laugh] Isn’t that paradoxical?

Our God is money sometimes! You see, “In God we trust” means we have to know God. If we don’t know God, how could we trust? It’s very easy to say, “In God we trust,” but how? Who is He? What does He look like? What did He do for me? What will He do for me that I have to trust Him? So, we must know that is what enlightenment offers. We have to be enlightened in order to know what God is, who He is, and what does He do to help us every day in all details of our activities. That is the thing we know after enlightenment. We know more and more.

If we did know God before, in some of the blessed incidents, then we’d know Him more and more everyday through a meditative attitude, through a very scientific way of maintaining our enlightened awareness. If we are enlightened once or twice, we still feel not yet there. If someone is hungry for a long time now, and you give him just a little bit of water and bread, will he be satisfied? Of course not.

If you want to learn free meditation method from Master Ching Hai. Please visit  http://www.Godsdirectcontact.org

Boy risks life to save baby deer from drowning

A young boy in Bangladesh risked his life in a surging river to rescue a drowning baby deer, prompting cheers from locals who weren’t sure whether Belal would reach the other side or be swept away.

Wildlife photographer Hasibul Wahab captured the heroic moments in photos from Noakhali, Bangladesh, where torrential rain caused fast-rising floods, causing the deer to be separated from its family, according to Caters News Agency and the U.K. MailOnline.

Belal, as you can see in the photos (which tell the whole story), grabbed the baby deer by its legs with one hand and held it high over his head as he trudged through the water, sometimes with his head fully submerged.

It was during those tense moments that onlookers believed the boy might perish. But the young teen persevered.

“He was such a brave boy—the river was so full of water and it was high tide so we thought he might drown,” Wahab told MailOnline. “My friend was even ready to jump into the river to save the boy. But he made it, and when he returned, we thanked the boy.”

Only about seven people witnessed the act of bravery and kindness, according to Wahab.

“It was a phenomenal sight,” he said.

Wahab told MailOnline that locals lose a lot of deer during the rainy season and are forced to do all they can to protect them, such as going to extreme measures like a young teenaged boy named Belal did.

From http://www.grindtv.com

 

For Little Angels – Lesson 6

FOR ANGELS TO ASPIRE TO THE GREATEST HEIGHTS

By Master Duy Tue
Originally in Vietnamese

Lesson 6 – Love and Intelligence

 The greatest and most precious power that we, as human beings, are born with is our love and our intelligence. The person with the most loving heart and the most intelligent head is the most powerful.

You should look to developing your love and intelligence. What your love tells you and what you see and hear are important for you to decide what to do in your everyday life situations, whether you are in school with your friends and your teachers or at home with your parents. Use your love and your understanding when you make your own decisions. If you depend on others to decide something for you, you are a puppet.

What is a puppet? A puppet is a doll that looks like a person or an animal and is controlled by people. When you see a puppet raise his hand or move his leg, you know it doesn’t do it by itself but somebody behind is controlling it. You are not a puppet. Make your own decisions and you will be confident. It is fine if your decision is not right.

To be intelligent, you should never use your imagination in a negative way. Negative imagination means that you believe in things that are unreal or you cannot prove. For example, your dad parks his car in front of your neighbor’s house and the neighbor is not happy about that. You want to ask him to forgive your dad. You want to apologize to him but are afraid he may yell at you. If you think that your neighbor may yell at you, it is negative imagination because you never know what he will actually do until you talk to him. Focusing on something unreal will not get you anywhere. When you think that your neighbor is not nice, you cannot talk to him comfortably and you may make him upset even more. Instead of worrying, you should look into his eyes and concentrate on your words to him. That way you can convince him to believe you and get his sympathy for your dad.

Keep in mind that one way to be intelligent is believe only in what you can see, hear and understand. Don’t believe in anything that cannot be proved to be true. Daydreamers or people who have negative imagination are not intelligent. They are not as productive at work as other people.

The Best Way To Worship God

Spoken by Master Ching Hai

The Quan Yin Method (free mediation method from master Ching Hai) is for you to realize that God is you, the way you make Him.  God can be as low as a worm, if you are that.  If you don’t raise yourselves higher than the worm’s level then God will forever stay as a worm. If you raise yourselves higher, the higher your God is, the higher God is glorified. So glorify God by your own power of meditation and realization. That’s the best prayer. That’s the best glorification for God, the most significant prayer and the most significant job that you could ever do for God.   If we say we worship God, Buddha, Allah or whoever you say, and we remain in ignorance, then we truly despite God; we truly disgrace God and Buddha.

Therefore, Buddha said, “If you believe in Buddha, but do not understand Buddha, you disgraced Buddha.” That is the truth. How do you disgrace Buddha? By remaining in ignorance and letting others see that you are an ignorant God, that you have no belief in God anymore, because God is ignorant due to your own ignorant thinking and view point. You think God is like that: “I pray to Him, but He doesn’t hear. I am crawling here, but He doesn’t see.” It is not God who does not see. It is you who does not know that God sees, and who does not directly receive God’s blessing, because you build a lot of obstacles around yourself. You, yourself, deny the benefit and the blessing from God, because you think, from a conditioned mind, from many generations, that you’re not worthy; that you’re wrong; that you are ignorant; that you do all the wrong things against your God’s nature.

Therefore, even now, when you pray, this kind of thinking subconsciously prevents you from knowing you are God, knowing the benefit of God. Then you think God is only that. God is only for you to pray to, to complain to and to demand from, but it is not so. Every God is truly different. Depending on how you think and on your level, God is different. Not that there are so many Gods, but our point of view differ, so God differs. Do you understand now why we must understand and realize God in order to say that we truly worship God? (Applause) Therefore, what the Buddha said is not wrong.  If you don’t understand Buddha, don’t just blindly believe in Buddha or you’ll disgrace Buddha.

Raw Vegan Chocolate and Peanut Butter Fudge

This recipe is not only delicious and decadent but it’s also good for you and super simple! It only takes five minutes to prepare and you only need five ingredients!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup coconut oil
• 1 cup unsalted crunchy peanut butter
• 2 cups raw cacao
• 1 cup dates (pitted)
• 1 to 2 pinches of unrefined sea salt

PREPARATION

1. Soak your dates in hot water for about 20 minutes to make them soft and sticky.
2. If you coconut oil is solid, put it in a jar and place the jar in hot water to melt your oil.
3. Place all your ingredients, except the peanut butter, in your high speed blender and blend until soft and well combined.
4. Add the peanut butter at the end to keep the crunch.
5. Spread evenly in a tin or container.
6. Place in the fridge for about one hour.

From  www.onegreenplanet.org

For Little Angels – Lesson 5

By Master Duy Tue
Originally in Vietnamese

FOR ANGELS TO ASPIRE TO THE GREATEST HEIGHTS

Lesson 5: Treat everyone equally and fairly

Do you know how to treat everyone equally? That is not to see your brothers and sisters to be the most important and people outside your family less important. You should love everyone and treat them equally. When you have some treats and you are with your friends and your brothers or sisters, you have to give everyone an equal share.

When you have only one candy bar and in front of you are your little brother and your friend, you may find it hard to decide who to give the candy bar to. Then you’d better put it away. Or if you are near a candy shop, you can buy more to give everyone enough. That is how you treat them equally.

And what does fairness mean? Let’s imagine one day your buddy takes you to an ice cream shop and he pays. You should let him do that and have fun with him. But another day, you must tell him to go with you to eat ice cream and you will pay. That is fairness. Fairness means no one takes advantage of the other.

If you practice being fair, your ability to see will get sharper and love will grow more.

A Teen’s Fight to Save Romania’s Stray Dogs

BUCHAREST (Reuters) – When French film actress Brigitte Bardot began a campaign to spare the thousands of stray dogs in Romania’s capital from being put down, she did it with a $150,000 donation scheme.

A similar campaign is being waged by Ana-Maria Ciulcu, a 13-year-old schoolgirl with braces on her teeth who uses Facebook to appeal to dog lovers all over Europe – and to make sure the dogs go to the right homes.

“I like to know that my dogs will be spoiled, and will be allowed to sit on the sofa … so one of my first questions would be: ‘Are you going to chain him?’,” Ciulcu told Reuters.

Ciulcu was a baby when Bardot started her sterilization campaign in 2001. Now she speaks fluent German and has a grasp of the Internet, and she’s used both to rescue 150 strays and ship them to Germany, Austria and Belgium since September.

But Bucharest’s state-funded wards now hold 2,800 dogs, and 2,000 dogs have been euthanized in the past two months, according to Romania’s Authority for Animal Surveillance and Protection. Foreign citizens, mainly German and British, have directly adopted about 30 dogs since September, ASPA Director Razvan Bancescu told Reuters.

Some 60,000 strays roam Bucharest. Last year, a four-year-old boy died after he was mauled by a stray beside a Bucharest park. Street protests demanded something be done about the dogs. The authorities began enforcing the euthanasia rules, which enable city halls to put down dogs caught in public spaces if they are not adopted within two weeks.

The strays are thought to be a legacy of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s decision to bulldoze Bucharest’s historic center in the 1980s to make way for a gargantuan “House of the People”. Thousands of guard dogs were abandoned by residents who had been forcibly relocated into small apartments.

Ciulcu collects strays on the street. They go to a temporary private shelter, or to the backyard of her home on the capital’s outskirts. She has a veterinarian vaccinate them and give them microchip identification tags and eventually gets international passports for them.

All costs, from medicines, vaccines and neutering to identification chips and passports, are covered by Ana-Maria’s family – about 150 euros ($210) per dog. Transporting the animals to their destinations is covered by the new owner.

She spends up to about two hours a day selecting owners from among thousands of would-be pet owners who visit her page (www.facebook.com/anamaria.ciulcu). Few Romanians are among them.

“Romanians generally want to adopt only a pure breed,” she said.

Ciulcu, who wants to become a doctor, believes keeping animals together in state-funded shelters is not a solution, just an extermination plan. Until she takes up her medical studies, her ambition is to save as many dogs as she can.

“Dogs can’t live packed together,” she said. “They need affection.”

 

From http://www.yahoo.com

EWG’s Dirty Dozen Report Lists the Most Pesticide-Heavy Fruits and Veggies of 2014

An apple a day usually keeps the doctor away — unless it’s ridden with pesticides.

For the 10th year in a row, nonprofit advocacy agency the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released its list of the most pesticide-contaminated produce, and once again apples top the Dirty Dozen.

The Dirty Dozen, part of the EWG’s yearly Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, is compiled from U.S. Department of Agriculture data on 48 fruits and veggies with pesticide residue data. About 65 percent of the produce samples test positive.

That’s bad news for a few reasons: Pesticides have been linked to developmental problems in children, and may act as carcinogens or throw off the endocrine system, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“For decades, various toxic pesticides were claimed to be ‘safe’ — until they weren’t, and either banned or phased out because they posed risks to people,” Sonya Lunder, EWG’s senior analyst and author of the Shopper’s Guide report said in a statement. “While regulators and scientists debate these and other controversies about pesticide safety, EWG will continue drawing attention to the fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide loads.”

For the third year, the EWG has also included two runners up with traces of some of the more dangerous pesticides that don’t quite fit into the Dirty Dozen. This year, that prestigious honor goes to leafy greens (which include kale and collards, according to the EWG) and hot peppers, which ranked 12th on last year’s list.

But the Dirty Dozen, listed below, doesn’t give us permissions to skip the produce with high loads. Rather, consider purchasing organic varieties of these fruits and veggies, and be sure to pick plenty of produce from the Clean 15.

12. A single snap pea sample carried 13 different pesticides.

11. The average potato sample was found to carry more pesticides by weight than any of the other foods tested.

10. A single sample of cherry tomatoes also tested positive for 13 different pesticides.

9. Not much has changed for the cucumber

8. Every sample of imported nectarines analyzed by the EWG tested positive for at least one pesticide.

7. Bell peppers

6. Spinach

5. Peaches

4. A single celery sample tested positive for 13 different pesticides.

3. A single grape sample contained 15 pesticides.

2. A single strawberry sample tested positive for 13 different pesticides.

1. Almost every apple — 99 percent! — tested positive for at least one pesticide residue.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

For Little Angels – Lesson 4

By Master Duy Tue
Originally in Vietnamese

FOR ANGELS TO ASPIRE TO THE GREATEST HEIGHTS

Lesson 4: The magic of giving

You should practice giving things. Try it today. Try it everyday if you can. Practice giving to friends, your brothers and sisters, and everyone around you something that you can afford to give or that is possible for you to give.

If you give away a lot, you will grow to see you get a lot because giving a lot means getting a lot. If you give one person something, another person will give you something else. Your life will be full of joy if you live with giving and sharing.

First you can give something to a friend, or your brother. That person will be happy and love you more. Then you may want to give more. This time you don’t just give a gift to your brother or your friend, but to everyone around you. You don’t just want to give one person, but you want to give everyone.

When you give away a book, a pencil, or some candy, you will feel happy inside. Just work on it and you will be able to feel it. Remember to listen to the pleasure inside.