The Dali Lama Speaks

Some good stuff from the Dali Lama:

As long as hatred dwells in the human mind, real peace is impossible.

Practicing the morality of individual liberation requires the self-awareness needed to refrain from physical and verbal actions that bring harm to others.  This means abandoning what Buddhists call the ten non-virtues.  These are organized into three categories:

1. The physical non-virtues: killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct.
2. The verbal non-virtues: lying, divisive talk, harsh speech, and senseless chatter.
3. The mental non-virtues: covetousness, harmful intent, and wrong views.

The physical ones are pretty straightforward and brook no argument. The verbal ones start to get a more invasive: I get the not lying part but the other three are a little more subtle. Avoiding talk that might annoy someone or start an argument, blathering on and on when you don't have anything to say, speaking with the intent to hurt someone. And the mental non-virtues start to get pretty abstract. They don't give me a pass for what I think. A lot of the time I allow myself to think whatever I want as long as I don't act poorly or run my mouth. The thinking part is the hardest to practice well but it still needs to be addressed.