Happy Birthday, Leo.
Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 10:11 pm
I thought I'd share this passage from Leo Tolstoy's letter, "To the Working People," with all of you today — his birthday according to the Julian calendar — because I think that it also sums up the Buddha's philosophy perfectly:
- People fare badly only because they themselves live badly. And there is no more injurious thought for people than that the causes of the wretchedness of their position is not in themselves, but in external conditions. A man or a society of men need but imagine that the evil experienced by them is due to external conditions and to direct their attention and efforts to the change of these external conditions, and the evil will be increased. But a man or a society of men need but sincerely direct their attention to themselves, and in themselves and their lives look for the causes of that evil from which they suffer, in order that these causes may be at once found and destroyed.