01 / THE BASIC IDEA
LIFE IS
PRETTY HARD.
You experience pain, loss, disappointment, uncertainty,
and change. Even your happiest experiences shift.
You cannot make everything you love stay exactly
as it is.
Buddhism invites you to examine your relationship
with that reality. Where do you cling to pleasure?
Where do you fight what has already happened?
What happens when life refuses to follow your expectations?
Through wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental cultivation,
you practice understanding suffering and loosening
the patterns that keep it going.
WHAT ARE YOU EXPERIENCING?
WHAT CONTRIBUTES TO IT?
WHAT HELPS?
02 / THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
START WITH
WHAT HURTS.
The Four Noble Truths give you a framework for
investigating suffering: recognize it, understand
its origin, recognize the possibility of its cessation,
and cultivate the path toward that freedom.
01 / DUKKHA
RECOGNIZE YOUR SUFFERING.
Acknowledge pain and dissatisfaction.
Notice how changing experiences cannot give
you permanent security.
02 / ORIGIN
UNDERSTAND YOUR CRAVING.
Examine your thirst for pleasure, becoming
something, or getting rid of an experience.
Notice how clinging sustains suffering.
03 / CESSATION
RECOGNIZE THE POSSIBILITY.
You can cultivate freedom through
relinquishing craving and attachment.
04 / PATH
PRACTICE THE WAY.
Develop wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental
discipline through the Noble Eightfold Path.
03 / THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH
PUT IT
INTO
PRACTICE.
You cultivate these eight practices together.
Your understanding influences your conduct,
and your conduct affects the mind you bring
to practice.
01 / WISDOM
RIGHT VIEW
Develop your understanding of suffering,
its causes, and the consequences of
your intentional actions.
02 / WISDOM
RIGHT INTENTION
Orient your intentions toward renunciation,
goodwill, and non-harming.
03 / ETHICAL CONDUCT
RIGHT SPEECH
Speak truthfully and with care.
Refrain from lies, divisive speech,
cruelty, and idle chatter.
04 / ETHICAL CONDUCT
RIGHT ACTION
Respect life and others' belongings.
Practice sexual responsibility and
consider the harm your actions could cause.
05 / ETHICAL CONDUCT
RIGHT LIVELIHOOD
Earn your living in ways that avoid
harming or exploiting other beings.
06 / MENTAL CULTIVATION
RIGHT EFFORT
Work to prevent and abandon unwholesome
states while developing and sustaining
wholesome ones.
07 / MENTAL CULTIVATION
RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Cultivate attentive awareness of your body,
feelings, mind, and mental phenomena.
08 / MENTAL CULTIVATION
RIGHT CONCENTRATION
Develop collected, stable attention through
meditative practice to support deeper insight.
HOW YOU UNDERSTAND.
HOW YOU ACT.
HOW YOU PRACTICE.
04 / THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS
NOTHING
STAYS
FIXED.
You can examine your experience through
impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self.
These teachings invite you to look closely
at what you ordinarily take for granted.
01 / ANICCA
IMPERMANENCE
Your thoughts, feelings, body, relationships,
and circumstances change through causes
and conditions.
02 / DUKKHA
UNSATISFACTORINESS
You cannot find permanent satisfaction
in what changes. Clinging to it leaves
you vulnerable to distress.
03 / ANATTA
NON-SELF
Examine whether your changing body and mind
contain a fixed, independent, unchanging self.
Notice how much depends on conditions.
You may begin to loosen your identification with
a feeling, role, or story about yourself.
An experience can matter deeply without becoming
a permanent definition of who you are.
05 / MINDFULNESS
WHAT IS
HAPPENING
RIGHT NOW?
You practice recognizing your experience as it unfolds.
You attend to sensations, feelings, thoughts,
and mental patterns with enough clarity to
investigate what is happening.
01 / BODY
NOTICE YOUR BODY.
Attend to your breathing, posture,
movement, and changing physical experience.
02 / FEELING
NOTICE THE TONE.
Recognize whether your experience feels
pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
Notice your response.
03 / MIND
NOTICE YOUR STATE.
Recognize whether your mind is distracted,
concentrated, angry, attached, or otherwise.
04 / MENTAL PHENOMENA
NOTICE THE PATTERNS.
Examine your experience through Buddhist
teachings, including hindrances and
qualities that support awakening.
You can begin by noticing a thought before
accepting it as fact, or recognizing an emotion
before acting on it.
YOU NOTICE ANGER.
WHAT IS FEEDING IT?
WHAT CHANGES AS YOU PAY ATTENTION?
06 / CRAVING, AVERSION & ATTACHMENT
YOU WANT IT.
KEEP IT.
MAKE IT STOP.
You reach toward pleasure, push away discomfort,
and hold tightly to whatever seems capable
of making you secure.
Notice how these movements shape your relationship
with people, possessions, beliefs, and your own identity.
Listen for the demands underneath your reactions.
YOU NEED THIS FEELING TO STAY.
YOU NEED THIS DISCOMFORT TO END.
YOU NEED THIS PERSON TO REMAIN THE SAME.
YOU NEED YOUR LIFE TO FOLLOW THE PLAN.
Practice loosening those demands. You can love,
enjoy, and commit while allowing more room
for change and uncertainty.
CARE DEEPLY.
NOTICE WHERE YOU ARE CLINGING.
07 / COMPASSION & LOVING-KINDNESS
LESS HATRED.
MORE
HUMANITY.
Through compassion, or karuna, you cultivate
the wish to relieve suffering. Through
loving-kindness, or metta, you cultivate
goodwill toward yourself and other beings.
You can recognize suffering while maintaining
boundaries and taking responsibility.
Care can help you face harm honestly
and consider what repair requires.
KARUNA
MEET SUFFERING.
Acknowledge your own and others' pain.
Consider what could help alleviate it.
METTA
CULTIVATE GOODWILL.
Extend wishes for safety, happiness,
and well-being to yourself and others.
OFFER YOURSELF KINDNESS.
EXTEND IT TO SOMEONE ELSE.
KEEP PRACTICING.
08 / THE MIDDLE WAY & EQUANIMITY
STEP OUT
OF THE
EXTREMES.
Through the Middle Way, you cultivate a path
that avoids sensual indulgence and severe
self-mortification.
Examine what your choices produce. Does chasing
pleasure leave you more dependent on it?
Does harsh self-denial undermine your health
and ability to practice?
Through equanimity, you develop steadiness amid
pleasure and pain, praise and criticism,
gain and loss. You remain engaged while learning
to be less overwhelmed by each change.
WHAT SUPPORTS YOUR CLARITY?
WHAT ADDS TO YOUR SUFFERING?
09 / DEPENDENT ORIGINATION
LOOK AT
WHAT KEEPS
IT GOING.
Dependent origination invites you to understand
how suffering arises through conditions.
You examine relationships among ignorance,
craving, clinging, and the continuation
of suffering.
As you investigate a pattern, you may recognize
places where changing a condition or your response
changes what follows.
WHAT CONDITIONS ARE PRESENT?
WHAT KEEPS YOUR PATTERN GOING?
WHERE CAN YOU RESPOND DIFFERENTLY?
In your everyday life, bring that curiosity
to your habits, surroundings, relationships,
and the support available to you.
10 / WORKING WITH DIFFICULTY
MEET LIFE
WITH AN
OPEN HEART.
Tibetan Buddhist mind-training practices offer
ways for you to work with adversity.
You can use difficult experiences to examine
attachment, cultivate patience, and deepen compassion.
You can seek relief, protection, and change
while exploring your reactions.
Learning from hardship does not require
you to welcome more of it.
MIND TRAINING
PRACTICE IN DIFFICULTY.
Notice the habits hardship brings forward.
Cultivate your capacity to respond with
patience and compassion.
SHAMBHALA
GENTLENESS & BRAVERY.
Explore basic goodness: your capacity
for wakefulness, dignity, and openness.
Practice meeting experience with courage.
In Shambhala's language of warriorship,
you develop bravery through openness.
You can acknowledge fear, remain tender,
and act with care amid uncertainty.
11 / EVERYDAY PRACTICE
BRING IT
INTO YOUR
ACTUAL LIFE.
Give your practice a place in how you speak,
work, pay attention, and care for others.
Begin with actions you can repeat.
01
Take a few comfortable breaths.
Feel your contact with the chair or floor.
02
Recognize a pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral
experience before reacting.
03
Notice where your appreciation has become
a demand that something stay the same.
04
Practice a moment of metta toward yourself
and another person.
05
Choose words that are truthful,
useful, and considerate.
06
Give your attention to something nourishing:
companionship, creativity, nature, or rest.
Practice at a manageable pace. Give yourself
opportunities to learn through repetition
and notice how your understanding develops.
YOUR AWARENESS.
YOUR PRACTICE.
YOUR OPEN HEART.
BE HERE.
NOTICE.
PRACTICE.
Learn what feeds your suffering, cultivate
what supports well-being, and bring that
understanding into the life in front of you.
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