Wisdom

Those who speak much
are not necessarily possessed of wisdom.
The wise can be seen to be at peace with life
and free from all enmity and fear.

Dhammapada verse 258

How do we get wise? Perhaps trying to get wise is not the best
approach. Consider how struggling to become peaceful often stirs
things up while simply allowing the activity of heart and mind to
cease naturally calms things down. When we are looking for something
we’ve lost, we don’t always look in the most obvious places. We might
start there but then we need to be creative. Wisdom is not discovered
by following habits of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The
Teachings tell us that when pain and disappointment come to us we can
learn to meet them with a quality of willingness and awareness that
leads to understanding. The same with happiness and delight; we can be
refreshed and renewed by our experience without becoming lost in it.
Enmity and fear are not necessarily obstacles. They can also be our
teachers pointing to a more spacious and wise way of living.

Bhikkhu Munindo

Why Women Cry

Why Women Cry

Watch her eyes
A little boy asked his mother, "Why are you crying?"

"Because I'm a woman," she told him.

"I don't understand," he said. His Mom just hugged him and said,
"And you never will."

Later the little boy asked his father,

"Why does mother seem to cry for no reason?"

"All women cry for no reason," was all his dad could say.

The little boy grew up and became a man, still wondering why women cry..

Finally he put in a call to God. When God got on the phone, he
asked, "God, why do women cry so easily?"

God said

"When I made the woman she had to be special.

I made her shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the
world,yet gentle enough to give comfort.

I gave her an inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection
that many times comes from her children.

I gave her a hardness that allows her to keep going when everyone
else gives up, and take care of her family through sickness and
fatigue without complaining.

I gave her the sensitivity to love her children under any and all
circumstances, even when her child has hurt her very badly.

I gave her strength to carry her husband through his faults and
fashioned her from his rib to protect his heart.

I gave her wisdom to know that a good husband never hurts his wife,
but sometimes tests her strengths and her resolve to stand beside
him unfalteringly.

And finally, I gave her a tear to shed. This is hers exclusively to
use whenever it is needed."

"You see my son," said God, "the beauty of a woman is not in the
clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair.

The beauty of a woman must be seen in her eyes, because that is the
doorway to her heart - the place where love resides."