S.N Goenka’s retelling of the Ganaka Mogallana ‪#‎sutta‬

In the city of Sāvatthī in northern India, the Buddha had a
large centre where people would come to meditate and to listen to
his Dhamma talks. Every evening one young man used to come to
hear his discourses. For years he came to listen to the Buddha but
never put any of the teaching into practice.

After a few years, one evening this man came a little early and
found the Buddha alone. He approached him and said, “Sir, I have a
question that keeps arising in my mind, raising doubts.”

China's super-rich communist Buddhists

By John Sudworth, BBC News, Shanghai

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Could China be bringing Tibetan Buddhism in from the cold? There are new signs that while a crackdown on Tibetan nationalism continues, the atheist state may be softening its position towards the religion - and even the Dalai Lama.

That a former senior Communist Party official would invite the BBC into his home might, to most foreign journalists in China, seem an unlikely prospect.

Especially if that official was rumoured to have close links to the Chinese leadership and to have worked closely with the country's security services.

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That, though, is exactly what Xiao Wunan did.

Inside Xiao's luxury Beijing apartment, in pride of place atop his own private Buddhist shrine, sits a portrait of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, a man long reviled by the Chinese government as a dangerous separatist.

For Tibetan monks even the possession of the Dalai Lama's photograph is a risky proposition and the displaying of his portrait in monasteries is prohibited.

But there, beneath that same image sat Xiao, with a Tibetan Buddhist guru, Geshe Sonam, sitting beside him.

Three kinds of wisdom

Received Wisdom (suta-mayā paññā), Intellectual Wisdom (cintā-mayā paññā), and Experiential Wisdom (bhāvanā-mayā paññā). 

The literal meaning of the phrase suta-mayā paññā is “heard wisdom”—wisdom learned from others, by reading books or listening to sermons or lectures, for example. This is another person's wisdom which one decides to adopt as one's own. The acceptance maybe out of ignorance. For example, people who have grown up in a community with a certain ideology, a system of beliefs, religious or otherwise, may accept without questioning the ideology of the community. Or the acceptance may be out of craving. Leaders of the community may declare that accepting the established ideology, the traditional beliefs, will guarantee a wonderful future; perhaps they claim that all believers will attain heaven after death. Naturally the bliss of heaven is very attractive, and so willingly one accepts. Or the acceptance may be out of fear. Leaders may see that people have doubts and questions about the ideology of the community, so they warn them to conform to the commonly held beliefs, threatening them with terrible punishment in the future if they do not conform, perhaps claiming that all unbelievers will go to hell after death. Naturally, people do not want to go to hell, so they swallow their doubts and adopt the beliefs of the community. Whether it is accepted out of blind faith, out of craving, or out of fear, received wisdom is not one's own wisdom, not something experienced for oneself. It is borrowed wisdom.

Religion not as clear as black and white

Kuo Yong Kooi Published: 2 March 2015 7:10 PM

If someone hands me a copy of the Quran, I would be happy to accept it with no ill will in my heart. I concluded long ago that all religious texts in this world are used as guidelines to improve human behaviours.

The unfortunate part is many people mis-interpreted religious text all the time. If someone has got it right, then it does not matter what religion you are from, their action shows.

In my opinion, the rules that the fundamentalist Muslims want every Muslim to follow are not that much different from the monastic rules for the Buddhist monks and nuns. 

The only big difference is their approach.

Stephen Hawking: One of Buddhism’s Three Poisons threatens us all

BY ROD MEADE SPERRY | FEBRUARY 24, 2015

Photo by Chris Boland.

As the Washington Post reports today, physicist Stephen Hawking has identified humanity’s aggression as one of the greatest threats to humanity itself. Quoth Hawking: “The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.” (Likewise, he said about empathy that it’s the quality he “would most like to magnify is empathy. It brings us together in a peaceful, loving state.”)

The best reason for giving Dana - Visakha's profound wisdom

"Once when the Blessed One and his monks were guests of Visakha she requested him to grant her eight favours (Vin 1:290-94). He replied that the Perfect One had gone beyond the fulfilling of favours. She said that she did not wish for something blameworthy but for allowable things. The Blessed One let her mention her wishes. She requested to give gifts to the Order in eight ways:
(1) robes for the rains,
(2) food for arriving monks,
(3) food for monks setting out on a journey,
(4) medicine for sick monks,
(5) food for sick monks,
(6) food for monks tending the sick,
(7) regular distribution of rice gruel
(8) bathing robes for nuns to bathe in the river.

The Blessed One then asked her for which special reasons she made these requests. She explained in detail:

Paritta Chanting - Jinapanjara Gatha 金那般川经文

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7BH9PtPK5c

Pali Chanting Thai Traditional Way.

Verses on The Conqueror's Mansion