1- The love you see in others is a direct reflection of the love that exists within you. We cannot recognise what we have no capacity to perceive, so stop indulging in the illusion that you are incapable of being loved yet somehow capable of loving others.

2- Distraction only prolongs suffering. The only way to move beyond pain is to feel it fully instead of endlessly trying to outrun it. What you bury within yourself will eventually find its way back to the surface (with greater intensity).

3- People can only hold your pain to the extent of their own emotional capacity. Do not expect others to carry what you must learn to process yourself, but also do not mistake compassion for responsibility by carrying burdens that were never yours to begin with.

4- The greatest betrayal you’ll ever commit is abandoning yourself.

5- Renounce all useless guilt. Guilt that does not lead to accountability or growth will never free you from the shame you are endlessly trying to suppress. It will only keep you trapped in a vicious cycle of self-punishment.

6- Your worth is not determined by the external recognition of others. You do not have to be seen for your existence to be meaningful. You do not have to be understood for your experiences to be valid.

7- Compassion and kindness are practices that require constant cultivation. They will not always arise naturally, especially during times of frustration and hurt. Choosing to actively embody them, even when they are hardest to offer, takes conscious effort and intention.

8- Fragility only exists in the mind. You can be deeply resilient and strong while remaining soft and gentle inside. Do not mistake strength for emotional numbness or building walls around yourself. Allowing the world to harden your heart is often a reflection of adopting false victimhood narratives and an inability to establish healthy boundaries. True strength lies in protecting your inner softness without surrendering your personal power.

9- Labels can make you feel like you belong, but remembering that you do not need to belong anywhere is what truly sets you free. Life is fluid, and so is identity. Stop holding onto labels simply to create a sense of belonging that does not reflect the complexity of who you truly are.

10- What is meant for you will never pass you by. Whereas, what isn’t meant for you will eventually find a way to leave, no matter how tightly you hold onto it. If you’re holding onto people or things that have already let go of you, you’re only prolonging your own suffering.

11- Grief can stay dormant for years before finding you in the middle of a grocery store. When it comes, let it.

12- The same lessons will return in different forms until you have truly learned them. Growth does not come from avoiding repetitive patterns, but from meeting them with greater awareness each time they appear in your life.

13- Stop saying “I am so self-aware,” or taking pride in it when others say it as a compliment. This can quickly become an ego-driven identity that keeps you attached to your comfort zone and the illusion that you have already recognised everything there is to recognise about life. Accepting that there is infinite room for growth is what opens the door to true awareness and presence.

14- Perfectionism creates stagnation. Learn to dismantle your attachment to the pursuit of an impossible standard, as it will prevent you from ever beginning anything. Do not let the belief that something must be perfect stop you from creating.

15- Keep your heart open to wonderful possibilities. Believe that your entire life can change in a single moment, often in ways you could never have anticipated. The circumstances you find yourself in today are not a permanent reflection of where you might end up in the future.

16- Make gratitude an everyday practice. Gratitude brings you back to the present moment and allows you to recognise the abundance that already exists within/ around you. It helps you loosen your attachment to what you lack and awakens you to the fullness of what is already here. It is within this state of presence and acceptance that true peace is felt and real transformation arises.

17-  Whatever you strongly cling to will eventually slip from your grasp. Letting go is the ultimate act of trust, because when you release attachment, you realise you were never dependent on anything outside yourself to be whole or content. Paradoxically, it is when you stop grasping for what you desire that you create the space for life to unfold and for what is meant for you to arrive.

18- (Essentially a guide on how to ignite real change in your life):   

• The true order of reaching a state of ‘result fulfilled’ is = belief, action, result. Not action, result, belief.

Before anything materialises in the external world, its seeds are planted within the mind first. The beliefs you hold about yourself and about what is possible shape the actions life will present you with, the opportunities you recognise and ultimately the path you move toward. Many people believe that endless hard work is the golden key to achieving what they desire, but action (no matter how persistent) without inner alignment often gives birth to a cycle of endless striving in one’s life.

You can work tirelessly toward something while carrying the belief that you are unworthy of it, that it is impossible, that you must suffer endlessly to receive it or that you must sacrifice your wellbeing and mental stability to gain it. Indulgence in mindless actions, that come from a place of lack or desperation, can make even achievement feel empty because the mind that created the result has not been transformed. Simply put, our starting point matters in regards to how we reach results and internalise their effects.

This reflects a fundamental Buddhist teaching that the mind precedes our experience of reality. In the Dhammapada, Lord Buddha teaches that “mind precedes all phenomena”. This highlights how our inner mental state shapes the way we perceive and engage with our external reality.

This is also reflected in the Noble Eightfold Path, where Right View serves as a foundation that informs the other aspects of the path, including Right Action. Although the path should not be approached as a linear checklist imo, it does emphasise that the way we see the world influences the intentions we cultivate and the actions we eventually take. This does not mean in any way that belief replaces effort but rather highlights that belief gives effort direction.

When you move from a place of trust in yourself/ life (rather than fear and scarcity), your actions naturally become more aligned, and you naturally become more open to recognising the opportunities that arise to guide you forward. The paradox is, as mentioned in the latter point, that true receiving comes through letting go of attachment to the outcome. When you stop believing that something outside of yourself (such as an external desire in this case) is required to make you whole, you no longer act from desperation, but rather from a place of awareness. This returns to the original point: when you transform your beliefs, your actions and results naturally begin to transform with them.

19- To love deeply, learn to remain an individual within a relationship. If you build your identity around the person you are in a relationship with, you will eventually realise there is nothing left of yourself when they leave. Love should add to who you are, not replace it.

20- Prioritise your health above everything else. Chronic pain is a first class ticket to anger and resentment. Make sure you actively make healthy choices for your own peace of mind.

21- Staying in the same place is infinitely scarier than stepping into a new phase of your life. You may feel terrified and uncertain, but choose to move forward anyway. The fear you experience in your imagination is often far greater than the reality itself, because when you are actually living through turbulent times, you will find the strength and resilience to endure it, no matter what.

22- Silence is often the most powerful response. Not everyone deserves an explanation, especially those committed to misunderstanding you.

23- Never build your identity around the hurt you’ve endured. When you make suffering the foundation of your identity, you will inevitably begin to interpret the world through the lens of your personal wounds rather than seeing and experiencing life for what it is.

24- Make it a habit to tell your loved ones how much they mean to you. The reality of impermanence is soothing when it comes to difficult experiences, but equally nauseating when it comes to the limited time we have with our loved ones.

25- Make peace with solitude and go one step further and actually enjoy spending time with yourself. You might discover wonderful things when you sit with yourself and observe the silence.

Both are untruthful distortions of our perception. One reduces others to simplistic narratives, whereas the other inflates their importance far beyond reality. Our task is to cultivate the discernment to recognise these distorted ego patterns as they arise, because neither reflects clear seeing. However, we should not expect ourselves to see through every illusion the moment it appears, nor should we judge ourselves for failing to do so (this would create more suffering, not reduce it). Recognition itself is a profound step toward freedom, as the simple act of actively observing these patterns is a crucial part of the path to enlightenment. The Tendai principle of bonnō sokubodai-“afflictions are themselves enlightenment”-reminds us that the very thoughts and emotions that bind us can also become the ground for our awakening. When met with awareness, we will come to realise that we are no longer absorbed by them as truth. Seeing them for what they are (expressions of fear, desire, insecurity, longing, jelousy and so on) begins to loosen their power over us. This opens up a brand new space for getting to know and truly see others. A space where true essence prevails over ego narratives.

I believe that every distorted perception of another person begins with a distorted perception of ourselves. We either diminish others to protect a fragile sense of self (that we came to believe is real) or elevate them because we have abandoned ourselves and forgotten our own inherent worth. In both cases, we are not truly seeing people, we are simply recreating dialogues where we relate to our own unresolved wounds, over and over again.

This is why self-love is such a radical practise in the modern world. The more deeply we seek to know and love ourselves, the less anyone else’s approval or rejection has the power to define who we are. No one can erase us simply by denying us love, because our worth is no longer something we outsource, it is something that we (re)recognise from within. It is from that place that we become capable of meeting people as they truly are rather than as our fearful projections or desires imagine them to be.

One of my most fundamental objections is that secular Buddhism tends to strip the tradition of its metaphysical and soteriological core while still retaining its moral and psychological authority intact. Core concepts like karma, rebirth, samsara and nirvana are not simply decorative beliefs. These concepts form the entire logic of why practise matters in the deepest sense. Removing them doesn’t just update Buddhism for modern sensibilities, it changes the problem Buddhism is trying to solve to begin with. What remains often becomes a mindfulness-based therapeutic philosophy rather than a path aimed at liberation from cyclical existence and suffering.

As I aforementioned, secular Buddhism often leans heavily on a modern Western epistemology (particularly scientific naturalism) as a gatekeeper for what is acceptable and what makes sense in the modern world. This can subtly but surely recast ancient contemplative Buddhist claims as useful metaphors or tools of storytelling rather than lived ontological commitments. By filtering everything through empirical verification, secular Buddhism risks diluting a sophisticated plural system of knowledge into something narrowly psychological. And in the process of doing so, it may project modern assumptions/ ideals back onto a tradition that never shared them.

There is also the issue of selective extraction. Secular Buddhism places strong emphasis on things like mindfulness and suffering reduction while discarding esoteric rituals, cosmology, monastic discipline, aswell as other types of devotional practices. I would argue that this creates a kind of ‘consumer Buddhism’ where practices are taken out of their ethical and institutional context and reassembled for individual benefit in a ‘spiritual marketplace’ model. The danger here is not just cultural appropriation, but rather functional distortion. Practises that originally existed within a tightly integrated ethical path face the risk of becoming tools for stress reduction or self-optimisation.

Lastly, in order to be a Buddhist one must take refuge in the three jewels: The Buddha, The Dharma, and the Sangha. Secular Buddhism is incompatible with the very foundational pillars of Buddhism as it does not comply with these three.

People usually follow with the same question: What about respect, trust, gratitude, compassion or understanding? But I do not see these as qualities separate from love. I believe real love naturally encompasses all of them. Respect is an expression of love. Compassion is an expression of love. Forgiveness, kindness, patience, and understanding all emerge from the same source.

When these qualities are absent, I do not think we are witnessing love in its fullest form. We may be witnessing attachment, fear, dependency, addiction or a distorted idea of love. What strikes me is that people who experience this distorted version of love often experience life through the same distortion. They approach relationships, people, and even themselves through fear rather than openness and grace.

Perhaps this is because love is not merely an emotion. It is our essence.

To love is to remember who we are beneath fear and ego. Whenever we choose compassion or understanding, we are not creating love but returning to it. Love is not separate from life. It is woven into its very nature and essence.

This is why I see romantic love as one expression of a much greater reality. The love I feel for a partner is expressed differently from the love I feel for my family, yet I believe they arise from the same source. The forms and expressions differ, but the essence remains exactly the same.

This is also why I believe unconditional love is often misunderstood. Loving someone unconditionally does not mean abandoning yourself or excusing harmful behavior. Love does not require you to sacrifice your integrity or prevent someone from facing the consequences of their actions. Sometimes the most loving response is to let accountability unfold while continuing to hold compassion in your heart. Love can be unconditional without being without boundaries.

I also struggle with statements like, “If they loved you, they would” These reduce love to a series of actions and expectations. While actions may certainly reflect and carry love, they are not love itself. I believe that love is not a transaction or a performance, it is a way of being.

Perhaps that is why I have always answered the question the same way.

Is love enough?

If by love we mean attachment or desire, then no. But if by love we mean the deepest essence of who we are, the source from which all qualities such and respect, compassion, forgiveness and understanding naturally arise, then I cannot think of anything more complete and enough.

Looking back accountability felt impossible because acknowledging the consequences of my actions required a calm, stable presence I did not possess. There is something deeply paradoxical about suffering, because while it often narrows your world until all you can see is your own pain, it can also prevent you from seeing the pain you create in others. It was not that I lacked a conscience. It was that I lacked the strength to look directly at what my pain had become.

I am not sure whether it was a single momentary revelation or if it happend over the course of time but once i truly had to look at my suffering, the most remarkable thing was not that I finally understood the consequences of my actions, but that my suffering itself changed shape. The pain that had once consumed me slowly ceased to be the source of my anguish. Instead, I found myself suffering because of what that initial (almost imagined) suffering had left behind. The original wound had not disappeared, but it had transformed by something heavier which was the grief of realizing how many people I had hurt, how many opportunities I had squandered, how many versions of myself I had abandoned, and how many moments I wished I could gather back into my hands and live differently.

It was as though my life had divided itself into two chapters. In the first, I suffered because of a suffering that was all in my head. In the second, I suffered because I had wounded others and most importantly myself while trying to survive the first.

That second suffering was infinitely harder to bear. I felt so lonely and the burden of responsibility felt so heavy that I wanted to dissappear completely.

I despised myself with relentless devotion I once mistook for morality. I searched a witness to my suffering for all these years, thinking that my pain would be numbed if someone saw and understood it. But it was never enough, no one understood enough. I selfishly wanted more and more attention.

I do not know if i was searching for absolution but know I was searching for someone who could save me from my own mind.

The irony, which I can only appreciate now, is that there were people all around me trying to help in their own way. They offered compassion where I believed only intense self-punishment was appropriate. They extended grace that I refused to extend to myself. Yet I remained relentless in my self-deprecation because I had quietly come to believe that my suffering itself was evidence of my sincerity. How laughable. I thought that if I stopped condemning myself, it would mean I no longer cared about the people I had hurt, as though guilt were the final proof that love had existed at all.

Lord Buddha teaches that attachment is one of the roots of suffering, but we often imagine attachment only in relation to things we badly desire. We forget that we can become equally attached to our shame and the identities we construct around them. I had become attached to the story of myself as someone beyond redemption. I carried guilt as though it were an ethical obligation, never once realising that I had mistaken self-annihilation for true accountability.

True accountability asks us to look directly at the suffering we have caused without turning away. Self-hatred asks us to keep looking until we can no longer see anything else. One is an act of courage. The other is simply another form of egotistical delusion that blinds us.

Lord Buddha taught that karma is not punishment but the unfolding of causes and conditions. I cannot undo the causes I set into motion, nor can I erase the suffering they created, but I can refuse to create new suffering by chaining myself eternally to an identity that no longer allows for transformation. Remorse was meant to awaken us, not imprison.

Perhaps that is what forgiveness has always been asking of me, not to forget the past, nor to excuse it, but to stop mistaking my capacity to cause suffering for the entirety of who I am and who I want to become. I am learning to love and embrace myself in my entirety.

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