Buddhism As Education

The Most Venerable Hai Tao will be coming over to Palme Gon Buddhist Society, Butterworth on this Sunday 2nd December 2012 from 3.00 pm to 10.00 pm as part of his annual Dharma tour to Penang. During his one-day programme here Ven. Hai Tao will conduct various prayer, mantra and Dharma lectures, follow by fire offerings and animal liberation. The Dharma programme will be held at the society's premises at 19 Jalan Sentral 4, Taman Sentral, Bagan Lallang, 13400 Butterworth, Penang, while the liberation would be carried out at the riverside in front of the premises. For more information, you may contact 017-2887278, 013-5911811, 012-4278987 or 012-5250918. All Buddhist devotees are most welcomed to this meritorious event. May you be well and happy.

Those just beginning often wonder what practice is. Practice occurs when you try opposing the defilements, not feeding old habits. where friction and difficulty arise, that is the place to work. When you pick mushrooms to eat, you do not do so blindly, you have to know which kind and what. So too with our practice, we must know the dangers, the snakes bite of defilements, in order to free ourselves from them. The defilements - greed, hatred and delusion are at the root of our suffering and our selfishness. We must learn to overcome them, to conquer and go beyond their control, to become masters of our minds. Of course it seems hard. It is like having the Buddha tell you to split up a friend you have known since childhood. The defilements are like a tiger. We should imprison the tiger in a good strong cage made of mindfulness, energy, patience and endurance. Then we can let it starve to death by not feeding its habitual desires. We do not have to take a knife and butcher it. ...

Today, Drupon Samten Rinpoche held a chanting session for the liberation of fish into the river in front of the Palme Gon Buddhist Society premises. After the liberation, the passing of merits was also conducted in order to ease the suffering of the wandering spirits, as well as for the benefit of all beings.

One develops right understanding by seeing impermanence, suffering and not-self in everything, which leads to detachment and loss of infatuation. Detachment is not aversion. An aversion to something we once liked is temporary. Imagine some food that you like - bamboo shoots or sweet curry, for example. Imagine having it everyday for five to six years; you would get tired or fed up with bamboo shoots. If someone were to offer you some, you would not get exited anymore. In the same way, we should see impermanence, suffering and emptiness in all things at all times i.e. bamboo shoots. We seek not for life of pleasure but to find peace. Peace is within oneself, to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where your experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. To try to run away from suffering is actually to run towards it. Investigate suffering, see its causes and put an end...

Drupon Samten Rinpoche has conducted the Achi Prayer and Smoke Puja at Palme Gon Buddhist Society, Butterworth today.

Venerable Drupon Samten Rinpoche from the United States is now in Butterworth, Penang and his stay here is currently being hosted by the Palme Gon Buddhist Society, Penang situated at No. 19 Jalan Sentral 4, Taman Sentral, Bagan Lallang, 13400 Butterworth. During his stay at Palme Gon Buddhist Society, Drupon Samten Rinpoche will conduct series of Dharma programmes confirmed as follows: 11 November 2012 - 0800 pm 35 Buddha Prayer 12 November 2012 - 0800 pm Achi Prayer and Smoke Puja 13 November 2012 - 0800 pm Chod Offering 14 November 2012 - 0700 pm Liberation and Chenrizig Recitation 15 November 2012 - 0800 pm Lama Chopa Drupon Samten Rinpoche is currently the Spiritual Director of the Tibetan Meditation Centre situated in Escondido, California, United States. Prior to his stint in California, Samten Rinpoche had also served in various meditation centres in Washington DC, Florida and San Francisco since 1987. Drupon Samten Rinpoche was born in Ladakh, India and at the a...

A wandering ascetic, having heard of the Buddha, travelled everywhere looking for him. One night, he came to stay in a house where the Buddha was also residing but not knowing the Buddha's physical appearance, the ascetic was clearly unaware of the Buddha's presence. The next morning, he arose and continued his journey to search for the Buddha no knowing that he was in his neighbourhood the whole night. To search for peace and enlightenment without correct understanding is like this. Due to lack of understanding of the truth of suffering and its elimination, all subsequent factors on the path will be wrong i.e. wrong intentions, wrong speech, wrong actions and wrong practice of concentration and tranquillity. You likes and dislikes are not a trustworthy guide in this matter either, although foolish people may take them for their ultimate reference. Alas, it is like travelling to a certain town, you unknowingly start out on the wrong road and since it is a convenient on...

Many people who have studied on a university level and attained graduate degrees and worldly success find that their lives are still lacking. Though they think high thoughts and are intellectually sophisticated, their hearts are still filled with pettiness and doubt. The vulture flies high, but what does it feed on? Dharma is understanding that goes beyond the conditioned, compounded, limited understanding of worldly science. Of course, worldly wisdom can be used for good purpose, but progress in worldly wisdom can cause deterioration in religion and moral values. The most important thing is to develop super mundane wisdom that can use such technology while remaining detached from it. It is necessary to teach the basics first, i.e. basic morality, seeing the transitory of life, the facts of aging and death. Here is where we must start. Before you drive a car or ride a bicycle, you must learn to walk. Later, you may ride in an air plane or travel around the world in the blink of ...

The Buddha does not want us to follow the double path - desire and indulgence on the one hand and fear and aversion on the other side. Just be aware of pleasure, he teaches. anger, fear, dissatisfaction are not the path of the yogi but the path of the worldly people. The tranquil person walks the Middle Path of right practice, leaving grasping on the left and fear and aversion on the right. One who undertakes the path of practice must follow this Middle Way i.e. "I will not take interest in pleasure or pain. I will lay them down". But, of course, it is hard at first. It is as though we are being kicked on both sides. Like a cowbell or a pendulum, we are knocked back and forth. When the Buddha preached his first sermon, he discoursed on these two extremes because this is where attachment lies. The desire for happiness kicks from one side; suffering and dissatisfaction kick from the other. these two are always besieging us all the time. But when you walk the Middle Path,...

The methodologies for transcendence are varied: meditation, prayer, devotion, yoga, fasting, even psychotropic drugs. In the long run, the ones that are the most useful will be the ones that can be integrated into daily life wit the minimum amount of dependence on external circumstances or internal ideology. Then, the method will be applicable to a wide range of people and it will not become the source of a more stressful mental activity, such is the spiritual alignment that the Buddha called "Dharma" and which he described as: Directly accessible, not bound up with any special events or times, encouraging interests and open mindedness (rather than belief), furthering and deepening, to be realized directly in one's experience through wisdom (rather than induced by another). Dharma supports and is supported by practices such as careful reflective thinking, cultivation of kindness and compassion to oneself and others, calming the mind in meditation and gaining transc...

What can we do when we have hurt people and now they cannot consider us to be their enemy? These people might be those in our family, in our community or in another country. We think you know the answer. There are few things to do. The first thing is to take the time to say, "I am sorry, I hurt you out of my ignorance, out of my lack of mindfulness, out of my lack of skillfulness. I will try my best to change myself. I don't dare to say anything more onto you". Sometimes, we do not have the intention to hurt, but because we are not mindful or skillful enough, we hurt someone. Being mindful in our daily life is important, speaking in a way that will not hurt anyone. The second thing to do is to try bring out the best part in ourselves, the part of the flower, to transform ourselves. That is the only way to demonstrate what you have just said. when you have become fresh and pleasant, the other person will notice very soon. Then, when there is a chance to approach t...

Millions of people follow sports. If you love to watch soccer or baseball, you probably look for one team and identify yourself with them. You may watch the games with despair and elation. Perhaps, you will give a little kick or swing to help the ball along. If you do not take sides, the fun is certainly missing. In wars, we also pick sides, usually the side that is being threatened. Peace movements are born of this feeling. We get angry, we shout, but rarely do we rise above all this to look at a conflict the way a mother would, who is watching her two children fighting. She seeks only for their reconciliation. In order to fight each other, the chicks born from the same mother hen put colours on their faces. Putting colours on our own face is to make ourselves stranger to our own brothers and sisters. We can only shoot each other when they are strangers. Real efforts for reconciliation arise when we see with the eyes of compassion and that ability comes when we clearly see that...

Nature is our mother. Because we live cut off from her, we get sick. Some of us live in boxes called apartments, very high above the ground. Around us are only cement, metal and hard things like that. Our fingers do not have a chance to touch the soil; we do not grow lettuce any more. Because we are so distant from our mother earth, we become sick. That is why we need to go out from time to time and be in nature. It is very important, we and our children should be in touch again with mother earth. IN many cities, we cannot see trees, the colour green is entirely absent from our view. We could imagine, one day, a city where there was only one tree left. The tree was still beautiful but very much alone, surrounded by buildings, in the centre of the city. Many people were getting sick and most doctors did not know how to deal with the illness. But one very good doctor knew the causes of the sickness and gave this prescription to each patient: "Every day, take the bus and go ...