Open Your Mind, Open Your Life: A Book of Eastern Wisdom by Taro Gold

Figuring out what you truly want in life is difficult. Achieving it, by comparison, is easy.

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There is always a way to get there from here.

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When we encounter criticism, we make a choice: Accept it as an opportunity to open our lives, or allow it to reinforce our insecurities.

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Seedlings change and become stalks. Stalks change and become rice. Rice changes and becomes a person. A person

changes and becomes a Buddha.

—Nichiren

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If we wish to eliminate the negative, unhealthy aspects of our lives, we would do well to increase the positive, healthy ones. Once strengthened, they will naturally help us transform the negative.

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What would your current frustrations look like from the vantage point of the final days of your life?

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Truth has the power to dispel the darkness of ignorance—just as a candle has the power to light a cave that has been dark for a million years.

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Adversity is the raw material of indestructible happiness. That’s why, when young, you ought to experience all sorts of hardships, even at a price.

—Josei Toda

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There is a bird that lives deep in the snowy mountains. Tortured by night’s numbing cold, it cries that it will build a warm nest in the morning. Yet, when day breaks, it sleeps the day away, basking in the warmth of the sun. So it continues, crying vainly throughout its life. People are often the same, lamenting their circumstances yet passing by every opportunity to change.

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Anger is only one letter short of danger.

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There once was a baby circus elephant who couldn’t break free from her leg chain, though she tried and tried.

Eventually, she gave up. Years later, she still had that little chain around her leg. Although she was strong enough to break free, she had long since accepted that she could not. Emotional chains, after all, are the hardest to break.

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Don’t belittle—be big.

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In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

—Lao Tzu

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Focus on the positive, for what you focus on increases.

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One who works with you is equal to ten who work for you.

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Don’t believe those who would hold you back.

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Money only buys what can be bought.

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Iron, when heated in flames and pounded, becomes a fine sword. Worthies and sages are likewise tested by abuse.

—Nichiren

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Be a lamp unto yourself. Rely only on yourself.

—Buddhist proverb

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There are two things you should never worry about—things you can help, and things you can’t.

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A change in surroundings will not help you unless you have first made a change in yourself.

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Invest more in your inner development than your outward appearance.

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Bias and bigotry arise from feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.

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When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

—Buddhist proverb

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Life appears throughout the universe wherever and whenever conditions are right, much like waves appear in the ocean as windy conditions arise. As a wave is simply an individual expression of the greater ocean, so too are we expressions of the greater life of the universe.

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Keep the wisdom gained from painful experiences and let go of the rest. Otherwise, risk the wisdom diminishing while the pain lingers.

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There once was a woman who lost her child to disease. Crazy with grief, she stumbled through the city begging for medicine to bring her child back. When she came upon the Buddha, he told her he would give her the medicine she needed. He asked her to find a poppy from a house where no one had lost a loved one. In her quest, she found there was not even one such home. She realized that death is a fact of life, and that she was not alone in her grief. In this way, the Buddha awakened her wisdom, restoring peace to her heart.

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Manifest the courage to follow your talents wherever they lead.

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Become a revisionist of your own history. Go back into your halls of memory and find the courage to view those experiences again—only this time through the clear vision of retrospection. Give yourself the answers you did not have then, learn what you once failed to learn, and allow yourself and others to have been wrong. Then let it go. When you do this, you will feel a sense of boundless, joyful freedom.

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Seek to find the positive in everyone.

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Let go of hate—people consumed by it often become exactly what they once hated.

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When we are upset, it’s easy to blame others. The true cause of our feelings, however, is within us. For example, imagine yourself as a glass of water. Now, imagine past negative experiences as sediment at the bottom of your glass.

Next, think of others as spoons. When stirred, the sediment clouds your water. It may appear that the spoon caused the water to cloud—but if there were no sediment, the water would remain clear. The key, then, is to identify our sediment and actively work to remove it.

—Josei Toda