Goenkaji: Every moment one is taking birth, every
moment one is dying. Understand this process of life and
death. This will make you very happy, and you will
understand what happens after death.

Here are my aspirations worded in a better and far more advanced way than i could ever create

i aspire to head in this direction.

"The principal focus is on cultivating a mind wishing to benefit other sentient beings.  With an increase in our own sense of peace and happiness we will naturally be better able to contribute to the peace and happiness of others.  Given the habitual orientation of the mind, fixed as it is upon the supposed reality of ego and phenomena, rooted in the duality of subject and object... the fact that an impulse toward perfect altruism and self-forgetting can arise at all seems nothing short of miraculous.
The doctrine of karma has only one message: the experience of states of being follows upon the perpetration of acts.
Buddhism teaches that the object of compassion is simply suffering itself.  All beings, at all times and regardless of circumstances, are worthy objects.  The vow of the bodhisattva is to deliver beings from suffering, in other words to deliver them from the causes of their suffering.
How is it, that mere thoughts can cause so much havoc?  It is simply because we allow them to do so.  Thoughts after all are merely thoughts.
The simple but difficult task is to become aware of how thoughts emerge and develop.  Just as the mind is the source of every suffering, likewise it is the wellspring of every joy."

Our hometown's hero!

I read this in the book On the Beaten Path: Westborough, Massachusetts.  by Kristina Nilson Allen

Tom Cook, Westborough’s Robin Hood, saw himself as the “Leveler” since he balanced the local economy by giving to the poor what he stole from the rich.  Noted for his cunning and personal charm, Tom Cook was born on October 6, 1738 in the “plaster house” at 114 East Main Street on the west corner of Lyman Street.  He was the son of the blacksmith Cornelius Cook and his wife Eunice Forbush Cook.

Legend has it that as a child Tom became deathly ill, and his mother- at her wit’s end- cried out, “Only spare his life, only spare his life, and I care not what he becomes!” Miraculously the child was spared and grew into a handsome scoundrel who made his livelihood by his sharp wit and agile fingers.  The Cook family left Westborough to settle in Wrentham in 1750, but Tom Cook chose to wander the New England countryside, stealing from carefully chosen, affluent victims.  Supposedly Cook also managed to collect protection money from those who did not relish a visit from the thief.

Tom Cook kept none of this booty for himself; he doled it out generously to those less fortunate than their neighbors.  He would slip into one prosperous farmer’s kitchen and steal a pudding cooking on the fire, only to drop it into the pot of a hungry family down the road.

One story has Tom climbing into a bedroom and selecting the very best featherbed.  Wrapping the comforter in a sheet, he climbed out the window, went around the hosue, and knocked at the door.  When the mistress of the house answered the door, Tom Cook asked politely if he might leave his bundle with her for safekeeping.  The woman refused to have either Tom Cook or his bundle in her house, so off he went with a clear conscience to present a sick comrade with the featherbed.

Although he was often arrested, Tom seemed little interested in mending his ways.  Reverend Parkman recorded in his journal for August 27, 1779, “The notorious Thomas Cook came in (he says) on Purpose to see me.  I gave him what Admonition, Instruction, and Caution I could.  I beseech God to give it Force!  He leaves me With fair Words – thankful and Promising.”

In his old age, Cook no longer could rely on his wits to live.  His last years were spent on the Upton Road farm of Levi Bowman who boarded the town’s poor.  Tom Cook died near the age of ninety and is thought to be buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in town.

More of his exploits are described in The Leveller by Jackie Greene (1984) and The Hundredth Town by Harriet M. Forbes.

do you find his behavior acceptable?