End-of-year decalogue

1. Don't hate anyone. Fight hatred with reflection: behind every action that arouses hatred there is ignorance and unawareness.

2. Do not cultivate anger, resentment, irritation and other negative states. Consider yourself and your mind as a garden to take care of. When a negative state arises, become aware of it, identify it, distance it from you ('I feel anger'), analyse it ('my anger comes from...') and then lay it outside the garden ('I will not allow my anger to make me worse').

3. Do not feed narcissism. Consider that you will soon be dead and no one will know anything about you.

4. If you cannot love others, at least be kind to them. If you cannot love yourself, at least be kind to yourself.

5. Take care of your body: don't eat too much, walk as much as you can.

6. Avoid chatter. Speak little, say the essentials. Cultivate silence.

7. Sit next to your death. Stop running away from what constitutes you.

8. Look neither backward nor forward. Settle here and now.

9. Do not look down on anyone, do not look up at anyone.

10. Cultivate irony. It is freedom from the world.