We can help people a great deal by thinking about them positively and developing metta towards them. And sometimes we can help people just by keeping out of their way – or rather by not getting in their way. Sometimes people need space, and we help them most by giving it to them, or at least not taking it from them.

The Bodhisattva, being joyful, spreads confidence and happiness wherever he or she goes. In a sense it is one’s duty to be happy and joyful. One can’t gladden others unless one is glad oneself.

The Enlightened person is like a clear window through which the light of reality shines, through which that light can be seen almost as it is. Or one can say that he or she is like a crystal or diamond concentrating and reflecting that light.

We believe in ourselves in this narrow, limited, egoistic sense, as identified with the body and the lower mind. We are blind to any higher vision, any more ultimate selfhood, any more universal mindor consciousness. This belief in self in this sense is a fetter that has to be broken before we can enter the Stream and break through into a higher, wider dimension of being and consciousness.

Tara is the spiritual daughter of Avalokitesvara. She is usually either white or green in colour, and according to another beautiful legend she was born from the tears of Avalokitesvara as he wept over the sorrows of existence. In the midst of a great pool of his tears there appeared a white lotus. The lotus opened, and there was Tara , the very essence, indeed the quintessence, of compassion.

Love where there is no reason to love