Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

“You are responsible for all of your experiences of life.”

This statement is absolutely true but it is somewhat of a trick. The trick is that it does not say “in life” but “of life.” You are not responsible for everything that happens to you, but you are responsible for how you react to what does happen to you. The formula is that, “Life acts. You react.” Your reaction is under your control. In any life situation you are always responsible for at least one thing. You are always responsible for the attitude towards the situation in which you find yourself. Your attitude is your reaction to what life hands you. You can have either a more positive or a more negative attitude. Your attitude is under your control and can be changed. With the right attitude you can be a resilient person.

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the Tiananmen Square massacre (referred to in China as the June 4 Incident, to avoid confusion with two other Tiananmen Square protests) were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) beginning on April 14. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.

The protests were sparked by the death of a pro-market, pro-democracy, and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang, whom protesters wanted to mourn. By the eve of Hu’s funeral, 1,000,000 people had gathered on the Tiananmen square. The protests lacked a unified cause or leadership; participants included disillusioned Communist Party members and Trotskyists as well as free market reformers, who were generally against the government’s authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which remained peaceful throughout the protests.

1. Life means suffering.
2. The origin of suffering is attachment.
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.
4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

President Barack Obama will likely announce a nominee within days to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Assistant Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin said on Sunday.

“I’ve been told it is likely to come this week, but I don’t know which day,” Durbin told NBC’s “Meet the Press” as the president entered a fourth week of considering possibilities.

Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl, on “Fox News Sunday,” admitted his party lacks the votes to block the pending nominee with a procedural hurdle in the Democratic-led Senate.

But Kyl also made clear Obama’s pick will face plenty of questions. “Undoubtedly this nominee will be liberal,” said Kyl, a conservative.

Obama has been mulling a short list of mostly women for a seat on the nine-member, male-dominated high court, which decides abortion, death penalty and civil rights cases as well as ones involving business and property rights.

The pick is unlikely to change the ideological makeup of the nation’s highest court since Obama, a Democrat, is expected to select a liberal in the mold of Souter, who announced his resignation on May  1^st.

The law of karma states that there is a connection between the moral quality, the level of skill in volitional actions, and the resulting states. What we are is determined largely by what we thought, said and did in the past, while what we are thinking, saying, and doing now will form our future. The karma of past, present, and future events are connected by the law of cause and effect. For instance, if one generates bad karma by hurting or killing sentient beings, one will have to endure the negative consequences of these deeds in this or another lifetime. Similarly, if one generates good karma by observing the precepts, positive consequences will follow inevitably. Buddhists understand karma as a natural law. There is no higher instance, no judgement, no divine intervention, and no gods that steer man’s destiny, but only the law of karma itself, which works on a global time frame. Deeds yield consequences either in the next second, in the next hour, day, month, year, decade, or even in the next lifetime, or in another distant lifetime.

To make this more intelligible, one has to account for (un)wholesome actions and (un)wholesome states and their respective meaning in Buddhism. The former is outlined in the Noble Eightfold Path. Action springs from volition, which springs from intention, which springs from thought, and so forth. The quality of actions can be described in ethical terms, simply as either good or bad, or both good and bad, or indifferent.

There are various grades of ethical qualities; and most people have an intuitive understanding that enables them to discern between good and bad, although the discerning ability depends on the person’s state of mental development. A wise person at a high level of mental development can clearly discern mental activities and actions in an ethical dimension, while a deluded person has difficulties or is even unable to do so.

Phil Mickelson’s wife, Amy, has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and the three-time major champion said Wednesday he will suspend his PGA Tour schedule indefinitely. According to a release from Mickelson’s management company, his wife was to have more tests but begin treatment with major surgery as early as the next two weeks. Mickelson, the No. 2 player in the world with 36 career PGA Tour victories, was to play the Byron Nelson Championship this week before defending his title next week at Colonial. It was not certain if Mickelson would return in time for the U.S. Open on June 18-21 at Bethpage Black in New York, where he was a runner-up in 2002 and is beloved by golf fans in the New York area.

Karma is a Sanskrit word that literally means “action”. The word is used to refer to volitional acts as well as the forces that arise from these acts. The idea of karma had existed in ancient Indian philosophy before the time of Siddhartha Gautama, and it became an important element of Buddhist philosophy.

The Hindu and Buddhist concepts of karma are quite similar, although Hinduism makes a further distinction between different types of karma, such as present karma, latent karma, and future karma. In the understanding of both thought systems, the law of karma describes the connection between actions and the resulting forces, as follows: wholesome actions lead to wholesome states while unwholesome actions lead to unwholesome states, individually as well as collectively.