Buddhism As Education

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...

When we live with another person, to protect each other's happiness, we should help one another transform the internal formations that we produce together. By practicing understanding and loving speech, we can help each other a great deal. Happiness is no longer an individual matter alone. If the other person is not happy, we will not be happy either. To transform the other person's knots will help bring about our own happiness as well. A wife can create internal formations in her husband and a husband can do so in his wife and if they continue to create knots in each other, one day, there will be no happiness left. In this case, as soon as a knot is created, the wife, for instance should know that a knot has just been tied onto her. She should not overlook it. She should take the time to observe it and with her husband's help, transform it. She might say, "darling, I think we would better discuss a conflict I saw growing". This is easy when the states of...

A brief resume of the Metta Sutta given here will help to cultivate the spirit of Metta. The man who is wise seeks the good of all and who has obtained peace need to accomplish the following. He need to be strenuous, upright, sincere, contented and joyous. He need to cast of pride, greed for worldly things and riches. He must keep his sense in strict control. Let him be wise without being conscious of it, and let him not spend all his efforts in gathering riches for himself and his family. Let there be nothing mean in any of his actions. May all being be happy. May they be joyous and live in safety. All being whether weak or strong. In high or middle or low realms of existence. small or great, visible or invisible near or far. Born or to be born. May all beings be happy. Let no one deceive or despise each other or wish each other any harm. Let there be no anger or hatred amongst people. Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protect her only child so with bo...

Let us go back to the teaching of Dependent Origination. The first link on the chain is ignorance. This is not a culpable ignorance. For example, the driver who pleads that he did not know he wasn't supposed to drive through a red light. He ought to have known it. But if a child sets fire to a house, it would be hard for the court to convict him for an arson. Perhaps a better word is nescience, simply "not knowing". Nescience is the state of not knowing that we all begin life with. What does the fetus or the new born child know? The development of that knowing is the flourishing of our pure awareness and intuitive intelligence. These are the 2 qualities of the enlightened mind, the Buddha within, which develops both gradually and in quantum leaps. An obvious stage when we enter into a different level of awareness, a different way of relating to the world, is that passed by most 7 year-old kids. Although the child steadily grows in understanding, all of a sudden at 7, the...

This is another of those points that we need to look at. First, we need to distinguish between can't when it means I am unable and can't when it means won't . Parents know when their child means won't rather than can't - such as when they can't sleep because they want to stay up. If they are honest with ourselves and if we have come to truly understand that the hurt inside us is created by us, then it is never a case of can't but always a case of won't forgive. We then need to change the internal dialogue and open up a chink of possibility: "Maybe I can forgive......" What is happening when we can't forgive ourselves? For most of us, this is the hardest thing to do. On a television programme about the "bag people", a late middle aged woman was interviewed. She had taken to the streets and began compulsive collection of rubbish, mainly papers. When asked why, she replied wistfully that she had been involved in the death of a...

Forgiveness is a change of heart, a radical transformation of our relationship towards people whom we have harmed, towards people whom have harmed us and towards ourselves, away from hatred and revenge; guilt and shame; self-hatred and self-punishing. To forgive is to stop justifying and indulging the emotions of hurt, anger, guilt, shame associated with the incident which evoked pain. When we have forgiven fully, we remember the incident and feel only compassion for ourselves and the other party for all the suffering and pain evoked and expressed in the incident. To forgive is not to brush an incident aside and forget it. Pushing it out of mind is a suppressive measure and the grudge works underground and sabotages our lives in ways of which we are unaware. For instance, it may be that we have been hurt by an unfaithful partner. If we fail to work through hurt towards forgiveness, that hurt stays within us and prevents us from forming a new relationship out of fear of further hurt. It...

Hurting another? What happens when we hurt someone? The reason for wanting to harm someone are many: envy and jealousy; revenge; spite; sheer cruelty. They are so many reasons as there are malevolent intentions. And when we achieve our goal of hurting someone, there arises a satisfaction, a joy in someone's suffering. This is cruelty. This is hard for us to accept because for the most part, we think we act from good motives. We justify and rationalize our behaviour: Eye for an eye; I just wanted to put them in their place and so on. the results is a hardening of the heart and distancing of it from its own emotions making it impervious to another's suffering. But when we empathise with the victim, then we feel shades of shame, guilt and remorse. How should we understand these qualities? Feeling shame We feel shame when our self-esteem is punctured. We lose face. We thought we were good but now we realize we can behave in petty or malicious ways. Our self-image is bruised and we ...