The Buddha encouraged people to "know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome and wrong. And when you do, then give them up. And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them."The message is always to examine and see for yourself. When you see for yourself what is true-and that's really the only way that you can genuinely know anything-then embrace it. Until then, just suspend judgment and criticism.

Furthermore, when we speak about people based on what we think, feel, or hope rather than what we observe and experience, we deprive them of their humanity. We have replaced what they are, in all their fluid validity, with our own crystallized ideas, opinions, beliefs.

What makes human life--which is inseparable from this moment--so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again.

This will never come again

As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of tolerance. We become patient, with no sense of putting up with anything. We become compassionate, with no sense of separation. And we become wise, with no sense of having to straighten anyone out.

Throughout most of our lives, we're so caught up in this and that, rushing through these wonderful distractions and stages, that we don't (or can't) take the time to settle into the mellow light that's always there and to let freshness suffuse the frame. Thus we miss this simple matter of just doing and living fully.

When we fancy ourselves to be a particular thing with a name, we see ourselves as we would a cork in a stream. What we do not realize is that there is only stream. What we fancy as particular is, from the first, only movement, change and flow.

[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.

[T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.