Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.

Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

I was at a friend's house the other day and she had one of those mirrors in the bathroom that if you flip over then everything is ten times magnified, and nothing looks good that close up. I think the world is very much the same way.

If we focus on the wars and the violence. I think the world is very much the same way.

If we focus on the wars and the violence that are going on in the world,

sometimes in our own homes,

then it's going to feel like we're absolutely doomed as a species. It's very discouraging. But if we zoom out, if only for a few minutes each day,

then everything seems strangely balanced when we look at the big picture, doesn't it? For every child that dies

another is born and each time a heart gets broken another couple is falling in

love. It's like this natural ebb and flow of the universe, just like waves in the ocean, but if we don't learn to float, then it's going to feel like we're drowning.

And that's where Buddhism is of most comfort to me.

The waves are inevitable. The drowning is optional.

As I always say, you cannot calm the storm, so stop trying, but what you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.

All this turmoil inside of us is rooted in thoughts that things or people should be other

than how they are. But if we learn to accept that we are all

mangoes on the same tree but we do not all ripen at the same time, then other people

shouldn't be anywhere other than where they are.

So the only problem is our thoughts that someone or something should be other than what it is.

So we can either let go of our need for things to be different, or we can get dragged by the anguish that such stubborn thinking is surely going to cause.

The choice is ours.

As Carlos Castaneda said, you can make yourself happy or you can make yourself miserable.

The amount of work is the same.

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