Buddhism As Education

The following attitudes are essential to success in practice. Most of them have been presented before, but we are bringing them together again here as a series of rules for application. 1. Do not expect anything. Just sit back and see what happens. Treat the whole thing as an experiment, take an active interest in the test itself. But do no get distracted by your expectations about the results for that matter, do not be anxious for any results whatsoever. Let the meditation move along at its own speed and in its own direction. Let the meditation teach you what it wants you to learn. Meditative awareness seeks to see reality exactly as it is. Whether that corresponds to our expectations or not, it requires a temporary suspension of all our preconceptions and ideas. We must store away our images, opinions and interpretations someplace out of the way for a duration. Otherwise, we will stumble over them. 2. Do not strain. Do not force anything or make grand exaggerated efforts. Me...

Many people, particularly the educated, professional people are moving out of the big cities and metropolitans in order to seek a quiet live and simpler livelihood in the small town and rural areas. This is natural. If you grab a handful of mud and squeeze it, it will ooze through your fingers. People under pressure likewise seek a way out. Many people ask about the problems of our world, about a coming apocalypse. What does it mean to be worldly? What is the world? You do not know? This is very unknowingly, this very darkness, this very place of ignorance, is what is meant by worldly. Caught in the six sense, our knowledge develops as a part of this darkness. To come to an answer to the problems of the world, we must know its nature completely and realize the wisdom that shines above the darkness of the world. These days, it seems that our culture is deteriorating, lost in greed, hatred and delusion. But the culture of the Buddha never changes, never diminishes. It says, ...

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...

If the Earth were your body, you would be able to feel the many areas where it is suffering. War, political and economic oppression, famine and pollution wreak havoc in so many continents. Everyday, children are becoming blind from malnutrition, their hands searching hopelessly through mounds of trash for a few ounces of food. Adults are dying slowly in prisons for trying to oppose violence. Rivers are dying and the air is becoming more and more polluted and with difficulty to breathe. Although the two great super powers are becoming little more friendly, they still have sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth of dozen times. Many more people are aware of the world's suffering; their hearts are filled with compassion, they know what needs to be done and they engage in political, social and environmental work to try to change things around. But after a period of intense involvement, they may become discouraged if they lack the strength needed to sustain a life of acti...

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...

The Dharma or the Buddhist doctrine primarily appeals to the dignity of human beings rather than glorifying the god's notion, his free will and his superiority over the nature, unlike the way the theists define humanism. Thus the Dharma is a humanistic philosophy, which in today's world is gaining significance because it makes an individual the master of his own destiny. According to Buddhism, the human form is the only form in the entire universe which is most conducive to deliverance. The Buddhist concept therefore believes in the fundamental idea of self reliance and humanism rather than that of an external agency. Today's world is a materialistic world as people (even those who call themselves religious) believe that the physical matter is the only reality and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and highest value in life. Such materialistic view clearly denies the existence of an absolute and objective moral standard. But the Dharma, as per the Bud...