Thank you for sharing this!

Your mind is like water. When the surface is perfectly calm you can see a crystal clear reflection of the environment. When the surface is disturbed the image blurs and/or disappears all together.

Also, I would add at the end that right actions/results produce peace of mind and right thoughts. The process starts over, repeats, accumulates and can be a self reinforcing upward spiral if you keep at it.

Haha. My childhood best friend's older brothers were always going on about this book. They rode bikes, of course.

This is fiction, borrowing from the teachings of the Buddha. People will argue with words rather than experiment and see for themselves if it is true.

Values are simply whatever is important to me. That's really what it all boils down to. How does one end up with the values one has? Well, that would be a worthy dissertation.

This world is messed up. Living here is the first barrier to peace of mind. After that, it goes downhill.

And the "right" thoughts are???

A peace of mind that is vapid creates no right values. Whatever this means (I doubt it is anything other than a platitude), it means something different from what Camus said, and what Camus said is far more valuable than this, in my peacefully humble opinion:

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”

You have to be able to look at the reality and understand it first. Achieving "peace of mind" isn't going to help us. But in order to understand the reality clearly, I agree that we must try to free ourselves from the emotional baggages that tie us down.

I'm not copping to anything but if I did act on what I consider to be my "right" thoughts I could end up in jail and on several shit lists. Serenity? Peace of mind? Not likely. I would say more but on advise from my attorney I'll take the fifth.....

it means think right, do right, work. it's a nice thought. thoughts like that do wobble on their platform of everyone's agreeing what "right" is and everyone's caring what "right" is. it is also the antithesis of "the best laid plans of mice and men...."

g

Ohferpetessake...if I do not have "right thoughts" (defined as...? By....?) I am doomed to misery?

Whatever you want it to.
This kind of stuff is really subjective.

As the quote gives no definition for "right", it means nothing.

It means nothing to me.

so what if my intentions are good, the result of my action is bad?
if the only job I can find is working in a slaughterhouse is that right employment?
if I have a dangerous job and I lied to my mother to to keep her from worrying is that right speech?

I think you could change the order of all these elements and it would end up making as much sense: " Right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produces right actions. Right actions produce peace of mind. Peace of mind produces work which will..."
Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage... If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. -- Dhammapada

Yes but what is it meant by right speech. is lying and inherently wrong?
if I lie to spare someone's feelings have they done a service or a disservice?