Integrity and Positive Concern

1  Personal integrity

2 Positive concern is natural

3 Awareness of importance is personal

4 Happiness, unhappiness and concern with problems

5 Distinguishing positive ideas from negative

6 Caution, criticism

7 Regret, discretion

8 Inherent, natural and wholesome ideas

9 Beliefs, metaphors and symbols

10 An example of personal belief

11 Opinions, demands, conventions

12 Persuasion, suggestion, influence

13 Conversation, courtesy

14 Reading and streaming media

15 Conversing by telephone

16 Hourly schedule, motor travel

17 Organized sports, conforming

18 Friendship and association

19 Traditions of learning integrity

20 Your important ideas

21 Personal memories

22 Feelings and thoughts

About the author

1 Personal integrity

1  Integrity and positive concern are natural qualities of your mind.

Your personal integrity is easy for you to understand and improve.

Your mind and relative freedom from confusion and suffering become visible whenever you're being the best person that you can be.

2 You need to intend to be the best person that you can be to be integrated and positive.

Being your best as you understand it and as well as you can is good enough.

Your sincere intention to be the best person that you can be is a reliable standard to help you to decide whether an idea is important to you or not.

3 You need to know that you share the same qualities and feelings with all other people.

Maintain the best relationships that you can with some people who intend to be the best person that they can be as you experience them.

You don’t need to depend on another person or association to maintain your integrity and positive concern.

2 Positive concern is natural

1 Positive concern is a natural quality and expression of the inherently pure and positive potential of your mind and supports your integrity.

Positive concern develops naturally from being the best person that you can be.

If you don't know that positive concern is a natural quality and expression of your mind then you might think that you need to learn how to be positive from another person or society.

Positive concern that you learn by participating in conventional relationships with other people sometimes will and sometimes will not help to maintain your integrity.

2 You learn integrity and positive concern naturally through your awareness, understanding and conduct that's respectful and sensitive to your family, neighbors, friends and other people. Your neighbors can include some of the people who live near to where you live, and some who attend classes where you attend classes, or who work where you work, or who you meet when you commute, or shop or enjoy recreation or entertainment.

You need to understand the ideas, beliefs and conventions that your family, neighbors and friends value as important and follow to some degrees.

You need to understand the meanings of the words and other expressions of integrity and positive concern that you hear, see and consider to become progressively more aware of your integrity in all of your thought and expression.

If you don't understand the ideas, beliefs and conventions that your family, neighbors and friends value as important you might misunderstand, dislike and mistrust many values and good perspectives that those people express that could help to illuminate your understanding and relationships.

3 Some beliefs and conventions of your family and society might confuse and conflict with your intention to be the best person that you can be. The understanding, kindness and benefit that you experience within your family and society might sometimes be ignored and overruled.

If sincerity and good intentions are dismissed as unimportant or harmful by some of your family or society you might reserve the right to choose sometimes to dismiss sincerity and good intentions as unimportant or harmful.

At the times when you don't remember or intend to be the best person that you can be, influential opinions and conventions of conduct can distract your awareness of the conduct of your mind and your sense of what's positive.

4 Your most of all habitual or conventional thinking is not aware of the conduct of your mind and cannot make reliably positive choices about your feelings, thoughts, memories or relationships with other people.

  Don't value any ideas, words or other expressions as reliably helpful for maintaining your integrity and positive concern based only on the ideas, words or expressions being eloquent or familiar.

You need to evaluate each idea that you think to keep your mind open to new ideas and experiences. When you become aware that you have not evaluated and integrated a subject with your most important ideas, or dismissed the subject from your thinking, then you should decide what you think about the subject as well as you understand it at the present time. Your decisions won’t be disapproved by other people if you don’t express your thinking carelessly.

Even when you’re aware that you don’t understand a subject well you need to integrate or dismiss each word or idea that you think.

Maintaining doubt or skepticism or postponing your decision about any contradictory ideas maintained in conflict in your thinking can result in experiencing a non-integrated mind.

3 Awareness of importance is personal

1 Awareness of importance is personal. Even when you hear or read what another person spoke or expressed by another means, your awareness of the importance of an idea is personal.

Everyone is aware and understands things individually, more or less, to different degrees. Or does not perceive or understand a particular subject clearly. Or does not understand that subject or idea at all.

Your awareness is your personal experience of reality.

2 You experience reality and importance when you're at peace, in peace, free from anxiety or distractions, and when you’re calmly aware of any thing or event, and when you compose your mind, breath and body. Being in peace and harmony allows your mind, feelings and body to be natural and to sense what's positive.

You need to be in peace and harmony enough to maintain your personal well-being and sense of what's positive.

3 You experience reality and importance also when you're aware of the qualities and feelings that you share with other people. When you're grateful to another person for their kindness, and when you respect another person for the benefit that they contribute to other people, and when you share friendship with another person. And when you pity another person's need or suffering and help them if you can.

You need to be aware of the qualities and feelings that you share with other people enough to appreciate their well-being, and to cooperate with them and to be reliably beneficial to them.

4 You experience reality and importance when you hear or consider important ideas at the times when you intend to be the best person that you can be.

Sometimes you hear or consider ideas when your sincerity or awareness is impeded or obscured. If you hear or consider an idea when you’re careless or distracted you might not know whether the idea is important to you personally or not.

When you’re not being the best person that you can be nearly any idea might seem to be important. Then you might think that you need to learn limitless ideas.

5 Every understanding and experience of integrity and positive concern turns your mind toward valuing and improving your integrity and positive concern.

You don't need to know more than you already know to be the best person that you can be at the present time. Being obliged to learn something that another person thinks that you need to learn disregards that you’re inherently aware and able to decide what subjects are important to you.

Any of the ideas and conventions that you have already learned might contribute to your integrity and your sense of what’s positive or might not.

6 Hope and confidence in your own mind is inherent and personal. Your awareness of your best thinking and priorities is internal.

  Another person can see only your external appearance and hear the words that you say. Your intention to be the best person that you can be cannot be perceived by another person. Another person cannot know whether you're being as integrated and positive as you can be at the present time or not.

The apparent or reputed qualities or power of another person cannot affect or overrule your emotions or thinking. Don’t be attracted or persuaded to fear.

7  Don't join or reinforce a convention of following or conforming to another person or association to maintaining or improving your integrity. Although you might depend on or cooperate with another person or association for your well-being sometimes, don't depend on or conform to another person or association to maintain your integrity and positive concern.

Anything that you experience most of all in your relationship with another person or association is not reliably beneficial for maintaining your integrity and positive concern. If you rely on receiving help from another person or association to maintain your integrity that will distract your awareness of the conduct of your own mind and you might not be able to maintain your integrity.

If you depend unnecessarily on another person or association you might become preoccupied with imagining what other people might be thinking.

8 When you intend to be the best person that you can be you can evaluate new ideas and view your experience more clearly. When you’re being the best person that you can be you can discern whether an idea is important to you or relatively not important.

You can become more aware of what's important as you continue to be the best person that you can be and maintain your awareness of what's important as well as you can.

4 Happiness, unhappiness and concern with problems

1 Happiness is a natural quality and resource of everyone's mind and best thinking. Happiness and freedom from confusion and suffering are an outcome of the inherent, natural and positive qualities and actions of your mind, speech and body.

Unhappiness and suffering are an outcome of negative and obscuring actions of your mind, speech and body.

  Within conditions of freedom from physical suffering the main cause of unhappiness is holding negative or unimportant thoughts in your mind or thinking.

2 Happiness arises naturally when you're in peace and harmony and when you're aware of the common good and as an effect of being the best person that you can be and doing positive actions of your mind, speech and body.

The happiness that you experience when you're in peace and harmony is a natural experience of the good that you inherently are and that you can experience more thoroughly.

The happiness that you experience when you're kind and compassionate is also a natural experience of the good that you inherently are and that you can mature.

The happiness that you experience when you prioritize your most important ideas is a natural experience of the good that you inherently are and a source of confidence in your potential to become free from confusion and suffering.

  You'll be happy within most of your personal experiences and relationships with other people when you maintain awareness of your best vision and positive concerns and you'll experience less intense or prolonged unhappiness when you avoid doing negative actions.

3 Your feelings and understanding are experienced personally, in your mind. Your personal happiness is the subject of the word happiness when the word is used in this text except when the word refers specifically to other people’s happiness.

  Happiness and unhappiness feel or appear in the ways that they're experienced in each individual person's feelings and thought.

There's no shared awareness or common knowledge of anyone's feelings or thought by another person.

4 Any of your speech or bodily actions might or might not involve your relationship with another person.

Don't intentionally say or express by any other means anything that might cause unhappiness, confusion or suffering to anyone, neither to yourself or another person.

If you carelessly or casually influence another person, they might become confused and react emotionally or discursively to the condition that you caused.

5 You cannot reliably communicate your happiness or well-being to another person. Don't expect to be able to describe your happiness or well-being in words or other expressions that reliably communicate your experience to another person.

You don't need to think that you cannot be happy and well, or that you’re not aware of your own feelings and thinking, because you cannot describe your happiness in words or other expressions that are impressive or interesting to another person.

6 Your innate, natural and wholesome experiences are most often accompanied by happiness and well-being and followed by happiness and well-being. Your happiness and well-being can help to illuminate your awareness and sense of what's positive.

Your awareness and sense of what's positive is always accompanied by hope. Hope is personal vision of your inherent limitless value and potential.

Don’t think much about a convention that disapproves of being calm, kind or confident. Don’t be dissuaded from being calm, kind and confident, as you understand or experience them.

7 The following is a traditional description of "The Nature of Mind:

  "The mind has three qualities. These three qualities together make up the mind.

"The first of these three natures of the mind is that its essence is empty. It's empty, just like space. There's no form; there's no shape; there's no colour. It's just completely empty. This is the first of the three natures of the mind.

"And then this empty essence also has the nature of clarity. When it says clarity, it doesn't mean light rays or moon beams, or something like that. Like in this building we have empty space, but in the space there is clarity. So we're able to see and perceive what there is in this room. So there is this clarity present. The clarity in, for example, in this room, that comes due to the sun or due to the electric lights, through interdependence with that. The mind doesn't need that kind of extra power. The mind is just, naturally has this nature of clarity. For example, with this clarity, it means that though we have now, we've arrived in this room and we're sitting here, if we think of America, or India, or some country, then this can appear very clearly to our mind. This is the clarity of the mind.

"What else one needs to have for there to be mind, for it to be mind, is unimpeded, unobstructed awareness. So that one is able to perceive and understand whatever there is in the world. One can see that, well this is the sky, and this is the ground. This is this colour, and this is that colour, and so on. So one is able to be aware or to understand anything. There's this unimpeded awareness or knowledge.

"So that one has this essence of emptiness, and a nature of clarity, and an outer aspect or form of this unimpeded, unobstructed awareness. And so these three, when one has these three together, this is what one attaches the name mind to. This is what one calls a mind." Khyabje Kalu Rinpoche.

8  Everyone experiences unhappiness and suffering, sometimes. Even when you maintain your integrity and positive concern as well as you can, you'll still be subject to some latent and habitual emotionality and discursive thinking and you'll experience unhappiness, confusion and suffering, sometimes.

Unhappiness can also arise in your relationships with other people and in some environments and events.

It's not beneficial for maintaining or improving your integrity to occupy much of your thinking with suppositions about how your might be happy if some conditions were different.

9 Happiness does not occur reliably as an effect of seeking happy experiences. You cannot reasonably expect to be happy just by wishing to be happy or by any efforts to become happy.

  Don't expect that feelings of happiness, satisfaction or fulfilled expectations will follow quickly from maintaining your integrity and positive concern.

  Some of your experiences won't be easy or pleasant, even when you have intended to maintain your integrity and positive concern for a long time.

10 You cannot reasonably expect to cause another person to be happy, although you can always wish that they be happy.

To describe the cause of happiness briefly in terms of the conduct that can improve it, the cause of happiness is being the best person that you can be, as you understand it and as well as you can.

You cannot reasonably expect to cause another person to be the best person that they can be.

11  Happiness and unhappiness are not always caused by recent influential actions of your mind, speech or body, nor caused by knowable aspects of the relationships that you're experiencing at the present time.

  Your thoughts, emotional tendencies and physical characteristics, and aspects of your relationships and conditions, can be thought to be effects of your previous actions of mind, speech and body and your present vision and perspective. These can be thought to have developed during previous time, during which causes and conditions eventually brought together the experiences that you are familiar with now. This process is the way cause and effect work in the time that you can observe in daily life, and this perspective clears your attention to make the best of all of your experiences.

12 Some traditions propose the thought that happy and fortunate experiences will follow as a result of your awareness and positive actions of mind, speech and body, and that happy and positive potentials will continue through the experience of dying and living again, and through this process you can progress to a state of freedom from confusion and suffering.

The traditions propose the related thought that unhappy and unfortunate experiences will follow as a result of ignorance and doing negative actions of mind, speech and body, and that unhappy and negative potentials will continue through the experience of dying and living again, until they're purified by your awareness and positive actions of mind, speech and body.

Your ordinary or conventional thinking might not accommodate those thoughts, although they contribute good perspectives to your ultimate concerns.

If you don't value those thoughts personally, you might not have sufficient motivation to be the best person that you can be sometimes, and to avoid negative thought, speech and actions.

13 Whatever happens, when you cannot understand your experience or when you cannot see far or deeply into something, so that what's happening or some concern is obstructing and overwhelming your well-being, choose the most meaningful and positive possibilities that you can see.

Your intention to be the best person that you can be is a reliable standard to maintain your integrity and positive concern, equally in circumstances of happiness and well-being and in circumstances of confusion and suffering.

Your intention to be positive can illuminate your memories, emotions and thinking and relationships with other people to some degrees.

14 Don't allow unhappiness or concern with a problem to become the subject of most of your thinking. You don't need to devote most of your attention to your own or another person's problem, except in conditions of emergency.

The word problem, when it’s used in this text, refers to an idea that persistently troubles your thinking, or a concern that interferes with your freedom to apply your attention to a subject that you choose. None of the positive or creative meanings of the word problem are intended when the word is used in this text.

Don’t assume that you're maintaining positive concern when you're unhappy or concerned with a problem. Don't think fatalistically that you're obliged to be subject to unhappiness or a problem. Don't imagine that you'll see light at the end of a supposed tunnel, that a dawn of understanding and liberation of your mind will occur when you're not being the best person that you can be.

15 Unhappiness, anxiety or stress don't liberate anyone, nor do they help anyone to value or even to be aware of other people.

You cannot learn conduct leading to happiness and well-being from experiencing unhappiness or a problem, nor from preoccupation with or mentally entertaining the supposed permanence of a problem or suffering.

16 Don't think that unhappiness or a problem is somehow solid. The idea that your feelings, thoughts or mind are solid, material, or that there could be any unchangeable problem or suffering does not agree with your experience of the changing nature of your feelings and thinking.

  Unhappiness or concern with a problem as if it were a material condition won't help your thinking to be positive nor even suggest that you can think positively.

17 Don't cling to or dwell on an idea or concern that you view as most of all a problem, as you experience it, even though you think that you’ll transform it somehow to be positive.

At the times when you cannot solve, dismiss or dispel a problem enough to restore some peace of mind and freedom to apply your attention to a subject that you choose, don't hold the problem in your mind or thinking for the purpose of becoming free from it, except in conditions of emergency.

  Don't do anything because you think that you cannot detach your emotions or thinking from that impulse or experience. Don't follow a subject with the motivation to be free from being influenced or affected by it. When you follow or pursue a subject or concern you’ll unavoidably be influenced and affected by it.

18   If you concentrate most of your attention on a problem, you might obscure or obstruct your access to the clarity and illuminating potential of your mind.

When you cannot integrate an idea into the context of your values and important thinking, or if a concern interferes with your freedom to apply your attention to a subject that you choose, you can reasonably consider that the idea or concern is distracting from your values and important thinking.

If you don’t apply your attention to removing the confusion and suffering that you perceive in your mind or thinking, the confusion and suffering might continue for a long time and appear endless. You might descend into states of deeper suffering due to the worsening effects of frustration and anger.

19 When you're unhappy or concerned with a problem, you can take refuge in awareness of your inherent worth and positive potential. Remember that your essential nature is absolutely good and that you can always improve.

  This does not mean that you can reasonably or safely ignore a problem, but you can intend to be the best person that you can be about that subject.

Then your unhappiness and problems will gradually appear less solid or permanent and you’ll have better understanding and perspectives regarding all of your experience.

Summary

20 Happiness is a natural quality and resource of everyone's mind and best thinking. The cause of happiness is being the best person that you can be as you understand it and as well as you can.

  Within conditions of freedom from physical suffering the main cause of unhappiness is holding negative or unimportant thoughts in your mind. If you hold thoughts of malice you’ll suffer anxiety. If you work for what you don’t need you won’t feel secure or content. If you think that speaking the truth doesn’t matter you won’t be confident that your good decisions improve everything.

Hope is personal vision of your inherent good and positive potential. Remember your inherent good and best thinking as well as you can.

Don’t add to the method that you practice to experience your best vision. Don’t expect to describe your important thinking to someone who you don’t know.

5 Distinguishing positive ideas from negative

1 It’s important to learn about the results of doing positive actions of your mind, speech and body and the results of doing negative actions, or you might hold mistaken views about what the results of doing positive actions will be and what the results of doing negative actions will be.

If you hold mistaken views about the eventual effects of doing positive or negative actions you might not continue to do some positive actions that you already do, and you might not do much that's significantly beneficial because you don't know any better, or you might do some negative actions because you don't care.

2 Positive actions cause positive effects. The word positive in this text means virtuous and beneficial.

  Negative actions cause negative effects. The word negative in this text means ignorant and harmful.

Positive actions don’t ever cause negative effects.

Negative actions don’t ever cause positive effects.

3 You can concern your attention with negativity beneficially only regarding your own thought, speech or bodily action. If you concern your attention much with another person's negative conduct or appearance that will distract your awareness of the conduct of your own mind and your sense of what's positive.

Your own character and behavior include some faults and failings when you evaluate your conduct by the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you value as important. You accidentally ignore or knowingly disregard being the best person that you can be sometimes.

Additionally, conforming to scheduled routines, dependence on technology and material reasons for interacting with other people most of the time can distract you from being aware of the conduct of your mind. You can become insensitive to the common good that you share with other people.

4 All of your thinking and experience can be evaluated by the same standard of awareness of your inherent, natural and wholesome qualities and your sense of what's positive.

Don't think, speak or act bodily regarding any subject or concern below the standards of the thoughts that turn your mind toward integrity and positive concern.

You'd be prudent to evaluate your negative thought, speech and bodily actions, as you need to think about your conduct sometimes, only by the liberating perspectives that are described in the thoughts that turn your mind toward integrity and positive concern.

5 Imagining what another person might think about your negative action can distract you from recognizing and ceasing from doing a negative action and restoring your integrity and positive concern.

You won't reliably recognize and cease from doing a negative action by imagining what another person or some people might think about your action or appearance. Although another person or some people might disapprove and might attempt to interfere with your speech or other expression that they don’t like, imagining what another person might think about your action or appearance won't reliably help you to recognize and cease from doing a negative action.

When you maintain the most important rules of conduct that you have already learned, the precepts that you observe will most often keep you from erring far from integrated conduct and will help you to remember how your integrity can be restored.

6 You need to consider your negative actions in the context of your inherent limitless value and positive potential.

Negative thought, speech and bodily actions have arisen from beginingless time within the ultimately pure state of your mind. And negative thoughts will continue to arise in your mind and be expressed and experienced until they diminish and ultimately cease as they’re irradiated and purified by your inherent indestructible value and your positive thought, speech and bodily actions.

Your natural wish to be happy and your good intentions are an outcome and proof that you’re inherently good and that you can always improve.

7 Consider your negative actions also in the context of your good intentions and habits. When you're devoted to maintaining your integrity, your thinking is occupied most often with being the best person that you can be. You don't occupy most of your time in negative or casual thought, speech or bodily actions.

  When you're devoted to being the best person that you can be, the intensity of negative thinking that you do that can worsen your negative expression is most often small.

  And the negative actions that you do can be ceased more easily in your mind, speech and bodily conduct than they could be ceased if the negative actions were done in the context of most of all casual thought, speech and bodily actions.

8 Anyone does a negative action only because of being in a condition of ignorance.

  No one does a negative action with clear vision and foresight. No one would do a negative action if they knew that they will unavoidably experience confusion and suffering at a later time as a result of doing the negative action.

  You might sometimes view your experience from the condition and outlook of a powerfully influential emotion or opinion. You might not care sometimes to be the best person that you can be or to be kind.

9 Your negative actions or problems are not a sign of the sincerity -or not of your intention to be the best person that you can be, at the times when you turn your mind toward integrity and positive concern.

  Your negative actions or problems are not a sign of your capability -or not to devote your mind, speech and body to thoroughly beneficial concerns.

  Your negative actions or problems are not a sign of the benefit -or not of your actions to improve your integrity at the times when you devote your mind, speech and body to improving your integrity.

10 Negative thought, speech and bodily actions are only harmful.

  There's no beneficial or controllable negative thinking or expression.

  “The only virtue of negativity is that the negativity can be ceased.” Khyabje Kalu Rinpoche

11  You can intend to cease all the negative thought, speech and bodily actions that you recognize in your conduct.

  There's no allowable or safe interval of time between -becoming aware that you're doing a negative action and ceasing from doing it.

  Cease from doing any negative action that you recognize easily that you're doing and that you can cease easily from doing.

  Cease from doing all of the negative actions that you recognize easily that you're doing and that you can cease easily from doing.

12 Don't intentionally picture in your imagination the description of an action that you have already learned that you should not do.

That something might be imaginable or thinkable is not a sufficient reason to hold that thought in your mind or thinking nor to express it through your speech or through an action of your body.

Carelessly imagining exceptional stories can result in you alternating valuing your integrity and positive concern sometimes and disregarding your integrity and positive concern sometimes.

13  Don't be attentive to thoughts, words or appearances that seem negative to you. You don't need to and you should not occupy your thinking much with any concern that appears to contradict or interfere with your awareness of the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you value and your sense of the common good that you share with other people.

Don’t be attracted or persuaded to any concern that confuses your sense of right from wrong.

Your best understanding of any subject can be experienced when you renounce being concerned with negative or casual views about the subject.

14 The experience of a thought arising in your mind or thinking should be distinguished from intending to hold or reinforce that thought in your mind or expressing it through your speech or bodily action.

Anything that you have already experienced, and anything that you have ever heard about, might possibly arise as a thought in your mind. That happens naturally to everyone a lot of the time. You cannot stop that from happening and it doesn't matter. You can ignore it.

When you don't hold or reinforce a thought, or express it through your speech or bodily action, that you thought it doesn't matter.

15 It’s not necessary or beneficial to hold negative feelings or thoughts, nor to express negative feelings or ideas to another person.

If you hold or express negative feelings or ideas you'll reinforce your negative thoughts and concerns. That will obscure your awareness of your well-being and your sense of what's positive and will interfere with all of your relationships.

16 Don't do any action of your mind, speech or body that you know you should not do, not even if you can easily think, or say or do the action.

Don't take a chance in doing anything that might cause harm to you or to another person, not even in apparently safe or familiar circumstances.

  The only negative actions that you do should be unconscious ones, never careless or calculated risks.

17  Don't knowingly approach the perimeters of how far you think that you can dare to do a negative action, before the effects become too hazardous for you to tolerate.

Don't suppose that you can safely or controllably continue to do a negative action, and remain within a safe perimeter of not -unknowingly or uncontrollably doing more negative actions of your mind, speech and body.

If you knowingly approach the perimeters of how far you think that you can dare to do a negative action, you might forget your most important values and might lose your way.

18 Doing any negative action of your mind, speech or body can obscure or distract your awareness of the conduct of your mind and your sense of what's positive.

  Don't underestimate the immediate and potential harm to you or to another person that might be the result of doing any negative action, however unimportant or small the negative action might appear to you or might appear to another person.

Any negative action that you do might possibly contribute to you doing further negative actions, or might contribute to another person doing a negative action.

19  Even though you might think that a negative action is subtle, don't think that it's not a negative action, or not harmful.

Conventional distinctions between subtle and coarse should not be mistaken to be value concerned distinctions between positive and negative.

Distinctions between subtle and coarse are most often conventions of familiarity and manners.

20 Don't value an idea as being reliably integrating or positive that can be thought or experienced only in the context of most of all negative or distracting concerns.

Regarding a positive subject that's accompanied by a negative subject, as you're experiencing or thinking about them, the positive subject should be distinguished and separated from the negative –in your mind or thinking, or the negative might appear to derive importance from association with the positive.

When you're thinking about both positive and negative subjects, you cannot be certain that the positive will reliably illuminate your understanding of the negative. The negative might interfere with, diminish or overrule the intended benefit of comparing the positive and negative.

21 A positive subject should not be carelessly joined to a negative subject, just because the positive can be associated with the negative conventionally or casually.

Don’t think or talk about a negative subject unless the negative might interfere with a positive concern that you’re considering.

Comparing or contrasting a positive subject with a negative subject unnecessarily can distort your vision of the positive and might impede or obstruct the benefits of the positive.

22 When a positive action is accompanied by a negative action, such as when you help another person but you speak harshly to them, the positive action that you do will cause positive effects and the negative action that you do will cause negative effects.

Positive intention does not cancel or compensate for negative speech or negative physical action, although your positive intention causes positive effects in your personal development.

Your inherent goodness and all of your positive actions reduce the effects of your negative actions, but it’s not possible to know how long the purifying will need to continue.

23 No one has a material accumulation or permanence of negativity, that anyone can beneficially examine to see if it has become smaller, or that anyone can safely inquire into for a theoretical or intellectual acquaintance with it. Don't expect that a negative concern or problem can be reduced or remedied by obtaining some kind of control, possession or grasp of the subject or concern.

You cannot beneficially confront a negative concern or problem. Don't attempt to apply thoughts about integrity and positive concern to a negative concern or problem, as if someone or something were able to confront and resist a negative concern or problem.

  Don't expect that integrity and positive concern can be fashioned into a material or conceptual force or power that can be controlled to confront and overcome an imagined solid problem.

24 Whatever you have not done or experienced that you intended to do or wanted to experience, don't do anything that you have already learned that you should not do.

  If you're impatient to obtain a particular benefit or to achieve a particular project, you might develop craving and become exasperated, and you might do negative actions of your thought, speech or body influenced by artificial urgency, spite or unconcern.

  Don't permit yourself to harbor negative thought, or express negative speech or manners, supposing that because you maintain your integrity sometimes and have developed some positive qualities, or because another person approves of your conduct or influence, -that some of your negative thinking or expression is not harmful or is an allowable ornament of your personality. Or that the integrity that you experience sometimes transforms your negative actions to be -not negative.

25   You might become preoccupied with thoughts of negative actions that you remember or heard about and you might imagine negative effects of the actions. A negative thought or concern with apparent negativity might expand to become a large obstacle to your vision of your inherent value and positive potential.

If you don't solve, dismiss or dispel a negative concern or problem as you experience or think about it, by applying your best understanding to the concern, then you might think that the concern or problem needs to be solved, explained or overcome in the terms of another person or convention that contradicts and cancels some of your values and understanding.

You might become subject to another person or convention that explains or controls aspects of your experience that you cannot understand or control.

26 Don't intentionally or knowingly hold or reinforce a negative thought, tendency or habit that you recognize in your mind or thinking. You don't need to allow a negative thought, tendency or habit to remain in your mind or thinking.

Don't expect that merely the passage of time, such as a period of months or years, ensures that a tendency to do a particular negative action won't arise again in your mind and potential conduct. A negative thought, tendency or habit might arise repeatedly and become more influential, if you don't remove a negative thought, tendency or habit that you perceive in your mind or thinking. You might think a negative thought, or speak negatively or do a negative bodily action repeatedly.

The recognition or awareness that your calm, vision or kindness is distracted by habits and effects of your passion, aggression or ignorance, is not sufficient to turn your mind toward integrity while you continue in the negative, distracted or disinterested conduct of your mind or thinking.

27 You don’t need to recognize a negative habit or tendency of your mind, speech or body, for your sincere intention to maintain your integrity and positive concern to progressively remove the habit or tendency from your mind, speech and bodily conduct.

When you cease from doing a particular negative action of your mind, speech or body and you devote your mind, speech and body to maintaining and improving your integrity, then any tendency or potential that remains in your personality to do that negative action again might not hinder maintaining and improving your integrity and positive concern.

28 Don't imagine that you'll immediately enjoy integrated vision and positive perspectives regarding your experience at the moment when you cease from doing a negative action of your mind, speech or body.

  After you have done a negative action of your mind, speech or body, you might experience confusion regarding any subject or concern, and you might not enjoy integrated vision and positive perspectives regarding your experience until some time has passed, until you have restored your best vision and positive perspectives.

  You might need to re-direct your attention repeatedly to view your experience with your best vision and positive perspectives until some time has passed after you have done a negative action.

29 If you want to have more self-control or autonomy to do or experience something positive, or to not do or not experience something negative, reduce your concern with whatever you don’t need to have or don’t need to experience and it will be replaced with improved awareness and confidence.

  Maintaining integrated and positive conduct of your mind, speech and body, as you understand it and as well as you can, is sufficient for you to develop beneficial qualities and relationships and to diminish harmful actions, habits and potentials.

  The result of maintaining your integrity and positive concern will be that your negative thought, speech and bodily actions will gradually diminish and negative experiences will gradually diminish in your relationships with other people. All of your thoughts, expression and experience will become progressively more understandable and beneficial.

6 Caution, criticism

1 Everyone is integrated and positive sometimes. Everyone intends to be the best person that they can be sometimes.

Everyone is aware and positive regarding countless aspects of their feelings, thoughts and relationships with other people much of the time. Everyone understands some other people's feelings and thinking, and communicates reasonably, to some degrees, to obtain what they need and to cooperate with other people and to pursue goals.

No one is ignorant to the extreme of being more impulsive or habitual than aware and resourceful most of the time. No one does most of all negative actions for a long time, because too many things would go wrong.

 Don't maintain a relationship with someone who you think that you need to forgive or tolerate for something that they did or appeared to do or appear to still do now. Don’t ever talk about it.

You should know that someone who appears to be potentially harmful might be harmful. Don't ignore anything that seems obvious to you. Maintain all the appropriate cautions.

While you maintain all the appropriate cautions, maintain awareness of that person's inherent goodness in your own mind and thinking.

2 There’s no beneficial idea that's most of all critical of someone or a group of people, except in conditions of immediate danger.

Don't expect that criticizing something will reliably improve anyone's awareness and sense of what's positive.

Don't intentionally or knowingly hold critical ideas about the speech, action or appearance of someone or a group of people. Similarly, don't think much about what another person or a group of people might think critically about you.

  If you hold critical ideas about someone or a group of people, or if you think much about what another person or group of people might think critically about you, you won't be able to recognize some of your own negative thought, speech and bodily conduct, and you won't be able to recognize some positive feelings and thinking that you share with a person or association that you criticize.

  If you don't dismiss or dispel critical ideas about the speech, action or appearance of someone or a group of people, you might develop a habit or tendency to think critically and angrily, and thoughts of criticism and emotions of anger might be reinforced in your mind.

Your thinking might become preoccupied with criticism and anger against anyone and any group of people, and you might express negative speech and actions uncontrollably. As a result of that conduct you'll become subject to confusion, fears and misfortune.

3 Don’t expect to divine the moral worth or value of everything that you observe or hear about.

You might disrespect someone because of nearly any difference of their conduct or appearance from your customs or preferences. You might doubt or deny that they’re being the best person that they can be or that they’re aware and kind.

There are differences in some of the customs and manners that express values between people in different societies, conditions and times. When you perceive a difference in someone's conduct from your vision of goodness and sense of what's positive, consider that the other person might view their conduct differently from how you view it. A difference from your values or preference that you perceive in the conduct or appearance of another person might be an expression of their values, as they understand or experience it. A contrast or exception to some of your familiar ideas or manners might not be incompatible with your important values.

  You don't need to think much about someone whose conduct appears to differ from your values or manners. Don't think much about someone who expresses criticism of integrity and positive concern as you understand them, or expresses distrust that you intend to be the best person you can be, or expresses criticism of your relatives or friends.

You don't need to maintain a relationship with someone if it hurts your feelings or disagrees with your important thinking, but don't slight or disparage anyone.

7 Regret, discretion

1 Vision does not disturb calm or harmony. Repentance is vision, recognition and regret of one's own error, and is experienced internally.

When you think that something you did was disrespectful and destructive, recognize the gravity of it, even though other actions that you do are good.

Don't think that you interfered with or distracted another person by anything that you felt or thought about them.

Don't apologize to someone for anything that you felt or thought about them that you did not express in your speech or bodily conduct.

Don't talk about the negative feelings or thoughts that you experience sometimes in your mind.

2 When you think that you're interfering with or distracting someone, as they might experience your conduct or influence, stop doing whatever is interfering with or distracting them.

  Then apologize to the person who you interfered with or distracted, if you think that apologizing to them won't cause them more interference or distraction.

  Apologize immediately or as soon as possible, completely, in very few, precise words.

  Express regret positively. Don't repeat negative words or describe negative actions. You can acknowledge that you sincerely regret that you said or expressed something disrespectful or destructive. The person who you express regret to might know what you regret.

  Apologize only to the person who you think you interfered with or distracted. If you interfered with or distracted someone in the sight or hearing of someone else, you'd be prudent to acknowledge the interference or distraction that you caused to anyone who saw or heard it, if you think that acknowledging it to them won't cause more interference or distraction.

  Repentance does not increase or improve by expressing it to anyone. Don't imagine that expressing regret will cancel all of the negative effects.

  After you've apologized for interfering with or distracting someone, don't talk about that subject any more.

3 Don't identify with your reputation for having done a negative action.

  Don't try to modify anyone's reputation in your talking or other expression.

  Don't try to show contrition. If you demonstrate contrition for having done a negative action, anyone who hears about it might become preoccupied with negative thinking.

  Proving repentance is impossible because repentance is internal.

  It’s natural to be saddened by thoughts of a negative action. Don't try to show that you're not saddened by thoughts of a negative action because you'll appear to not care.

4 Maintain discretion regarding anything that you understand or experience as negative.

Don't avoidably describe a negative action, fault or failing. Don't think that anyone could benefit from thinking about a negative action.

  A negative action that’s described will be imagined and might be expressed by anyone who hears about it. Someone hearing an alarming description might react in some way that's potential in their feelings or thinking.

  If you describe a negative action you might become the subject of someone's dislike and anger.

5  Don't intend to hold a negative memory in your mind or thinking. That would interfere with your intention to be the best person you can be.

  You don't need to hold a negative memory in your mind. Concerning thoughts of negative actions done or experienced in the past, you don't need to think much that someone was ignorant and harmful in the past. If you think that a negative action was done or experienced in the past you can acknowledge it and then dismiss thinking about it anymore.

You cannot reliably think positively while you intend to hold the memory of a negative action that anyone did in the past.

You might diminish and lose your freedom from confusion and suffering if you intend to hold a negative memory in your mind.

6 You can relate all of your experience to the thoughts that turn your mind toward integrity and positive concern. Being the best person that you can be and practicing a reliable method to improve your integrity will liberate and enlighten your experience as much as possible and you’ll experience improved calmness and clarity of your mind and thinking.

8 Inherent, natural and wholesome ideas

1 Inherent, natural and wholesome awareness is nurtured and matures within the experience of receiving kindness and care from your family, neighbors and friends and by you intending to be the best person that you can be and learning how to cooperate with other people and help other people. This awareness includes wishes to accomplish simple needs and cautions regarding hazards to your well-being.

You can be aware without there being an idea in your mind. And you can be aware through understanding the meanings of words that describe values that are important to you personally and the positive potentials of your experience.

The ideas that describe inherent, natural and wholesome awareness to you personally are your most valuable ideas.

2 The inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you have already learned in your relationships with your family, neighbors and friends and that you share with some of them now are experienced as good, happy, pleasant by the whole range of your physical senses.

These ideas, wishes and concerns are your best descriptions of reality and importance and your most reliable standards to test the value of all the new ideas and experiences that you encounter.

Every inherent, natural and wholesome idea that you value illuminates many aspects of your understanding and experience.

3 Everyone receives some benefits and learns some of the values and conventions of their culture and society. Everyone meets people who express personal goodness and kindness and there are opportunities to learn good ideas and positive conduct in every family and society.

Everyone is instructed in beneficial conduct by some of their family, neighbors and friends. Everyone follows an education in some beliefs, arts and sciences to learn how other people think and do things and to obtain and experience what they want and to achieve projects and to help other people.

Everyone’s intention to cultivate excellence in any positive concern can illuminate many aspects of their personal experience.

4 Everyone experiences unique causes and conditions and so each individual person is aware of inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns and allows them to illuminate their thinking and expression more or less, to different degrees.

During the early years of their life someone might have been deprived of natural affection and interest in their feelings and thinking in their relationships with their family and other people that nurture and mature awareness of inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns.

Or someone just might not be interested in allowing awareness of inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns to illuminate their thinking and experience much or at all.

So someone might not know any better until they begin to discover inner peace and confidence and more beneficial companions.

5 Everyone’s awareness or understanding and priorities effectively determine the illuminating value—or not—of every idea and experience that they encounter.

Don't attribute a commonly understood meaning to any idea or expression, because even though you might have learned what some people think about a particular idea or expression, you cannot reliably know how anyone other than you personally views, values or experiences that idea or expression.

This does not mean that the meanings of words are so diverse that it's not possible to describe or agree about anything, because you can learn important ideas by hearing and reading words and you can communicate ideas and find mutual understanding and agreement with other people by exchanging words.

It means that whatever you think a word or idea means is the meaning of that word or idea to you and that influences your personal conduct.

6 It's inherent in the limitless potential, natural clarity and unimpeded awareness of the mind itself that you can decide how important an idea is, as you understand or experience it, and that you can disregard an idea that interferes with your awareness of your well-being and sense of what's positive, or appears to disagree with the values that are already important to you.

An idea that interferes with your awareness of your well-being and sense of what's positive is not beneficial to you. Don't value an idea or concern as important to you personally that can confuse or obstruct your awareness of the values that are already important to you.

Don't avoidably rely on or reinforce an idea or concern that you already know can misdirect your thinking to negative or unimportant concerns.

7 During the early years of your life you might have been subject to some insistent education or training that was permitted by a tradition or privilege, or not. You might have been taught to hold particular ideas that hindered loving kindness and intelligence from nurturing and maturing your awareness.

Now that you have become an adult you can disregard other people's ideas and control--without protest.

You can become more aware of what’s important and positive to you personally. You can develop and mature.

8 Don't ignore or disregard the standards of integrity and positive concern that you have already learned, including your family and social conventions of modesty and prudence that help you to maintain and renew your integrity.

You cannot prove your integrity and positive concern by experiencing whatever you want or overcoming the objects of your aversions.

You need to maintain the standards of conduct of your mind, speech and body, and regarding your relationships with other people, that you have already learned that can help you to maintain your integrity between the times when you devote your attention to improving your integrity.

9 If you think that the most important benefit of understanding ideas is that they can help you to obtain some happiness and to achieve material projects, then you might undervalue the benefit of understanding the meanings of the words that you hear and think.

Then you might not benefit much from your ability to understand ideas to improve your awareness and experience.

10 Don't value an idea as important to you personally that seems to belong most of all to another person, or to a particular group of people, as you understand or experience it. If you hold an idea that's most of all another person's idea, as you understand or experience it, you'll unavoidably be affected by it in ways that you cannot understand or control.

An idea can be an aspect of your personal wisdom, as you understand or experience it, however you came to value it originally, even though you might have learned it from another person or a group of people. Your personal resonance with any expression of goodness that you observe or hear about does not need that you be aware or concerned with anything that another person might think about it.

All of the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you value are integrated in their essential good and benefit to you personally, as you understand or experience them.

9 Beliefs, metaphors and symbols

1 Some of the ideas that you value are beliefs, metaphors and symbols. Belief in this text means an idea that was created or developed by a person and that you value as important.

A belief is important to you when it illuminates your awareness to some degree, as you understand or experience it. The value of a belief is experienced in the moment when the belief illuminates your awareness of your inherent qualities and potentials.

A belief that improves your awareness does not need to be supported by any other thought to experience the benefits, and you don't need to describe the benefits.

2 A belief can be represented by a metaphor or symbol.

A metaphor is a word or phrase that someone decided or learned can represent a particular idea that's not communicated in the plain and simple meaning of the word or phrase. To learn the metaphoric meaning of a word or phrase you need to learn the information that describes what the metaphor is intended to mean. An analogy or narrative can express a metaphoric meaning. The educated meaning of a metaphor that you value is a belief.

A symbol is an object, shape or sound that someone decided or learned can represent a particular idea that's not an obvious purpose or meaning of the object, shape or sound. To learn the symbolic meaning of an object, shape or sound you need to learn the information that describes what the symbol is intended to mean. An expression or gesture can express a symbolic meaning. The educated meaning of a symbol that you value is a belief.

3 A belief as the word is used here is an idea that you understand or experience personally, as you individually understand or experience it, however another person or group of people might understand or experience it.

Because it illuminates your awareness a belief is always free, voluntary. Never compelled or obliged.

This educated, personal and positive meaning of the word belief is the intended meaning of the word when it's written in this text. The ideas that all beliefs are mistaken thinking, or that some beliefs are negative and harmful, don’t invalidate the educated, personal and positive meaning of the word belief that’s intended whenever the word is written in this text.

4 Nearly everyone expresses awareness and harmony to some degrees in every society. Some people express exemplary awareness and kindness. All of these positive expressions resonate through all dimensions of their influence.

These positive expressions might be valued as examples of awareness, harmony and kindness.

The same positive expressions might be valued or experienced as beliefs, metaphors and symbols.

5 A belief is ordinarily learned by hearing it described by another person or by reading about it. A belief can also be learned by seeing what it creates and hearing it described in the discussion of arts and religions.

Your education regarding any positive concern is composed of structures of information and reason represented in concepts that can illuminate your awareness in the same way as beliefs. You learn concepts to interact with people who you don't know and to develop and increase your knowledge of arts and sciences and to learn and communicate about a trade or profession.

Don't imagine that anyone is experiencing a belief insincerely or superficially.

6 Everyone learns a belief and values it, more or less, to different degrees. Or does not learn that belief, or does not value it.

Some of your beliefs are created or reinforced by you, gaining importance through your personal experience that you value.

You might value a belief consciously or unconsciously.

7 You might experience beauty sometimes in the same way that belief is described here when the experience is spontaneous and positive.

Your experience of beauty might involve your desires or might be serene.

Although you value your personal experiences of beauty, any famous or popular subject of beauty that’s not illuminating to you might seem to be conventional or not beautiful at all.

8 A belief can be illuminating, informative or distracting.

If you think much about how another person might experience a particular belief, that belief might not be illuminating to you, but might be most of all informative or distracting.

A belief might seem to represent, include or cancel any of the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas and concerns that you already value.

9 Don't avoidably rely on a belief to maintain your vision of goodness and sense of what's positive.

A belief that might illuminate your awareness at the times when you intend to be the best person that you can be, might obscure or obstruct your awareness or might distract or distort your sense of what's positive, at the times when you don't intend to be the best person that you can be or when you’re careless.

When you think or communicate in the words or terms of a belief at the times when you don’t intend to be the best person that you can be or when you’re careless, the illuminating potential of that belief might be overruled by an influential convention or popular ideal.

10 Although your inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns are experienced by the whole range of your physical senses, your beliefs are not experienced by the whole range of your physical senses. So your beliefs are not reliable standards to evaluate the ideas and experiences that you encounter.

If you feature or reinforce a belief regarding an important or urgent concern, you might forget your inherent qualities and potentials and you might think that nothing that you decide can improve your experience. Or you might think that you depend on help from another person.

Or you might identify with authority or power and you might express your views or will at any cost.

11 You don't need to learn more beliefs than you already have to understand important ideas and to mature your inherent qualities and potentials.

You can intend to clarify, distill or sublime the beliefs that you perceive in your mind and thinking into awareness of your inherent, natural and wholesome qualities and potentials as well as you can.

However you value a particular belief, don't use a belief to describe or explain yourself.

10 An example of personal belief

These are some thoughts regarding my childhood visualization of gentle Jesus being near me. I collected these thoughts to remember how I can imagine being in the presence of Jesus.

I imagine that I’m with Jesus beside the lake Galilee when he is teaching his Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are the place in the Bible where I can imagine being with Jesus and learning his teaching. He chose the place to teach the Beatitudes. He taught clearly and simply in the country.

It’s always easy for me to imagine that I see him near, if I want him to be: he’s dressed in white and appears translucent like the reflection of the moon on water.

I believe that he’s the presence of God and at the same time an astonishingly kind human being: he said that I and my father are one, my father loves you like he loves me.

He’s always calm, in peace and harmony: he said my yoke is easy and my burden is light, I will give you rest.

He’s always sensitively attentive to my feelings: he said I have called you my friends.

He’s always aware of me and all others with loving kindness: he said my grace is sufficient for all your needs.

No aspect of history or time interferes with his presence being accessible to me in a moment of simple trust or sincere prayer: he said I will never leave you or forsake you, I will be with you always even until the end of the earth.

No thought of him ruling or suffering is necessary or compatible with being aware of him present with me as my gentle friend. I would not be valuing his teaching in the Beatitudes if I followed the story of his suffering, death and resurrection or the prophesy that he will come again in power. He showed that loving kindness endures suffering and still radiates kindness.

He said that he will be with me through all the experiences of my lifet would not matter if I could not imagine seeing Jesus: he said that a pure heart will see God.

His teaching and example inspire me to be the best person that I can be.

11 Opinions, demands, conventions

1 Some of your ideas are the opinions and demands of other people regarding your conduct or appearance that govern your experience to some degrees.

Opinion and demand, in this text, refer to another person's opinion or demand regarding your conduct or appearance that affects you so that you conform to it: A particular idea that another person or a group of people rule that you should think or that you should not think. Or a particular word that you should say or should not say. Or a particular physical action that you should do or should not do.

An opinion, demand or convention as the words are used here is an idea or experience that you understand or experience personally in the ways that opinion, demand and convention are described here, however another person or a group of people might understand or experience it. The ideas that an opinion or demand might be an expression of another person's knowledge -or ignorance, or that an opinion needs to be accompanied by sufficient evidence to be trustworthy or that a demand needs to be accompanied by sufficient reason to be fair -don't invalidate the meanings of the words opinion, demand and convention when the words are used here.

Most of your opinions and manners are learned by conforming to the ideas and manners of people who you don't know and through the influence of formal education and entertainment.

Everyone is subject to a particular opinion or demand regarding their conduct or appearance, more or less, to different degrees of obligation and conforming. Or is not subject to that particular opinion or demand at all.

Some of your opinions and manners are formed by your own accustomed conduct and habits.

You might hold an opinion or follow a manner or convention consciously or unconsciously.

The opinions and demands regarding your conduct or appearance that are formed by your own accustomed conduct and habits and the opinions and demands that you share with some of your family, neighbors and friends might be beneficial to you personally, or not. The opinions and demands that you conform to that are the ideas and manners of people who you don't know or the influence of formal education and entertainment might overwhelm your awareness of your well-being and sense of what's positive.

2 Some ideas introduce doubt into your awareness of what’s good and important to you, and your trust and confidence in your understanding of your experience.

The idea that you need to be schooled in the most important concerns by people who don't know you, who are not your family, neighbors or friends, disregards how everyone is born and cared for and disrespects your inherent awareness and the positive concerns that you already share with some of your family, neighbors and friends.

You're not obliged to test or challenge your values and important ideas by introducing critical or alternative ideas to compete against your important ideas and priorities. You won't have many important ideas and priorities left if you apply yourself to testing, challenging or discrediting them.

You're not obliged to show and tell all that you feel and think in terms of speech and manners of appearance that are agreeable to everyone who's observing you or who wants to know something about you even though you don't know them. If you're accustomed to applying all that you know to developing a personality that you can express to everyone then you might think that nothing is important that you cannot express agreeably or profitably to other people.

The obliged expression of values or beliefs is rule. Consenting to obey can seem to be free, but even the best aspects of submission are inseparable from force, fear and convention. Fear blinds awareness so that following and conforming can seem to be necessary.

3 There’s an idea that you can improve another person’s well-being reliably by providing for their material benefit or by promoting particular ideas for them to learn. A material or creative aspect of another person’s experience is reported to be lacking and is argued to be necessary or desirable. Don't develop or reinforce an idea that someone would benefit by receiving help from another person, based most of all on blame or expectation regarding someone’s conduct or appearance.

Naturally parents and relatives provide all that they think their children need physically and need to learn, as well as they can. You cannot provide for the material or learning needs of more people than your own family unless you have more wealth or influence than most other people. People who have wealth or influence most often provide benefit to many other people.

Being subject to another person’s influence or following another person’s ideas don’t reliably improve any adult person’s well-being, except in some kinds of emergencies. Everyone’s experience is primarily an outcome of the actions of each person’s own mind, speech and body. Your pure and positive outlook and actions are your well-being.

The idea that you can improve another person’s well-being reliably by providing material benefit or by promoting particular ideas can overrule your awareness and thinking and can justify that you disregard the awareness and feelings of other people.

4 Persuasive education and broadcast technology amplify some ideas and brand the meaning of some of the words that you hear. You might imagine that some people own the meaning of some of the words that you think. Don’t invest importance in an elaborate narrative that’s designed to replace inherent, natural and wholesome ideas and experience with some exaggerated concerns and a plan.

Recorded history, literature, arts and entertainment are commonly misused to describe some people and manners of conduct critically or carelessly. Some people, governments, schools and media devote much effort and resources to describe some people destructively. Ignorant, mean and hurtful ideas are commonly expressed about some people and manners of conduct or appearance. Some people are publicised as an example of permanent bad character and potential harm to all other people, although no one like that really exists.

Conventions of courtesy and control can forbid that someone express words or ideas that another person does not want to hear.

Some ideas and projects are promoted and expressing disinterest in them is disapproved or forbidden in every society. You don't need to think much about that. You might suppose that there are good reasons why particular ideas are promoted and why expressing disinterest in them is not allowed. You might imagine that the people who promote ideas and don't allow expressions of disinterest in them, share inherent, natural and wholesome ideas and experiences with some of their family, neighbors and friends, even though you don't know them.

5 Holding other people’s ideas in your mind or thinking by your consent or submission -or by resisting them can perpetuate your subjection to ideas that originated in other people's thinking and that disregard your well-being.

You might forget that the ideas that are promoted are other people's ideas. You might consent or submit to follow some ideas or manners of conduct that are promoted. Or you might resist that you're not allowed to disagree with or disregard other people's ideas. It won't help to feature a history of those ideas and their effects that you think were harmful in the past and are harmful now. You might become preoccupied with judgment.

Thinking about anyone or any manner of conduct or appearance carelessly or too much, can obscure or obstruct your awareness of your inherent, natural and wholesome qualities and positive potential.

You can diminish the influence of other people’s ideas that you hold in your mind or thinking. You’ll need to diminish following unnecessary news, commercial entertainment and fashion motivated shopping.

6 Don't avoidably engage in an important or urgent concern conventionally -or critically. Conventionally means following a demanded code of thought or expression. Critically means featuring a negative aspect.

Regarding your interests, education and entertainment, you'll experience diminishing awareness and control of your well-being and sense of what's positive if you disregard your integrity and positive concern even temporarily. If you follow stories that describe negative conduct or events without pity for all who appeared negative and for all who suffered you'll reinforce negative thinking even though you don't mean to.

You need to learn new ideas and procedures continually when you live in a changing society. Maintain awareness of your important thinking and priorities as well as you can when you devote your attention to learning or managing a material or abstract concern.

No material or abstract concern is anyone's most important thinking or priority, except in an emergency. And when you need to work for what you need. And when you’re positively concerned with learning and developing science and technology. And when you use proven methods and machinery and conform to a schedule.

  Don't consent or submit to art or performance that demands your attention or disregards your feelings, as you experience it. Fiction, movies and edited media combine provocative and suggestive ideas with special effects that might overwhelm your feelings and awareness.

7 You might sometimes be overwhelmed by more information than you can integrate into the field of what you already understand, or than you can disregard or set aside. You might experience an imagined atmosphere of proposed beliefs, opinions and demands regarding your conduct and appearance that you're accustomed to accept as unavoidable.

You might be confident that you can understand your experience, whenever you intend to understand your experience. You might be able to find integrating and positive perspectives regarding your experience most of the time, when you intend to understand your experience. And you might be confident that some of the people who you know can help you to understand your experience, if you ask them for guidance or advice.

You might none the less spend long intervals of time relatively unaware of your important ideas and priorities. At the times when you're thinking most of all conventionally or casually, you might conform your conduct and appearance to the opinions and demands of people who you don't know and the influence of movies and social media or that you made up.

12 Persuasion, suggestion, influence

1 An idea that’s a product of persuasion might be formed by joining a positive idea with a negative idea, expecting that adding the negative idea will help to communicate an intended meaning or to achieve an intended purpose.

Persuasion might suggest that something resembles another thing and that similarity is enough reason that two things can be viewed as the same. Or persuasion might promote a project by telling a story of positive and negative ideas woven together with information from history, literature and entertainment. Persuasion might brand a word or concern as the property of a particular person or association.

Persuasion can be expressed in words or manners or projected in something created or made.

2 You don’t need to wonder for a long time whether an idea is persuasion or if the negative that you perceive is your own ignorance or misunderstanding.

You can dismiss or dispel the negative part of an idea immediately. A negative idea is not necessary or helpful to understand or experience good.

All of the authentic and positive potentials of an idea endure whenever you dismiss or dispel the negative aspects of the idea.

3 An idea that’s a product of persuasion can be mistaken for inherent, natural and wholesome awareness, but it doesn’t help to understand new ideas and experiences like awareness does, and it obstructs or obscures awareness.

An idea that’s a product of persuasion can be mistaken for a belief, but you cannot reflect, distill or contemplate it so that it will become understanding like a belief can become. An idea that’s a product of persuasion might include beliefs, metaphors and symbols, but the illuminating potentials of a belief are not reliably experienced in persuasion.

An idea that’s a product of persuasion can be mistaken for an opinion, but you cannot describe it precisely enough to examine or discuss it, and improve or dismiss it, like you can with an opinion, demand or convention. An idea that’s a product of persuasion might affirm -or resist any ideas and their implications.

4 Ideas that are products of persuasion can influence your thinking, speech and conduct in ways that you cannot understand or control.

Although you might be aware that an idea that’s a product of persuasion is not reliable when you consider it, when the idea is repeated often in your hearing and experience you might become accustomed to tolerating it.

The multiplying of persuasion in broadcast news, entertainment and casual conversation has resulted in a majority of people developing habits of thinking and relating to other people in the words and manners of persuasion.

5 Ideas that are products of persuasion can obscure or obstruct your awareness and confuse and replace your beliefs and familiar conventions when you’re overwhelmed by diverse ideas that you don’t prioritize or disregard.

Compelling and troubling ideas and emotions that are products of persuasion can accumulate in your experience and perception.

Your intention to be the best person that you can be and the values that you share with some of your family, neighbors and friends help to keep you from being influenced by persuasion.

13 Conversation, courtesy

1 You can usually understand the meanings of the words that you hear when you converse with another person in a language that you understand. And you can ask the other person to clarify an idea that they expressed. When you can ask another person to clarify the meaning of something that they said and they will try to clarify it, that exchange of ideas with another person is a conversation.

When you’re listening to another person talking but you cannot ask them to clarify the meaning of something that they said, then you're not engaged in a conversation with the other person, you're listening.

2 The plain meaning of a word is always the most important meaning of the word. All of the additional meanings of a word are relevant to some degrees, or not.

Intend that primarily the plain meaning of every word that you hear and consider will influence your thinking and expression.

You can sometimes diminish your attention to the precise meanings of words in poetry and music and enjoy the range of their suggested meanings and the influence of their rhythms and melodies personally.

Then you need to trust that their influence in your feelings and thinking won’t cause you to experience confusion or suffering.

3 Being casual or unconcerned does not allow you to disregard the manners of courtesy that are relevant to you at the present time.

You might need to exchange greetings and polite remarks, sometimes, to signal that you're reasonable and cooperative and the exchange can be positive when you engage in it with sincerity and self-restraint.

You might hope to appear that you’re good and it's worth your best efforts to be reasonable all of the time but you cannot imagine what another person might feel or think about how you appear to them.

  Every word that you say and everything that you seem to express can be perceived in ways that you cannot imagine by someone who does not know you well. Whatever another person thinks that you mean can be thought about you.

4 You should know that you’re not obliged to talk about any particular subject or idea.

Personal expression is always a personal choice.

When you converse with more than one person at the same time the ideas that you try to describe to everyone might not be understandable to anyone and your manner might not be agreeable.

Don't talk much about any subject.

5 You'll miss many of the benefits of conversation if you disregard your own best manners of sincere and modest courtesy.

Respect everyone and be kind because everyone is inherently good and has limitless positive potential. Your respect for someone resonates with their awareness and self-respect and contributes to their happiness.

Words and manners of courtesy that are not necessary distract and confuse communication.

Conventions of courtesy don't reliably allow important ideas to be clearly and precisely discussed. Don't introduce or discuss an important subject when manners of courtesy must be observed. If you introduce an important subject in circumstances when another person is not able to consider the subject appropriately, you might appear to be desperate. Merely mentioning a controversial subject can be mistaken to indicate that you support it -or condemn it.

If an important or urgent subject is introduced to you by someone who you don't know then respond with your best understanding and humility. Your best response might not be understandable and might appear negative.

6 You can aspire to diminish and eventually not express idle or meaningless talk, or lying, criticizing or harsh speech:

If you hear much news or conversation, or read more than you can use or set aside, then any words that you hear and ideas that you think might seem to not mean anything.

Nearly any idea can seem to represent, include -or cancel nearly any other idea in casual conversation, fiction and persuasion.

You cannot talk in a careless or casual way about any subject and avoid expressing idle talk. If you talk about values or society at the times when you're not being the best person that you can be, you might be expressing most of all your emotions and opinions, even though your expression might be tolerated or popular.

  Don't express an idea that you imagine that another person might think or say, or that you imagine that another person wants or expects to hear you express. Don't rely on manners of speech or relationship that you learned from the arts or entertainment.

7 If you think that speaking the truth doesn’t matter you won’t be confident that your good decisions improve everything.

If you lie you won’t trust what other people say. If you lie about trivial things the important things that you say won’t be trusted.

Don't try to affect how you think someone might respond to an idea that you want to express because you might obscure the idea or misrepresent it.

Don’t converse much with someone who you seriously disagree with or you'll accidentally say things that you don't sincerely think. If you think much about someone who you seriously disagree with you'll uncontrollably fear or imitate their thinking as you imagine it.

8 Don't try to describe another person's feelings or thinking.

Don’t avoidably describe someone in terms of their appearance, as if they could be perceived well enough by only the physical senses. The important aspects of someone might be disregarded in the ideas that you casually think about them. Petty disapprovals of another person’s appearance or expression that you might possibly think -that you don’t dismiss every time but casually reinforce can ruin any of your relationships.

Don't avoidably describe someone in terms of their relationship with another person, because that might disregard their feelings and thinking and might disregard the feelings and thinking of the other person.

Don't try to express good by describing something bad. Your good reason won't be visible to another person. It will just be disappointing.

9 Don't use foolish or shocking words or exaggerate to emphasize the importance of something that you want to say. Don’t test anyone’s affection for you or tolerance by saying wicked or mean things.

Don’t try to embarrass or shame someone to help them. Courtesy and kindness are not suspended by humor.

Don't intend to surprise or evoke urgency or ridicule, or challenge another person's ideas or influence.

Don’t try to express humility by disparaging yourself. Someone might think that the disparaging is about them and they will suffer.

14 Reading and streaming media

1 You can usually understand the meanings of the words that you read in a language that you understand. You might understand the ideas that seem to be similar to the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you already share with some of your family, neighbors and friends. Or you might understand the ideas by considering them for a while.

Some of the ideas that you read might be composed of complicated structures of educated thinking and conventions of conduct and conditions that are not familiar to you. Then you might not understand the meanings of some of the ideas until you learn the structures of thinking or follow the conduct and experience the conditions that are required.

2 You can usually understand the meanings of the words that you read on an electronic screen as easily as you can understand the meanings of the words that you read on a page, when the words continue to be visible on the electronic screen as long as you need to consider the meanings of them. And when you can choose to scroll the text back any time to read a preceding part of it again.

Similarly, you can usually understand the meanings of the words that you hear in an audio broadcast or recording as easily as you can understand the meanings of any words that you hear, when you can pause the recording to consider the ideas for a while. And when you can scroll the recording back any time to listen to a preceding part of it again.

3 You might understand the meanings of the words that you hear on streaming media such as the news, videos and movies, or you might not. You might understand the ideas that are expressed or suggested on streaming media that seem be similar to the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you already share with some of your family, neighbors and friends. Or you might understand the ideas by considering them for a while. But you don't have the time.

The words that you hear on streaming media are similar to the words that you hear in dreams. You might imagine a realistic experience and you might think that you understand the ideas that are expressed or suggested. But you cannot understand the words reliably or even know whether the subject is important to you, or not.

Because you don't experience streaming media with the whole range of your physical senses.

And you don't have enough time to consider the meanings of the words.

If you follow much news or commercial entertainment, or if you talk a lot casually, many ideas that are products of persuasion might influence, distract and confuse you, until you find relief in calm and confidence in your personal understanding.

15 Conversing by telephone

1 When you converse by telephone you’re conversing with someone who's not physically present with you where you are. Because the person who you’re conversing with is physically absent from you, if you converse about a subject that you feel emotionally your feelings might flow out of touch with your physical experience of being where you are. Then you might not be able to evaluate your feelings and thoughts reliably by referring your feelings and thoughts to the whole range of your physical senses.

2 Additionally, when you converse by telephone you might oblige someone to listen to most of what you want to say before they can respond. That's too slow for anyone's feelings and thinking. The dominance of whoever's talking and submission to them until they pause or can be interrupted might not happen if you were physically present together, but the limitations of the telephone demand it. Because conventional manners of courtesy require that one person defer to the other, when you talk on the telephone you might suppose that the other person is deferring to you because they agree with you, as long as they don’t protest that something that you said is disappointing or unaccepable. But the conversation might not communicate either person's feelings or what either person wanted to express.

3 Exchanging text with someone on your iphone or the internet is similar to conversing by telephone if either person is expected to respond immediately.

4 Seeing one another’s face electronically while you’re talking on your iphone or the internet might help to communicate with someone who you already know. But don’t trust talking on the telephone to develop friendship or to discuss any difficulty.

16 Hourly schedule, motor travel

1 Your awareness of your well-being and the choices that you make during the hours of each day are natural experiences that you can integrate with your important ideas and priorities. Maintaining awareness of your well-being and harmonizing all of your experiences as well as you can improves your well-being and helps you to realize your important concerns.

Conforming to hourly scheduled routines is commonly thought to be responsible behavior and is nearly impossible to avoid when you share experiences with other people. Conforming to many different scheduled routines demands that your planning and relationships harmonize as well as possible with the concerns of many other people during the hours of each day.

These comments are not intended to deny the importance of time, natural rhythms and cycles and the durations of experiences in everyone's days and lifetime. These comments are intended to caution that the series of sixty minute hours is not a value. It’s a machine measurement of time that’s a practical standard for science. But it’s an artificial and mean standard for cooperation.

Every concern that's subject to the structure of an hourly schedule is influenced in ways that no one can understand or control. Conforming to an hourly schedule disregards everyone's feelings, distracts awareness and overrules important concerns.

2 When you travel by motor vehicle the foundations of firmness and stillness beneath your body are replaced by abnormal velocities and centrifugal forces. And your control of the position of your body is replaced by an obliged and most of all passive position of your body. Those experiences overwhelm the natural motion and rest of energy in your body so that you experience anxiety unavoidably.

  All of you thinking and conversation might be influenced by a sense of urgency. You might remember fears or suffering that you experienced previously or heard about, even though you have already learned that you don't need to experience those fears or suffering personally. Even when it’s not probable that you'll experience an accident and when you're not conscious of being in motion and even when you're accustomed to travelling by motor vehicle.

Pleasant scenery, recorded music, conversation or competition that you experience while you ride in a motor vehicle, or a special place, comfort food, shared experience or a video that you experience after riding in a motor vehicle might seem to relieve the anxiety. But they might only add compensating or compatible feelings and ideas to the experience of riding in a motor vehicle. Even the sounds of motor traffic and machinery cause persistent tensions and anxiety.

Your personal wisdom and sensitivity to other people might be severely dulled when you arrive at your destination until you find relief in calm and sufficient rest. The habits that you develop to maintain your calm and clarity within the influence of motor travel and machinery are important and necessary. Constantly refresh your awareness and priorities.

17 Organized sports, conforming

1 Personal motivation to achieve competence and excellence in any positive concern is beneficial. Any efforts to achieve worthy goals might include beneficial aspects of comparison that stimulate wholesome effort and set standards. But comparison that disregards or overrules anyone’s well-being is harmful.

Competition is a normal urge or impulse that’s commonly employed to assist -or resist various concerns. The competition that's promoted in technologically connected societies is modeled on military training, education and entertainment and stimulates public interest in artificial concerns, projects and goals.

2 Organized sports feature and compare particular athletic, learning and cooperating abilities of different people, and the featured skills are repeatedly tested in structured encounters between pairs of the highest ranking players or teams. Players are urged to surpass the recorded achievements of the preceding players. If you follow organized sports you might remember details of the achievements of some players in two or three different sports through many years of games.

Organized sports are promoted as beneficial for developing physical fitness, fairness and good character in those who compete and for developing good social conduct in those who follow the sports by attending the games or watching the games on broadcast media. Wearing sport clothing or a symbol of sport is a sign of following sport or being a good member of society.

The popularity of organized sports profits from the qualities of the people who compete and the qualities of the people who follow the sports, although everyone who competes is valued primarily for their contribution to the sport.

3 Commercial publicity promotes fictions of rivalry and antagonism between the people who compete and also between the people who follow organized sports. Names and symbols are branded to represent the competing teams and to reinforce arbitrary loyalties and conflicts.

If you compete or follow organized sports you might apply rules of imaginary membership or competition in your relationships with other people, or you might conform to routines or devote your efforts to realizing other people's plans.

You might think that you’re obliged to follow elaborate courses of education to be competitive with people who you don’t know in your learning, material possessions and physical appearance. You might dread that you’ll fail to demonstrate sufficient standards of achievement or enough devotion to competition. Conforming to diverse regimes and the accompanying anxieties leave you very little time that’s not scheduled and little time for you to restore inner peace and to devote your attention to personal concerns.

4 These comments are not intended to deny that many benefits can be experienced from competing or following organized sports. These comments are intended to caution that in addition to the benefits that can be experienced, some confusion and suffering might also be experienced as a result of competing or following organized sports.

The resolve to cultivate excellence through competing or following organized sports can illuminate many aspects of personal experience. This can also resonate benefits in the experience of many other people.

Each person’s intention to be the best person that they can be -or not, is essential to how much someone might become a better person from competing or following organized sports or might not.

18 Friendship and association

1 There are people who express wisdom and kindness in every family and society. Appreciating the good that they contribute and remembering them gratefully can inspire you to be the best person that you can be.

Inspiration and friendship resonate with your innate wisdom and kindness.

The good that someone might contribute to your experience can be obscured or obstructed when you think much about negative or unfamiliar aspects of their conduct or appearance.

2 Maintain awareness of your personal well-being and modesty in all of your relationships with other people. This will help to avoid negative developments and will allow both you and another person to each be aware of your own well-being and sense of what's positive.

You need to be the best person that you can be to reliably maintain awareness of your values and to view your experience clearly.

When you consider that there’s much that can influence every circumstance that you can’t expect to know, maintaining your awareness of the conduct of your mind is the most knowable and controllable aspect of your experience.

3 Any liking that you feel toward another person can help you to perceive their feelings and to develop friendship with them.

Experiencing happiness with someone can be mistaken for perceiving their feelings and can be mistaken for developing friendship with them. Experiencing happiness or sharing experiences with someone don't reliably help you to perceive their feelings or to develop friendship with them.

Similarly, sharing a similar idea, interest or concern with someone can be mistaken for sharing similar values and priorities with them. Don't suppose that you definitely understand what someone said or appeared to express or how important the subject is to them.

4 For the purpose of developing and maintaining friendship, you don't need to know what someone is doing that you can't already see or that you don't already know. Don't ask anyone to tell you something about them or about another person.

  Don't inquire in your imagination or in a conversation into what another person is trying or needs to say. That might be trying to describe a more emotional or discursive condition than the other person can express in words or than the other person is experiencing. Listen to what someone is saying however they express it and consider the meaning of what they said as well as you can.

Don't listen to much information about anyone.

5 Don't avoidably compare someone with another person, or avoidably compare a group of people with another group of people, not even privately in your thoughts. Don't think that your ideas resulting from your comparisons of people are reliable.

Neither educated or popular comparisons of people are helpful for you to maintain awareness of another person’s inherent, natural and wholesome qualities and potentials.

Of course you might compare some people appropriately sometimes in your thoughts. But you might compare the same people prejudicially at other times unintentionally and unaware.

6 To become acquainted with someone who you don't know, you need to learn some of the ideas that the other person thinks are important. Similarly, to become acquainted with a group of people, you need to learn some of the ideas that the group of people thinks are important. Important ideas include the concerns that someone or group of people thinks are urgent and their priorities.

The ideas that appear to resemble the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you already share with some of your family, neighbors and friends are the ideas that you can recognize most easily as agreeable and beneficial in the words and other expressions of another person. Sharing similar family values and social conventions and important ideas with someone can help you to communicate thoroughly and to develop friendship with them.

Don't underestimate the difficulties of communicating thoroughly with someone when you don't share similar family values and social conventions and important ideas.

7 Don't conform your appearance to resemble how you think that another person wishes or expects you to appear.

Trying to please another person does not reliably express respect or kindness to them.

Manners of courtesy don't reliably communicate respect or kindness. Don't rely on the expressions of your eyes or face or motions of your hands or body to communicate with someone who you don't know. If you seem to signal something and the sign is misunderstood that can distract someone and influence their feelings and thinking.

8 Giving or receiving a gift, service or influence don’t reliably signify or result in any particular feeling, idea or experience. Your wish to help another person is positive but you cannot foresee many of the effects of your influence. Naturally your family, neighbors and friends will expect you to exchange gifts, help and cooperation. Maintain harmony with everyone as well as you can. If you sincerely intend to be humble that will help people to disregard the pride and rudeness that you express to them sometimes without being aware of it.

To be worthy of anyone’s trust, and to maintain awareness of your priorities, you need to keep your attention free from a wide variety of concerns most of the time. Avoid planning that’s attached to a schedule. If you can’t easily remember the times of future events you might not remember some events. Then someone who doesn’t know you might suppose that you don’t care about other people.

Don’t feel obliged to converse with someone at random times except in an emergency.

9 You might suppose that the ideas that you express will be more interesting or persuasive due to the influence of some aspect of your personal environment.

Anyone might be influenced by your personal environment to develop mistaken ideas about you if they don’t know you. The appearance of your personal environment can distract someone from relying on how they feel and think about you. They might decide that what you say is proved by the evidence of your knowledge or preferences that they think they see in your environment. Or they might decide that what you say is contradicted by the evidence of things beyond your understanding or control that they think they see in your environment.

If your personal environment is not sufficiently conventional it might be distracting or contemptible to someone who’s not a member of your family or your friend.

10 If you propose a particular idea or project to another person that you think will help you to communicate with them and to develop friendship with them more reliably than by sharing similar family values, social conventions and priorities, that idea or project might obstruct your awareness of the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas that you already value.

Don’t think much about an idea or project that’s not compatible with your family and social values and your priorities.

  You might hold an idea or project that obstructs your awareness or that seems to allow you to not be the best person that you can be.

11 You cannot share natural affection or good counsel with someone if you judge, compete or don't care much about the other person, or if the other person judges, competes or doesn't care much about you.

You might hold opinions or not think well about someone who you think does not care about being the best person that they can be and you might suppose that they hold opinions or don't think well about you. Whatever you think about someone don't deny that they're inherently worthy of your best understanding and harmlessness.

If you think that someone or a particular subject deserves respect, you might become angry at another person for their apparent disrespect or unconcern. You might not appear reasonable or harmless when you're preoccupied with anyone's fault or blame.

12  Don't overrule your feelings or thinking about your relationship with someone with any ideals or expectations about the relationship or experience.

 Insufficient mutual respect is an unfavorable condition for communication. If you're preoccupied with thoughts about your apparent faults or ignorance in your relationship with someone, you might not be resonating enough mutual respect. You'd be prudent to withdraw from that relationship emotionally and physically as soon as you can.

Of course you could be wrong, but you could be right. Don't ever talk about it.

13 You might associate with some people who share a tradition that’s important to you to celebrate significant events that occurred in the history of the tradition and to illuminate and share some of your important values in the present time. You might encounter manners of relationships and customs that appear to distract or disregard and overrule your awareness of your integrity and positive concern, as you understand or experience them.

Then you might confuse maintaining your integrity with some manners of relationships and customs that are observed in your society.

Don’t rely on help from another person or association to maintain your integrity and positive concern.

14 You can be more aware of the integrating values of your society and the inner practice of your important traditions when you don’t feature or reinforce an emotional, discursive or conventional aspect--as you understand or experience it--of an important or urgent concern.

Don't disregard any values that you have already learned can help you to maintain your integrity and positive concern.

  Some beginner's values and manners of good conduct are beneficial through all the stages of development to maturity in every society and tradition.

15 Don't avoidably demonstrate--or criticize--authority or membership. Be careful with someone who does even when they don't mean it.

Don't reinforce thoughts about rule or power. Pride distorts vision of goodness and sense of what's positive. No one has a privilege to harm or interfere with another person.

If you talk about authority, misfortune or anyone's fault, it won't be clear whether you're kind or not.

16  When you intend to maintain your integrity you'll think less about your social status and similar conventional concerns.

You appearing to not develop your social status and projects might seem to be unreasonable to someone who thinks that developing and expressing personality and preference are necessary for good character and participation in society. Your speech and actions that express your intention to be thoroughly good might help to compensate for appearing to neglect your personal interests to someone who knows you.

You appearing to not appreciate another person’s projects to increase their information, activities or prosperity might seem to be unconcerned with their well-being. Your speech and actions that express that you care about another person’s feelings and best thinking can help to compensate for appearing to not appreciate their projects to someone who knows you.

17 Ideals and optimism about other people’s feelings and thinking don't help to develop understanding or friendship.

No one can know whether another person is maintaining their integrity or important values, or not.

Don't expect that someone who shares your society or tradition will share the integrating values of your society or the inner values of your tradition--as you understand or experience them--in their relationship with you.

19 Traditions of learning integrity

1 Traditions of learning integrity are accessible in every culture and society.

Most of the people who share a tradition of learning integrity follow the tradition with varying degrees of concern with their personal integrity, more or less at different times. Many important values might be observed by the people who share a tradition and society.

The benefit that most people gain from a particular tradition might appear to be gained by learning and maturing in association with a particular group of people, although the most important benefit of everyone’s concern with integrity is internal, not visible to another person.

2  The most meaningful purpose of following a tradition of learning integrity is to develop your awareness of the nature and beneficial conduct of your mind.

  Your awareness and understanding most often guide you reliably when you intend to be the best person that you can be, as you understand it and as well as you can. You can also be guided by the values of your society that instruct everyone to maintain their integrity and positive concern.

Your inherent, pure, indestructible essence and limitless positive potential will become increasingly accessible to you when you’re devoted to being the best person that you can be, as you understand it and as well as you can. You will become more aware of the nature and beneficial conduct of your mind and you will gradually perceive more of your experience in this perspective. You will also encounter people who will help you to understand your most important concerns.

3 You have probably been taught that reliable help to understand your most important concerns cannot be found. When you want to learn about the nature and beneficial conduct of your mind for the purpose of becoming liberated from confusion and suffering you will find the advice and guidance that you need.

A qualified lama is a reliable source of information about the nature of the mind itself, and karma, and how you can progress in your awareness and conduct toward improvement. Inherent, natural and liberating instruction that can progressively enlighten your vision is accessible due to the uninterrupted continuity of enlightening instruction, devoted practice and accomplishment since the time of the enlightened Buddha until now.

Renew your awareness by doing the practice that you have already learned can help to integrate your mind, speech and body as early as possible every day. Don’t add anything to the method that you practice to experience your best vision.

4 Although you might naturally prefer or resonate with a particular person or a group of people, it's not reliably beneficial concern with a tradition of learning integrity that you develop or reinforce distracting concerns regarding the personality or interests of other members of the tradition.

  Particular ways of thinking and conduct are customary among every group of people because of the ways that some things were previously viewed and done or not done by influential members of the group. Also, influential members of a group can oblige that some things be done or not done by other members of the group.

Some of the conventions of a tradition of learning integrity might seem to be more relevant to other people, as you understand or experience them, than relevant to you learning how to improve your integrity, so you might disregard some aspects of a tradition that you value that don’t seem to help you to improve your integrity and positive concern. Although you might disregard some aspects of a tradition that could be valuable to you, your sincere intention to be the best person that you can be, as you understand it and as well as you can, is always your most reliable standard to evaluate all of the ideas and experiences that you encounter. In time, you’ll meet people who have learning and experience in the tradition that you value who will help you to benefit from the tradition.

5 Any of the difficulties and hazards of association with another person or a group of people might distract or obstruct your most meaningful purpose of following a tradition of learning integrity. Mutual understanding and friendship might not develop or endure between some people. Personal opinions and suppositions about other people’s feelings and thinking and different conventions of expression and sharing influence everyone’s experience of other people.

Any member of a tradition might accidentally think that some of their negative conduct doesn’t matter because they’re a member of the tradition.

Expressing your sincere harmlessness, reasonableness and kindness does not ensure that you’ll be perceived by another person as harmless, reasonable or kind. Anyone’s expressions of devotion might be mistaken by another person to be efforts to gain some advantage or privilege. If your reputation describes that you intend to be thoroughly good you need to know that someone might suppose that your faults are worse than other people’s faults. Similarly if your reputation describes that you intend to be thoroughly kind someone might suppose that you don’t judge your own faults severely enough and they might imagine your faults. Rumors of your faults might result in the development of opinions that your conduct or reputation might offend someone or damage the reputation of a group of people and some people might exclude you from their society or association.

6 Don’t blame anyone for your difficulties in maintaining harmony in some relationships. If you experience disappointments in some of your relationships you need to know that some people are attached to their accustomed manner of participation in their society or tradition and might disregard some values of their society or tradition to avoid imagined problems or criticisms of them or their group. Don’t expect that any particular member of a group can remedy that you might be excluded by some people who share your society or tradition.

Don’t maintain a relationship with someone who expresses that they seriously dislike something about you or that they need to forgive you for something that they’re thinking about you. Don’t express formal or cordial submission or protest.

Maintain friendships with people with whom you enjoy good will and harmony. Participate modestly in association with people who share your values when you can participate beneficially.

20 Your important ideas

1 The ideas that describe inherent, natural and wholesome awareness to you personally are your most important ideas. These ideas are learned in your experience of receiving kindness and care from your family, neighbors and friends and by you intending to be the best person that you can be and learning how to cooperate with other people and help other people.

These ideas are experienced by the whole range of your physical senses. They’re your most reliable descriptions of reality and importance and your best standards to test the value of all the new ideas and experiences that you encounter.

Confidence in your awareness or understanding is the subject of the first part of this text. You experience awareness and understanding most of the time without needing to think any particular ideas.

2 Remembering your important ideas and priorities can help to integrate your thoughts, memories and experiences.

  You can write your insights and best thinking in a personal journal. Use plain and simple words. The plain meaning of a word might bring many ideas to your awareness that are included in its meaning or benefits as you understand or experience it.

Every word should feature the most integrating and positive aspect of the subject that it represents as you understand or experience it.

3 You can describe an idea that's integrated in your understanding or experience of it in a word or a few words that any nearly other person could understand. This is not intended to suggest that you describe the idea to another person but only that you can test your understanding of an idea privately by that method.

If you understand an idea or remember an experience imprecisely or carelessly you’ll be able to describe it in mostly conventional words or terms. You might not recognize your own idea or experience described in conventional words.

You can write your most important ideas in a relatively small number of words. How many words you write is not important. You can always add or remove ideas.

4 Don't write a word that needs that you think more ideas about it in addition to the ideas that come to your awareness immediately when you read or remember the word. Write another word to remember another idea. Later you might replace a word with another word that represents an idea better.

You can easily express something that’s important to you in your own words if you’re not trying to express it to another person.

A word that you choose does not need to include anything that appears negative to you. Don’t suggest a negative reason or context in which an illumination occured. The list is not intended to explain anything.

5 Don't expect to be able to describe your most important thinking to someone who you don't know.

You might not be able to maintain awareness of your important ideas and priorities if you try to describe your most important thinking to someone who you don't know. You might become preoccupied with imagining what the other person might think about what you describe. You might substitute an idea that you want to remember with another idea that you imagine that another person might think. Then you might not remember an idea that you want to remember.

6 You can read the list sometimes to remember the important ideas and priorities that help you to maintain your integrity and positive concern.

It can be beneficial to describe your best thinking to some of the people who you know with whom you share important ideas, wishes and concerns. Their responses to the ideas that you describe can help to improve your understanding.

21 Personal memories

1 The ideas described here are intended to help you to benefit from your personal memories. Memory in this context refers to anything that you remember that you experienced personally in the past.

When you remember something that you experienced in the past you can try to remember whether you were being the best person that you could be within that experience –or not.

And you can try to remember what you thought that it meant to be the best person that you could be at that time.

2 To help you to remember what you thought that it meant to be the best person that you could be in the past, you can write a list of subjects or concerns that illuminated your awareness as you understood or experienced them at that time. You can include subjects or concerns that illuminate your awareness now because you’re applying your awareness now to evaluate your conduct in the past.

The following list suggests the immense variety of subjects or concerns that might illuminate your awareness.

Health, well-being, expression, events, environment

Family, neighbors, friends, society

Music, poetry, conversation, arts, celebrations

Agriculture, engineering, commerce, earning

Culture, classics, constitution, responsibility, governance

Reason, logic, principles, trust, clarity

When you remember something that you experienced in the past you can try to remember what relevant subjects or concerns could have illuminated your awareness at that time.

When you combine your memory of something that you experienced in the past with the relevant subjects or concerns that could have illuminated your awareness at that time, you might be able to evaluate whether you were being the best person that you could be in that experience –or not.

3 Your awareness is inherent in the nature of the mind itself and can be improved by being the best person that you can be.

Every experience of awareness is limitlessly beneficial. Your awareness illuminates all of your thinking to some degree. Specific experiences of awareness are not comparable.

Your sense that you were the best person that you could be in a particular experience that you remember can be a cause of happiness and peace.

4 Your awareness of the illuminating potential of a subject or concern might be obscured or obstructed at the times when you’re not intending to be the best person that you can be.

Any concern that’s important to you might overrule any other concern that’s important to you when you don’t decide which concern is the most important to you personally in the present moment.

Any idea that you hold as an opinion might hinder loving-kindness and intelligence from nurturing and maturing your awareness. Disregarding the harm of holding negative opinions is a common mistake and results in the difficult aspects of experience.

5 Awareness in your relationship with another person arises in respecting the other person and can be improved by maturing in kindness in your relationships with other people.

To evaluate how respectful you were -or were not in a particular interaction with another person in the past, you can try to remember if you were respectful of the other person as you understood being respectful at that time. When you combine your memory of your interaction with another person in the past with the relevant subjects or concerns that illuminated your awareness at that time, you might gain insight into how respectful you were -or were not in your interaction with the other person.

This can improve your understanding of your conduct in the past when you don’t feature or intend to remember a negative idea about anyone.

If you arrive at the conclusion that another person did not respect you enough in the past for things to work out better, you might not be illuminating your memory of your conduct in the past in the light of the positive concerns that you valued at that time.

6 Don’t miss an opportunity to improve by imagining someone criticizing you for negative actions, faults or failings. Imagining someone criticizing you can distract you from evaluating your conduct and improving yourself.

You cannot improve your experience thoroughly as long as you hold negative ideas about anyone.

Your intention to be the best person that you can be when you realize that sometimes you forgot or did not care can awaken your hope and strengthen your confidence in your potential to improve. Being the best person that you can be naturally improves your awareness and experience.

[This chapter is being written.]

22 Feelings and thoughts

1 Anything that you have ever experienced or heard about, and anything that you can imagine, can possibly arise as a feeling or thought in your mind.

You can evaluate all of your feelings and thoughts by the standards of the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you already value.

It's not beneficial to follow or deplore your negative feelings or thoughts.

2 Your feelings and thoughts are personal and private. No other person is able to know what you feel or think.

Don't express your feelings or thoughts carelessly.

It's not beneficial to imagine that anything that you feel or think can be observed or judged by another person.

3 Liking and disliking are part of everyone's feelings and thoughts about other people, to some degrees, however someone might intend or wish to experience other people.

It's not disrespectful, insulting or harmful to anyone that you feel or think that someone does not like you, or that you don't like someone or something.

Don't exaggerate the effect of a moment or glimpse of a feeling or thought.

4 You can view your liking and disliking as information that you won't allow to be influential until you evaluate it by the inherent, natural and wholesome ideas, wishes and concerns that you already value.

Don't hold any liking or disliking that you become aware of as a subject of your attention any longer than you need to evaluate it by the standards of your important ideas and priorities.

You can trust your liking that does not impede your awareness of your well-being and sense of what's positive, as you understand or experience it, but you need to be careful regarding any hazard to your well-being or conflict with your important ideas and priorities that is suggested by your disliking.

5 Your liking and disliking don't need to stop happening for them to not distract or harm you. Your liking and disliking can be aspects of your personal wisdom when you evaluate your feelings and thoughts by the standards of your important ideas and priorities.

The inherent, natural and wholesome qualities and potentials of your mind, combined with your intention to be the best person that you can be and the benefits of progressive learning from your personal experience, can evaluate the liking and disliking that arise in your mind. Also, some of the people who you already know, who share your important ideas, wishes and concerns, can help you to evaluate your experience if you ask them for guidance or advice.

Don't expect your feelings and thoughts to be aspects of your personal wisdom when you don't intend to evaluate your feelings and thoughts by your important ideas and priorities.

6 Much of your liking and disliking is not personal if you follow much news, commercial entertainment or fashion motivated shopping.

If you follow much news, entertainment or fashion it's hard for you to know which of your liking and disliking is personal, and which of your liking and disliking is an opinion or convention that you learned from your interactions with people who you don't know and from communicating with people who you know by electronic media.

As you diminish conversing casually and relinquish concerns that conflict with your important ideas or distract from your priorities, you can become more aware of your important ideas and priorities and you can experience improved well-being and more harmonious relationships with other people.

7 Maintain your awareness as well as you can. As early as possible every day compose your mind, breath and body and renew your memory of your most important ideas and priorities.

As often as you can remember renew your intention to be the best person that you can be and be kind.

About the author

This text is written by Tyndale Martin. I was born in 1944 in Toronto, Canada, to sincere and generous parents from whom I received a good upbringing in a Biblical tradition and country life. During the early years our family lived a few miles from Orillia in northern Ontario then on the shore of Lake of Two Mountains a few miles from Vaudreuil village in rural Quebec. Since 1963 I have been living in Montreal. For a while I followed some classical arts, poetry and social ideals. I received a B.A. in History from McGill University in 1969. The Korean Zen master Samu Sunim tutored me in the postural architecture of zazen in 1968. In 1971 the Tibetan Lama Kalu Rinpoche gave me instruction in finding and maintaining calmness, improving vision and the nature and beneficial conduct of the mind. I devoted my time to practicing the instruction that I received from these kind teachers as well as I was able.

This is my journal of important ideas. The ideas described in this text include some that I was taught and some that I learned by applying what I was taught to my personal experience. I dedicate these thoughts to the happiness of each one of my dear family and all of my friends who shared our best understanding of the values described in this text. I thank everyone who showed me the vision that some of these ideas describe. I hope that everyone who reads or hears these ideas will find happiness and inner peace.

The text contains some unclear thinking that I intend to improve as well as I can.

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