• The Applied Chan Teachings of Master Lin-Chi

    The Applied Chan Teachings of Master Lin-Chi

    It is often said in Chan literature that there are 84,000 doors to the practice and 84,000 obstructions. The door that resonates with my practice are the teachings of Master Lin-Chi. “Teachings” is a misnomer, however, as there is nothing to teach and no one to learn. 
  • Conceptions of Compassion in Buddhism
By Jennifer Goetz

    Conceptions of Compassion in Buddhism By Jennifer Goetz

    In Buddhism,  compassion  is the wish for others to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. It is based on appreciating other people’s feelings, especially when we’ve gone through the same ordeal. Even if we’ve never experienced what they’re going through, we can put ourselves in their shoes and feel how awful it must be. Imagining how much we'd want to be free of it, we strongly yearn for others to be free as well.
  • Moral discipline

    Moral discipline

     It is necessary to see what is meant by the term moral discipline in general. This word indicates the distinction between right and wrong or good and evil in relation to actions, volitions and character. A moral sense is said to mean the power to understand the difference between right and wrong especially when viewed as an innate quality of the human mind, which is described as the moral faculty.Moral concepts are terms involving ethical praise or blame, concerned with virtue and vice or rules of right conduct. Here, moral virtue is distinct from intellectual virtue just as moral laws are different from legal and institutional laws. Other aspects of moral discipline include moral rights, moral force, moral responsibility, moral courage, moral behaviour and moral victory.
  • Giving - The Key To Good Fortune

    Giving - The Key To Good Fortune

      “Then again, a certain person makes a gift to an ascetic or a brahmin, offering him food … or lighting. He now hears of the long life, the beauty, and the great happiness of the devas of Brahmā’s company, and he wishes to be reborn among them. He sets his mind on that thought, keeps to it firmly, and fosters it. This thought of his aims at what is low, and if not developed to what is higher, it will lead him to just such a rebirth. After his death, when his body breaks up, he will be reborn among the devas of Brahmā’s company. This, however, I declare only for the morally pure, not for the immoral; only for one free of lust, not for one who is lustful. Because he is without lust, monks, the heart’s desire of the morally pure succeeds.
  • Merit: The Key To Good Fortune

    Merit: The Key To Good Fortune

    The text proposes an interesting twofold distinction of the Dhamma Jewel: among all conditioned things (dhammā saṅkhatā), the Noble Eightfold Path is supreme; among all things conditioned or unconditioned (dhammā saṅkhatā vā asaṅkhatā vā), Nibbāna is supreme. Merely having confidence in the Three Jewels, that is, reverential trust and devotion toward them, is itself a basis of merit; but as the verses attached to the sutta make clear, the Buddha and the Saṅgha additionally function as the recipients of gifts, and in this role they further enable donors to acquire merit leading to the fulfillment of their virtuous wishes. More will be said about this aspect of merit just below.
  • The Law of Kamma

    The Law of Kamma

     “Thus, student, the way that leads to short life makes people short-lived, the way that leads to long life makes people long-lived; the way that leads to sickliness makes people sickly, the way that leads to health makes people healthy; the way that leads to ugliness makes people ugly, the way that leads to beauty makes people beautiful; the way that leads to being uninfluential makes people uninfluential, the way that leads to being influential makes people influential; the way that leads to poverty makes people poor, the way that leads to wealth makes people wealthy; the way that leads to low birth makes people low born, the way that leads to high birth makes people high born; the way that leads to stupidity makes people stupid, the way that leads to wisdom makes people wise. “Beings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior.”
  • The Community

    The Community

    The Nikāyas concisely organize the types of merit into three “bases of meritorious deeds” (puññakiriyavatthu): giving, moral discipline, and meditation. Text V(...) connects the bases of merit with the types of rebirth to  which they lead. In the Indian religious context, the practice of meritorious deeds revolves around faith in certain objects regarded as sacred and spiritually empowering, capable of serving as a support for the acquisition of merit. For followers of the Buddha’s teaching these are the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha. Text (V...) extols these as each supreme in its particular sphere: the Buddha is supreme among persons, the Dhamma among teachings, and the Saṅgha among religious communities. The text proposes an interesting twofold distinction of the Dhamma Jewel: among all conditioned things (dhammā saṅkhatā), the Noble Eightfold Path is supreme; among all things conditioned or unconditioned (dhammā saṅkhatā vā asaṅkhatā vā), Nibbāna is supreme. Merely having confidence in the Three Jewels, that is, reverential trust and devotion toward them, is itself a basis of merit; but as the verses attached to the sutta make clear, the Buddha and the Saṅgha additionally function as the recipients of gifts, and in this role they further enable donors to acquire merit leading to the fulfillment of their virtuous wishes. More will be said about this aspect of merit just below
  • The Family

    The Family

    Then the Blessed One spoke thus: “If, householders, both wife and husband wish to be in one another’s sight so long as this life lasts and in the future life as well, they should have the same faith, the same moral discipline, the same generosity, the same wisdom; then they will be in one another’s sight so long as this life lasts and in the future life as well.”
  • The Happiness visible in this Present Life

    The Happiness visible in this Present Life

    As the king of the Dhamma, the Buddha takes up the task of promoting the true good, welfare, and happiness of the world. He does so by teaching the people of the world how to live in accordance with the Dhamma and behave in such a way that they can attain realization of the same liberating, Dhamma that he realized through his enlightenment. The Pāli commentaries demonstrate the broad scope of the Dhamma by distinguishing three types of benefit that the Buddha’s teaching is intended to promote, graded hierarchically according to their relative merit: Welfare and happiness directly visible in this present life (diṭṭha-dhamma-hitasukha), attained by fulfilling one’s moral commitments and social responsibilities; Welfare and happiness pertaining to the next life (samparāyika-hitasukha), attained by engaging in meritorious deeds; .  T he ultimate good or supreme goal (paramattha), Nibbāna, final release from the cycle of rebirths, attained by developing the Noble Eightfold Path.
  • The Visible Origin And Passing Away of Suffering

    The Visible Origin And Passing Away of Suffering

    The Buddha says that his teaching is about suffering and the cessation of suffering. This statement does not mean that the Dhamma is concerned only with our experience of suffering in the present life, but it does imply that we can use our present experience, backed by intelligent observation, as a criterion for determining what is beneficial and what detrimental to our spiritual progress. Our most insistent existential demand, springing up deep within us, is the need for freedom from harm, sorrow, and distress; or, positively stated, the need to achieve well-being and happiness
» Buddhism in VietNam
Filling the Emptiness with Love at the Duc Son Orphanage
The open fields of Thuy Bang village offer a refreshing change from the busy traffic and the crowds of tourists one can find just 7 kilometres north of the village in the city of Hue in Central Vietnam. Up a little side road lined with huge shady trees you can find the Duc Son Pagoda. Inside the compound stands a sprawling Bodhi tree, which provides shade and a cool place for a break in the summer heat. It was at the foot of this tree that head nun Thich Nu Minh Tu found baby Tranh, wrapped in a blanket, cold and hungry. Barely two weeks old, the chances of baby Tranh surviving were low. But Thich Nu Minh Tu did not give up. Today, the sight of Thanh sleeping soundly in her crib warms the heart. Nursed by the nuns’ tender care and love, Thanh is now a healthy 3 month old baby.
» Media
Secret Tibetan Book of the Dead | History Channel Documentary
Bardo Thodol: The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State, it is often referred to in the West by the more casual title, Tibetan Book of the Dead, a name which draws a parallel with the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, another funerary text. The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, during the interval between death and the next rebirth. This interval is known in Tibetan as the bardo. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death, and rituals to undertake when death is closing in, or has taken place. It is the most internationally famous and widespread work of Tibetan Nyingma literature. According to Tibetan tradition, the Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State was composed in the 8th century by Padmasambhava, written down by his primary student, Yeshe Tsogyal, buried in the Gampo hills in central Tibet and subsequently discovered by a Tibetan terton, Karma Lingpa, in the 14th century.[7][8] There were variants of the book among different sects.[9] The Tibetan Book of the Dead was first published in 1927 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz chose this title because of the parallels he found with the Egyptian Book of the Dead.[10] The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State is recited by Tibetan Buddhist lamas over a dying or recently deceased person, or sometimes over an effigy of the deceased. The name means literally "liberation through hearing in the intermediate state".
Xuân Nhâm Thìn
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