There are some who have never stolen things, killed or hurt anyone; rather, they have kept their vows and practiced virtue. Yet, they often seem to be less fortunate than others in many aspects. Such cases tend to make people wonder, “If karma was true, why should good people run into bad luck?” Lay practitioners who do not have in-depth knowledge of karma or fully understand the viewpoints of Abhidharma-kosha-shastra may ask the same question. Some would even say, “I have attended many pujas and read so many scriptures. I should not have to suffer this or that illness or misfortune.” This is a wrong view. The fact is that all the virtuous actions committed have been stored in our alaya consciousness. It is due to the relevant conditions not yet matured that karma derived from those actions has not come to fruition. This is like a farmer who sowed all his grains in the springtime and must wait five to six months for the harvest. In the meantime, he is just a poor fellow with nothing left to eat at home. Some people may question, “You have toiled hard every day, tilling the land. Why don’t you have any food to eat?” Question like this is pointless. Everyone knows that there is a waiting period between sowing and harvesting.The reason why he has no food now is because he did not plough the land properly last year to reap a bumper harvest this year. His hard working this year would not have directly affected that outcome in any way. Similarly, attending pujas or liberating animals would not have any direct impact on the pain and misfortune we suffer now as those are the manifestations of the ripening of past negative karma.

We should not think of burning incense and doing prostration as being mundane, whereas listening to the teachings of Madhyamaka or the Great Perfection is supramundane. The distinction between the two is simply not about form.

Take the example of offering butter lamp to the Three Jewels. Given the same object of offering, act of offering and person who offers, the practice will be deemed mundane when renunciation is not generated and the purpose of the offering is to obtain worldly benefits like health, longevity, job promotion, wealth and so on, or a favorable rebirth. Conversely, offering lamp out of true renunciation and to seek liberation from samsara will be considered a supramundane practice. Therefore, the gauge for distinguishing the mundane from the supramundane is no other than whether one has renounced worldly pursuits or not.

If people ask: What is Buddhadharma? Answer: It is wisdom and compassion. What is learning Buddhism about? It is to learn wisdom and compassion.

With bodhicitta, many problems related to practice could be easily solved since bodhicitta has within itself the incredible capacity for accumulating merit, forgiving and purifying evil karma and so forth. Thus, bodhicitta is regarded as the indispensable universal key for the entrance of Mahayana Buddhism.

We should know all suffering comes from attachment to self-love. Because of this attachment, we create negative karma for self-interest and suffer painful retributions. When we come upon suffering, we do not understand it is of our own doing; we place the blame on others and develop hatred; with hatred, more bad karma is created. The result of this perpetual cycle of enmity is that we cannot extricate ourselves from samsara. If we want to be free of suffering, we must change our ways. From now on, we should help, love, and support all sentient beings with no ego attached.

- Quote from Are You Ready For Happiness? Don't Let the Paper Tiger Scare You Off, "How to Face Suffering"

An analogy used by Maitreya Bodhisattva in the Uttaratantra Shastra aptly defines the Four Noble Truths. When treating any illness, doctors need to take four steps: 1) to ascertain the nature of the illness; 2) to eliminate the cause of the illness, since it would be ineffective to treat only the symptoms; 3) to prescribe remedies; 4) to heal. All doctors must go through this four-step process to treat an illness. Not knowing the cause of the illness, the doctor cannot prescribe a cure. Even knowing the cause of the illness but having no suitable medicine or the requisite pharmacological knowledge, or worse, giving the wrong prescription, the doctor will still be rendered ineffective. Nevertheless, everything that is concerned with treating a patient starts with identifying the cause of the illness. The Four Noble Truths also correspond to the four steps of treating an illness. The nature of suffering is what to be ascertained, the origin of suffering to be eliminated; the path leading to the cessation of suffering is what to be practiced (prescription), the cessation of suffering to be attained (cure).

- Quote from The Right View, "The Four Noble Truths—the Path Out of Samsara"

Mind “free of clinging and concepts” means emptiness, the void nature of all phenomena. Most of you may not have realized emptiness, but there is no need to be anxious. Once you have generated renunciation and bodhicitta, realization of emptiness can be rather easy to accomplish after all. Conversely, trying to realize emptiness without cultivating renunciation and bodhicitta first will be like making rice out of sand.

To use another analogy, it will be easier to harvest when seeds are sown in springtime. Whereas in wintertime, due to a lack of the requisite conditions, seeds sown in this season may not yield any crop no matter how much effort has been made. That is to say, when all the necessary conditions are in place and ripe for happening, things will naturally take their courses as wished.

The standard set in the texts regarding actual practice, say, the practice of the six paramitas, is to do it while realizing at all times the empty nature of all phenomena. For example, when releasing life of other beings, one should realize that the person who releases (oneself), the beings released and the act of releasing are all without self-nature and hence illusory like dreams. That is, the action performed is free of the concept of a doer, an object and an action. This constitutes the second of the Three Supreme Methods.

Using the logic and reasoning in the Middle Way, we can gain certainty in the view that the world is illusory and that all phenomena lack inherent existence. When we are in a dream and dream of becoming a high official and having a lot of money, the experience is not unlike in real life; however, when we wake up, we realize everything in the dream is unreal. Similarly, even though we are now a high official or a tycoon in real life, we will one day realize this too is a dream. The difference between real life and a dream is only in length of time; there is no difference in their basic nature.

- Quote from Are You Ready For Happiness? Don't Let the Paper Tiger Scare You Off, "How to Face Happiness"

Nowadays many lay practitioners make it a habit to chant Buddha’s name, burn incense, do prostrations and so forth every day. But please ask yourselves honestly why you do all these. Is it to gain health and longevity for this or next life and to make sure not going to the hell realm? If so, nothing that you do will ever free you from samsara, not if you practice for one hundred, one thousand, or even ten thousand years. Good karma resulted from this kind of motivation cannot be made the cause of liberation. Neither can it yield the fruit of liberation when matured. To practice with such intentions will not result in much virtuous karma other than some temporal benefits like health and long life, or avoiding rebirth in the hell realm.

- Quote from The Right View, "The Three Supreme Methods"