May 11, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, Happiness, JOY, Life, Wisdom
Buddhism, Buddhist quotes, Buddhist wisdom, David Hare Coach, Ikeda quotes, Nichiren, SGI, words of wisdom
Greetings all Spoon fans,
Would you like to share your photos, drawings and pictures with the hundreds of people worldwide who follow this blog? If so, I would love to use them on here with some encouraging, inspirational Buddhist quotes. As you can see, my favourite personal development authors use pictures very powerfully. To take part, just email buddhistpics@mail.com
I am looking for images that would help me illustrate thoughts like these:
- “We are all magnificent works in progress.”
- “I am not my past. I am not my psychometric profile. I am not the role I have played to survive so far. I am not the product of my childhood. I am a Buddha. I am who I choose to become.”
- “Wisdom without action produces only regrets. And action without wisdom does pretty much the same.”
- “We do not suffer because life is difficult, we suffer because we expect it to be easy.”
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April 27, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, JOY, Life, personal development, Wisdom
Buddhism, Daisaku Ikeda, Nichiren, problems, Serenity Prayer, SGI, suffering
Here is one of Nichiren’s most famous quotes about the Buddhist approach to dealing with problems: “Suffer what there is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy as facts of life and continue chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, no matter what happens.”
A great palace (pic by Tiffany Wright)
I have known Buddhists who base their whole lives just on these 32 words, re-reading them whenever the going gets rough. Or when it gets smooth. Or anything in between. Or for no reason at all. But how many of us get this advice completely back to front?
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April 13, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, Confidence, FOOTBALL, Happiness, personal development, society, Winning Edge
disadvantaged kids, encouraging young people, hope, kids fulfilling potential, SGI youth, Winning Edge, youth of today
Last week I had the good fortune to be training some teenagers from Southend in Essex, one of my favourite seaside towns. All of them had been excluded from mainstream schools and/or came from disadvantaged backgrounds. Luckily there are two people who believe in their potential, their teacher Rachael O’Brien and Stuart Long (of South Essex Homes), who have set up a Football Club for them, with funds they have fought long and hard to obtain. More info on Southend ATF (Achievement Through Football) here: http://achievementthroughfootball.org/
We had two marvellous days together, a mix of football plus the mindset and happiness stuff I teach on The Winning Edge personal development programme. This wonderful experience proved that with some warm but strict encouragement plus a more positive way of looking at themselves and the world, even kids who’ve had the toughest starts in life can discover a spark of hope, an inner resilience and a new sense of purpose. More about these lovely kids and their dreams at the end of this post.
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March 31, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, Compassion, Depression, Determination, Happiness, JOY, Life, personal development, Self-esteem
Alastair Campbell, Buddhism, Causes of depression, Darren Eadie, depression, Leon McKenzie, overcoming depression, Personal development, Prozac, SGI
Five years ago, I decided to chant about the fact that I’ve always tended to wake up in a grumpy, grouchy mood. It was a fairly casual decision born of curiosity and no little guilt that my ‘low life-state’ often had a negative impact on people around me.
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March 25, 2013
davidhare3000
anger, Buddhism, Compassion, Happiness, Respect, society, Wisdom
anger management, Buddhism, controlling anger, rage, SGI, temper
I have had a few angry conversations in recent months. One with a fellow blogger whom I’ve never met, one with the BBC and one with the manager of my son’s football team. Whether I ‘won the arguments’ or not is irrelevant (except to my ego), whether I was right or wrong is equally by-the-by. Buddhism teaches the sometimes inconvenient truth that I attract these situations into my life, that my own inner anger is like a magnet that can pull me into conflicts and sometimes sees me being disrespectful and losing my temper more than I would like to.
Luckily I have learned a lot about anger from my 12-year-old son Leon. A few years ago, when I was trying to catch the cat to take her to the vet, I asked him to make sure he didn’t leave the back door open. Unfortunately he did, the cat escaped, we were going to be late, I exploded with rage… And he just calmly looked at me and said: “Daddy, getting angry won’t bring the cat back in.” I was gobsmacked and will never forget this humbling moment and the fact that he naturally focused on the solution instead of the problem. Chanting about it later, it occurred to me that anger is the first reaction of the stupid when it needs to be the last resort of the wise.
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March 18, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, Happiness, Life, Religion, society, Wisdom
BBC, Buddhism, Catholic Church, Nichiren, Pope Francis, SGI
The appointment last week of a new pope has made me think and chant lots about my Catholic upbringing. And it has stirred in me a mix of emotions. At first I felt really angry that my favourite BBC radio station (5 Live) dropped all their other news and sports stories to broadcast almost non-stop speculation for 45 minutes about what colour puff of smoke would emerge from the Vatican (who, it has to be said, do theatre incredibly well.)
The reporter’s tone was one of excitement and hushed reverence, of the sort we normally hear during coverage of a British royal wedding. I felt this was inappropriate, for an organisation whose treatment of women, homosexuals and sexually abused children leaves a lot to be desired. And also because I reckon only 20,000 of the programme’s 1 million UK listeners actually attend Catholic mass on a Sunday. I argued that there were probably more ex-Catholics than practising Catholics listening to the broadcast. I shared this view on a BBC blog, but it was deleted by the BBC for being too provocative. It was then allowed to appear after all when I emailed them to appeal against their censorship.
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March 8, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, Happiness, JOY, Law of Attraction, Wisdom
Buddhism, Happiness, joy, Law of Attraction, LOA, Rhonda Byrne, SGI, The Secret
[7 mins to read]
A few years ago, several delegates on the personal development training courses I deliver for Mancroft International started asking me if I had heard of the Law of Attraction.
Many of them had read Rhonda Byrne’s book, The Secret or Joe Vitale’s The Key which teach that “your thoughts and your feelings create your life” and more significantly that the events (good and bad) that we attract into our lives reflect our inner reality. There was a real buzz around the LOA – it was a new way of looking at life, happiness and suffering. Or was it?
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March 2, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, Happiness, Life, LOVE, Wisdom
are we compatible?, Buddhism, Happiness, how to express love, relationship compatibility, types of love
[8 mins to read]
After my recent Valentine’s Day post (‘The Buddha in the Bedroom’) I received quite a few messages and questions about Love and relationships. One of the most common issues was around couples ‘growing apart’. So I want to address these questions here and write about six different types of Love. For the Nichiren Buddhists reading this, please note that I am writing today wearing my ‘Life Coach Hat’ rather than as a Buddhist quoting from the Gosho or citing guidance about meeting a Kosen Rufu partner.
My experience of coaching people to make big decisions about their love life is that the question: “How do you want to love and be loved?” is one of the most powerful ones I can ask. It can produce tears, joy, gratitude, relief or doubt in equal measure, depending on who I am talking to and how much they are able to give and receive the kind of love they most value. Often it can produce quite a long silence, because people haven’t stopped to think about it before.
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February 25, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, Happiness, hope, motivation, society, Wisdom
coping strategies, hope, Kazuo Fujii, vision
I love this quote by SGI-UK Buddhist leader Kazuo Fujii (pictured here in 1993) who outlines the huge difference it makes when we learn to challenge ourselves instead of just coping with life’s difficulties:
“There are two ways of approaching life. The first is coping and the second is challenging to change a situation. The situation is the same but the results are different. Coping is linked to the past and our past knowledge and experiences. It is a conservative attitude, limited, restricted, passive, defensive, dependent. There is no vision and no hope. This is not Buddhism. Buddhism is about change. Changing ourselves, society and humanity for good. The way to change is determination based on wisdom. Change is a projection towards the future. It is positive, creative, independent, attacking and seeking. It is an attitude of great hope and vision. Coping is the past projecting to the present. Changing is the present projecting to the future. We can choose. The difference between ordinary and great lives is up to us.”
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February 20, 2013
davidhare3000
Buddhism, Happiness, JOY, Life
Why me? Buddhism. Purpose of suffering. Victim mindset. Dealing with problems.
Clients in difficult situations sometimes say to me: “Why me?” Or “What did I do to deserve this?” Or “Why does this keep happening in my life?” This is a very natural but ultimately futile question. Our karma is so profound over this and many previous lifetimes that it is impossible to work out what causes you have made in the past that are producing today’s effects in your life. And as I was taught when I trained as a coach, ‘Why?’ is a negative, backward-looking question. Much healthier, say the coaching textbooks, to “look at the hows of the solution in the present rather than the whys of the problem in the past.” But there is a third approach that combines the best of the first two because Nichiren Buddhism reveals that it is healthier to look at ‘Why me?’ as a positive, forward-looking question.
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I am looking for images that would help me illustrate thoughts like these:
