Blessed is He.

BLESSED IS HIS BIRTH.
BLESSED IS THE TEACHING OF THE WAY.
BLESSED IS THE UNDERSTANDING AMONG THOSE
WHO FOLLOW IT.
AND BLESSED IS THEIR DETERMINATION.
AND BLESSED ARE THEY WHO REVERE
THE MAN WHO AWAKES AND FOLLOWS THE WAY.
THEY ARE FREE FROM FEAR.
THEY ARE FREE.
THEY HAVE CROSSED OVER THE RIVER OF SORROW.

To meet a buddha is rare. To take refuge in a buddha is even more rare. To follow, to live out the teachings of a buddha is even more rare. Hence Buddha says: BLESSED IS HIS BIRTH. BLESSED IS THE TEACHING OF THE WAY. A man who one day becomes a buddha, even his birth is blessed. His coming into the world is a blessing to the world, to himself and to others too. BLESSED IS THE TEACHING OF THE WAY. And then spontaneously he starts teaching; it is a sharing. He has come home and he starts calling others who are still wandering in the darkness.

BLESSED IS THE UNDERSTANDING AMONG THOSE WHO FOLLOW IT. And not only the buddha is blessed: blessed are those too who follow it. AND BLESSED IS THEIR DETERMINATION. And blessed is the commitment, the involvement of following the way, the dhamma.

AND BLESSED ARE THEY WHO REVERE THE MAN WHO AWAKES AND FOLLOWS THE WAY. THEY ARE FREE FROM FEAR. THEY ARE FREE.

To be free from fear is to be free. To be free from fear you need to be free from desire. Desire keeps you afraid. Desire keeps you always wavering: "Whether it is going to happen or not? Whether I am going to make it this time or not?" If you succeed you are afraid -- somebody will take it away from you. If you succeed in accumulating riches you are worried, afraid: you can be robbed, they can be stolen. If you don't succeed you are constantly in fear that "I am not of any worth." You fall in your own eyes, you are trembling. To be free from desire is to be free from fear.
Then one lives in the moment; neither the past is one's concern nor the future. How can there be any fear? And Buddha defines freedom as freedom from fear.

THEY HAVE CROSSED OVER THE RIVER OF SORROW. Life unexamined, unobserved, unenlightened, is nothing but a river of sorrow -- and we are all drowning in it. There is only one boat to get to the other shore. The name of the boat is awareness.........