Wake up world

Wrong View

“Buddha once saw a jackal, a wild dog, run out of the forest where he was staying. It stood still for a while, then it ran into the underbrush, and then out again. Then it ran into a tree hollow, then out again. Then it went into a cave, only to run out again. One minute it stood, the next it ran, then it lay down, then it jumped up. The jackal had the mange. When it stood, the mange would eat into its skin, so it would run. Running, it was still uncomfortable, so it would stop. Standing, it was still uncomfortable, so it would lie down. Then it would jump up again, running to the underbrush, the tree hollow, never staying still. 

Crisis and Opportunity—Can Theravada Buddhism Meet the Challenge?

The Buddhist sangha is perhaps the longest-lived 
institution in world history.It has diffused across 
time and space over a period of more than 2,500 
years. It has traversed the globe through diverse, 
culturally adaptable communities that betray a clear 
(if not always successful) attempt to maintain continuity 
with traditions transmitted millennia ago. More Vinaya 
lineages and doctrinal schools have died out than those 
that are extant, but the Theravada, Mahayana, and 
Vajrayana have all survived in some form or another.

From the Lekha Sutta - AN 3.130

"Monks, there are these three types of individuals to be found existing in the world. Which three? An individual like an inscription in rock, an individual like an inscription in soil, and an individual like an inscription in water. 

Russia's immortal Buddhist monk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8s4Waif2KY&feature=youtu.be

The Snobbish Monk - Kumāra Bhikkhu

At a feedback session of a course I conducted about 2½ years ago, a participant from Penang commented that I had “changed a lot”. He told the audience that when he first met me (in another event Bhante Aggacitta and I conducted in 2007), he found me quite snobbish.

In my mind, that was one of the best compliments I had ever received, and it still is. There were other nice things that he said about me, but that first comment had already made my day.

No doubt, I had been rather snobbish. It didn’t seem so to me then though. Whenever I think of this, I feel grateful for the change that had happened. I sometimes also feel a bit strange; that person seems so remote now.

What Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön Learned After A 'Traumatizing' Divorce

The Huffington Post, May 6, 2015 San Francisco, CA (USA) -- Before Pema Chödrön became a world-renowned Buddhist teacher and best-selling author, she had what she calls a "conventional" life and marriage. Then, one day, her entire world came crashing down in a matter of seconds when her then-husband blurted out that he wanted a divorce. Chödrön recalls it being one of the most devastating moments in her life, but looking back, she now understands it was also one of the most profound. It was the 1970s, and Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown and raised on a New Jersey farm, was living with her second husband in northern New Mexico. She still has a very clear memory of the day he dropped the bombshell, as she tells Oprah in the above video from "Super Soul Sunday." Back then, Chödrön had been sitting outside her adobe-style home, quietly sipping her tea when her husband of 8 years pulled up in his car. "I heard the door slam. [He] came around the corner of the house and just said it... 'Things haven't been going well with us. I'm having an affair with somebody else, and we need to get a divorce,'" she says. The statement left Chödrön reeling.

Rich or poor, young or old, human or animal.....

"The Buddha said that rich or poor, young or old, human or animal, no being in this world can maintain itself in any one state for long, everything experiences change and estrangement. This is a fact of life that we can do nothing to remedy. But the Buddha said that what we can do is to contemplate the body and mind so as to see their impersonality, see that neither of them is "me" or "mine." They have a merely provisional reality. It's like this house: it's only nominally yours, you couldn't take it with you anywhere. It's the same with your wealth, your possessions and your family — they're all yours only in name, they don't really belong to you, they belong to nature. Now this truth doesn't apply to you alone; everyone is in the same position, even the Lord Buddha and his enlightened disciples. They differed from us in only one respect - and that was in their acceptance of the way things are; they saw that it could be no other way." ~ Ajahn Chah