Words of the Buddha

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.


This is an unsourced quote I got off an internet list, but it sounds like the Buddha to me. A persistent problem Westerners face, which apparently is absent in Tibetans, is the tendency to continually and obsessively self-criticize. To hold ourselves to higher standards than anyone else, and suffer inner dejection when we fail to meet those expectations. It is as though we are constantly stabbing ourselves with a knife, over and over and over again. Wouldn't it be great if we stopped? There's a difference between stabbing yourself with a knife and openly, warmly, compassionately assessing yourself. If you feel like you did something wrong, I'm not saying you shouldn't admit it, but it is better to lovingly accept yourself than to think "I'm no good." In fact the ability to merely see yourself as you are is a wisdom aspect of your mind, so when you notice certain things about yourself, even those you'd rather not accept, you are coming in contact with your own wisdom deity, your own Buddha nature. Or maybe it's better to say your inner wisdom nature is being revealed.