The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings: Chapters 1 - 3

Chapter 1

• If we go to the Buddha with our hearts open, he will look at us, his eyes filled with compassion and say, "Because there is suffering in your heart, it is possible for you to enter my heart." 
• Suffering is the basic condition for us to enter the Buddha's heart and for the Buddha to enter our hearts. 
• "I teach only suffering and the transformation of suffering".
• Suffering is how we can become free. 
• The ocean of suffering is immense, but if you turn around, you can see the land. 
• Don't let your suffering (pain) imprison you. 
• Once the door of awareness has been opened, you cannot close it. 
• The Buddha called suffering a 'Holy Truth'.

Chapter 2

• "I have seen deeply that nothing can be by itself alone, that everything has to inter-be with everything else."
• If you destroy your health, you have no energy left to realise the (Eightfold) Path. Be free from austerity *reduced availability of luxuries and consumer goods* and avoid sense pleasures (sexual desire, running after fame, eating immoderately, sleeping too much, chasing after possessions).

Chapter 3 - The Four Noble Truths.

• The Buddha had found perfect awakening (the water) but he had to discover jars like the Four Noble Truths  and the Eightfold Bath to hold it.

1. We have to embrace suffering  and look deeply into it for it to be 'holy'.
2. After we touch our suffering, we need to look deeply into it to see how it came to be.
3. Refrain from doing the things that make us suffer. We can be happy. Healing is possible.
4. We need the Path the most - refraining from suffering.