Buddhism As Education

When we go to the western Pure Land, we are like elementary school students. But there are also university students, post-graduate students and PhD students in the same classroom. When we face difficulty, they will help us. An inconceivable world! Therefore, attaining rebirth in the Land of Common Residence of Ordinary Beings and Saints, the first of the four lands, is the same as attaining rebirth in the Land of Expedient Liberation because arhats are our fellow practitioners. It is also the same as attaining rebirth in the Land of Eternally Quiescent Light, the highest of the four lands because Buddhas are also there with us. Although there are uncountable number of methods, their objectives are the same. It is often said, 'all the roads lead to Rome' and 'all methods are the same'. Pure Land practitioners should never criticize or slander Zen, Esoteric or any other schools because their objectives are the same as ours; they simply follow different methods of p...

With faith, vow and the recitation of the name of Amitabha Buddha, we will be able to be reborn in the Pure Land and never again fall back in our practice. Up until now, we have made progress in one lifetime only to fall back for lifetimes after that. This is constant progression and retrogression is why it is taking us so long to attain enlightenment. But once, we are in the Pure Land, we will never fall back again, which will allow us to attain our goal much more quickly. And as we are progressing, we will learn the infinite ways in which we can help all those we have vow to help be liberated from suffering as well. What is the nature of the mind? An example, which is easy to understand, is called purity of mind in the Pure Land school. when our minds are pure, all of our deeds will be good. Thus, we will accumulate far more than just 10,000 good deeds. Amitabha Buddha is a name of millions of virtues. As we gradually come to understand the true reality, we will realize that w...

Purity, impartiality and enlightenment are the guidelines for learning and practicing. what are we learning? We are learning to, first, cultivate a pure mind, second, cultivate an impartial mind and third, be awakened and not deluded. Purity, impartiality and enlightenment are three in one, one in three. The Pure Land school focuses on the cultivation of a pure mind. When the mind is pure, the land will be pure. The connection between us and Amitabha Buddha of the Western Pure Land lies in a pure mind. Amitabha Buddha is Sanskrit. Amitabha means 'infinite', Buddha means 'awakening'. This name therefore implies infinite enlightenment. 'Infinite' describes that which is innate in the true nature: infinite wisdom, infinite virtues and abilities, and infinite auspicious marks. These three categories of  'infiiteness' covers all the infinities in the entire universe. 'Amitabha Buddha' is the name of the true nature. That is why Venerable Mast...

The first thing that the Buddha told the Kalamas was that it was right for them to be perplexed and doubtful when a matter that arouses perplexity has arisen. Given the frustration of the Kalamas this opening statement of the Buddha is well placed and understandable. But the Buddha did not mean this as merely a consolation for the Kalamas in order to put them at ease. More than that it also serves as an encouragement to ask questions and seek knowledge when in doubt. For within the Buddha's teaching itself there is a room for healthy doubting which serves as a catalyst for the search after knowledge and truth. This kind of doubt should be differentiated from the vacillating doubt that constitutes a hindrance to the practice of meditation. Vacillating doubt is an unwholesome state of mind closely allied with delusion, the combination of both which gives rise to a confused and debilitating mental vacillation that leads to mental paralysis. The mind that is plague by vacillatin...

Venerable Khedup Rinpoche and his Lamas from Nepal held a Grand Smoke Offering and the Amitabha Chang Chok Puja from 16 August to 18 August 2013. The event was held at the Karma Norbuling Buddhist Centre where the Rinpoche is the resident master. The Gand Smoke Offering and Amitabha Chang Chok Puja was held in conjunction with the 7th lunar month in order to promote merit making, with mantra recitation, chantings and passing the merits to the departed one as well as the wondering spirits and souls.

Death is the dissolution of khandhas. The khandhas are the five aggregates of perception, sensation, mental formations, consciousness and corporeality or matter. The first four are mental aggregates or nama, forming the unit of consciousness. The fifth, rupa is the material or physical aggregate. This psycho-physical combination is conventionally named an individual, person or ego. Therefore, whatever entities exist are not individual as such, but the two primary constituents of mind and matter, which are rare phenomena. We do not see the five aggregates as phenomenas but as anentity because of our deluded minds and our innate desire to treat these as a self in order to pander to our self-importance. We will be able to see things as they truly are if we only have patience and the will to do so. If we turn inwards to the recesses of our own minds ad note with just that bare attention, note objectively without projecting an ego in the process and then cultivate this practice for a...

Let us all examine how the Buddha solve this problem for two person who, through attachment, were both deeply grieved by death of their love ones. One person is Kisagotami. Her only child hd died after being attacked by a serpent. She went to the Buddha carrying the dead child in her arms to seek for help. The Buddha then asked her to bring a few mustard seeds from a family where no one had died. But she could not find such a family everywhere. Every house that she had visited was either in mourning or had mourned over a death at one time or another. Then she realised the bitter truth: that death is universal. Death strikes all and spares no one. sorrow is the heritage of everyone of us. The other person whom the Buddha advised was Patacara. Her case was even sadder. Within a short period, she lost her two children, husband, brother, parents and all her possessions. Losing her sense, she ran naked and wild in the streets until she met the Buddha. The Buddha brought her back to s...

Men are disturbed not by external things, but by beliefs and imaginations they conjure up in their minds with regard to the form of their future lives. For example, death is not by itself that dreadful: the dread or terror exists only in our minds. It is not often that we are brave enough to come facing with the thought of our own mortality. Insistence upon the truth of suffering may seem horrible and unacceptable to the mind which is unable to face realities, but it surely helps to reduce or eliminate the dread of fear realities by knowing how to actually face death. Once life is launched, like a bullet, it rushes to its destination i.e. death. Realising thus, we must bravely face that natural occurrence. To be considered free in life, we must also be free from fearing death. Fear only comes to those who are not able to comprehend the laws of Nature. "Wherever fear appears, it appears in the fool, not in the wise man", says the Buddha in the Anguttara Nikaya. Fears ar...

The highest perfection of altruism, the ultimate altruism, is bodhicitta complemented by wisdom. Bodhicitta, the aspiration to bring about the welfare of all sentient beings and to attain buddhahood for their sake, is really the distilled essence, the squeezed juice, of all the Buddha's teachings, because ultimately the Buddha's intention is to lead all sentient beings to perfect enlightenment, complete omniscience. Since it is bodhicitta that determines whether or not our practice becomes the path to enlightenment, bodhicitta is truly the heart essence of all the teachings of the Buddha. Thus, all 84,000 discourses of the Buddha can be seen as either preliminary to the practice of bodhicitta, the actual practice of bodhicitta, or precepts and activities in which we must engage as a result of taking the bodhicitta pledge. When we come to recognise all this, we will really appreciate the preciousness of our human existence, which gives us the ability to reflect on and exp...

The parami are then inclinations and potentials that we develop into clear intentions. Their development comes in three stages, the initiating, the gathering and the completion. Initially, one brings the subject to mind. Even this much is useful; it means that parami get built-in as a frame of reference, when other values such as fun, convenience, style, worldly performance and success can be taking over the mind. The "gathering" stage is when you apply the perfection in the face of opposition. Something in you does not want to bother, other people do not see the point, it is not convenient, etc, etc and etc. The third stage of completion, is when you know your fullness in that perfection will bring you through any obstacles, you can give up your life for it. You realise: "Why not? Life is going to end anyway, why not establish a mind in a position of strength while there is time?" So, when we establish our minds on one of these parami, we can put aside incli...

There are two other floods: of view (ditthogha) and of ignorance (avijjogha). "Views" refer to the instinct we have to hold beliefs, opinions and dogmas in order to gain a standpoint. They could be anything from "Buddhism is the best religion" to "The liberal party is fair and just and seeks for the welfare of the nation" to "Women are hopeless drivers" to "Our nation is the source of truth and harmony in a brutal world". Or a view could be a lot more personal, "I am a Taurus and that means that I will get on well with Scorpios". Such broad-brush generalisations form an easy basis for our decisions, loyalties and world-view. And so, throughout history, societies have adopted views such as, "There are witches who consort with the devil and bring blight onto the crops and plague into the city". Or they have adopted the view that Jews are a contamination and should be eradicated; or that communists are infiltrating...

The first flood to note is he current that accompanies the senses of emotional impressions of their desirability or interest. This is the flood of sensuality (kamogha), a torrent under whose trance sense objects seem to offer pleasant sights, sounds, tastes, fragrances and touches. With some experience and considered attention, we can note that some of these, once seen, heard, etc, actually induce the kind of feeling that the current promises in any but the most fleeting way In the gentle or pulsing waves of this flood however, the objects of the sense seem irresistible, charming and productive of real satisfaction. And yet the manifest truth of our lives is that we are not blissed-out or even satisfied for long in any sense of contact. It happens all day long and with luck it is mostly okay. Sometimes it is pleasant for a little while and sometimes it is unpleasant, but the pleasant, once established, gets to be normal and then became boring after some time. So, desire for newe...

The term "floods" speaks for itself : the overwhelmed, swept-along feeling that comes as we get plunged into stress and suffering. In the Buddhist texts, the word is sometimes used in the broad sense of the mind being overwhelmed by sorrow, lamentation and despair in full-blown dukkha or to the existential dukkha of our being carried along in the flood of ageing, sickness and death. On occasion, the floods refer to five key hindrances that clog the mind :  sense craving, ill-will, dullness and torpor, restless worry and doubt. Meditators in particular know how any of these five can hinder the mind from realizing the clarity and peace that they are aiming for. In the most specific use however, the floods (ogha) refer to four currents, also called "outflows" (asava), that run underneath the bubbling stream of mental activity. There they remain unseen but yet direct the flow of that stream. Sounds eerie? Well if you sit still in silence for a little while, with ...

The reason why this set was put together, some years after the Buddha passed away, seems to have been that Buddhists speculated on why this one person arose in the world who surpassed all toehr in the depth and range of his wisdom. Many of his disciples developed qualities that the Buddha had manifested and also crossed over to the Other Shore but none came close to the Buddha in terms of depth, range and versatility in presenting the Dhamma. And unlike his disciples, he realized the path without a teacher. So people reckoned that this unique person must have interited a huge stock of strengths and virtues in the process of many lifetimes. Stories and fables were created to describe this process whereby the Future Buddha (Bodhisatta or Bodhisattva) developed parami as foundation for his future enlightenment (or awakening). Different schools of Buddhism selected different qualities to be parami, but in the school that came to be called Threvada, then were so designated. Theravada...

As it is extremely important to cleanse away the stains of black karmic debts and downfalls (from broken vows) tarnishing the three gateways (of your body, speech and mind), and especially (to remove) your karmic obstacles (which would prevent such rebirth), you should cherish continually devoting yourself to (applying) the complete set of four opponent powers (which can purge you of them). With respect to refraining from negative actions in the future, you can determine to maintain an ethical discipline that will protect you from committing negative acts in future, but what about the negative actions you have already committed? The only way to deal with these is to purify them. There is a Tibetan saying, "If there is one good thing about negativities, it is that they can be purified." However, there are different degrees of purification. One possibility is to completely eliminate the potency of a karmic act such that it can never ripen at all. Another is to diminish t...

Upon taking refuge in the Three Jewels, your main responsibility is to observe the law of karma and abstain from the ten negative actions. Moreover, your success in doing so depends on your considering thoroughly which are the black or white karmic actions together with their results and then living accordingly to the guides of what is to be adopted or rejected. There are different kinds of karmic actions ad various ways of categorising them. Since we all share the same fundamental nature, which is the natural aspiration to be happy and not to suffer, actions leading to happiness are generally considered to be positive or virtuous, while actions leading to pain and suffering are generally considered to be negative or non-virtuous. Therefore, it is in their causal relationship to happiness and suffering that the distinction between positive and negative or virtuous and non-virtuous actions is made. With respect to the medium through which these positive and negative actions are c...

The interlocking chain of the twelve links demonstrates the entire process of evolution and explains the individual's existence in samsara. There is no concept of there being some kind of central, unifying creator around which everything evolves. While we are experiencing the consequences of one set of twelve links, the ignorance and karmic action links of another cycle have already been set in motion. Thus, there are ever-rotating, interlocking chains of twelve links of dependent origination constantly keeping us bound to the wheel of life, which is how our evolution through cyclic existence is explained. The Buddha actually taught the twelve links in two ways. One charts our evolution through cyclic existence from ignorance to karmic volitional acts to consciousness and so on down the chain, while the other presents the same process in reverse, explaining how we escape from samsara and reach enlightenment. By bringing an end to ignorance, volitional acts are prevented; by ...

As to what specific meditation practices you should engage with, take the topic of impermanence as an example. The significance on impermanence and death is not just to terrify yourself, there is no point in simply making yourself afraid of death. The purpose of meditating on impermanence and death is to remind us of the preciousness of the opportunities that exist for us in life as a human being. Reminding ourselves that death is inevitable, it is time unpredictable and when it happens only spiritual practice is of benefit gives us a sense of urgency and enable us to truly appreciate the value of our human existence and our potential to fulfill the highest of spiritual aspirations. If we can develop this profound appreciation, we will treat every single day as extremely precious. As spiritual practitioners, it is very important for us to constantly familiarize our thoughts and emotions with the idea of death so that it does not arrive as something unexpected. We need to accept ...

Karma Norbuling Buddhist Centre (KNBC) which is situated in Alma, Bukit Mertajam has held its Wesak celebration from 23rd May to 24th May 2013 commencing with the Buddha Bathing and Circumambulation ceremony on the Wesak Eve Night and followed by Liberation of Live, Lamp Lighting and the 16 Arahant Puja. Members and devotees of KNBC later joined in the Wesak float procession at about 6.00 pm in the Bukit Mertajam town centre. Meanwhile at Cherok To'kun, also in Bukit Mertajam, Nandaka Vihara Meditation Society also held its Wesak celebration with numerous activities, which includes, Dharma Talk, Dana, Sanghikadana and Chanting of Suttas. The celebration also includes other merit making activities, like Offering of Robes and Sangha Requisites by the devotees.