Living Kindness: The Buddha's Ten Guiding Principles for a Blessed Life
FROM THE INTRODUCTION:Living Kindness focuses on wise, timeless, and enduring spiritual principles, or values, that were promoted and followed by the historical Gautama Buddha. The Buddha Vamsa Pali Texts, or lineage of the Buddhas, tell the story of how the Buddha-to-be found the ten conditions necessary for becoming a Buddha. These principles are astonishingly fresh and easily adapted to modern life. Some Buddhist teachings use these as their ideal, a means by which one becomes a Bodhisattva, or an "awakening being" seeking enlightenment. But do not assume that this makes them exclusively "Buddhist" principles or standards. Or that you have to be a Bodhisattva to experience them.Who can benefit from these principles? Anyone can. Whatever your faith, creed, or background, living kindness represents an inclusive, tolerant, and interfaith path that is not steeped in dogma or ideology. These ten principles—generosity, effort, patience, ethics, simplicity and meditation, wisdom, truthfulness, steadfastness, equanimity, and lovingkindness —offer a universal path to spiritual growth and compassionate living kindness. They can also help us cope with the many challenges facing us today, both personally and as a community.