Buddhist Answers to Question asked 037 : What do you think about the life after death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trSe6kzlyM0

Published on Feb 4, 2016

Buddhist Answers to Questions Asked presented
by Venerable Sander Khemadhammo
Master's degree in Psychology from Radboud University-Netherlands, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Thailand.

Faith

Buddhist Temple Celebrates a Century

by Dennis Evanosky, Alameda Sun, September 22, 2016

Alameda, CA (USA) -- Members of the Buddhist Temple of Alameda are celebrating the 100th anniversary of their autonomy this weekend. They have attended services here since 1906, the first 10 years or so as a branch of the Oakland Buddhist Church. By 1914 they were attending service in rented rooms at the former home of William T. S. Ryer at 2325 Pacific Ave. Ryer had built the Stick-Eastlake villa for his family in 1886.

On Jan. 4, 1916, the temple came into its own as Ashi Bukkyokai. Three years later the Buddhists purchased Ryer’s villa to use as both a temple and a home for their minster and his family. The community thrived here through the 1920s and 1930s. The Buddhists built a kitchen and social hall to accommodate their growth. By 1936, the temple had so many members that records show that 560 children were attending Sunday school.

This all ended in with the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. The following Feb. 19, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forced all Japanese-Americans, regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to evacuate the West Coast. By May 1942 Alameda’s thriving Japanese community was no more, their temple converted to a Navy school. 

The tools and equipment to get the job done are generosity, virtue, samādhi, and wisdom

"The essential principle of Buddhism is empty of any phenomena. It's not contingent upon miraculous displays of psychic powers, paranormal abilities, or anything else mystical or bizarre. The Buddha did not emphasize the importance of these things. Such powers, however, do exist and may be possible to develop, but this facet of Dhamma is deluding, so the Buddha did not advocate or encourage it. The only people he praised were the ones who were able to liberate themselves from suffering.

When a Monk Sprinkles Water to Us!

Peaceful Uplifting Monasteries

As we read in Ratana sutta, once the Buddha came to the city of Vesali followed by a large number of monks including the Venerable Ananda, the Buddha attendant disciple, there were torrential rains which swept away the putrefying corpses. The atmosphere became purified, the city was clean. Thereupon the Buddha delivered the Ratana sutta to the Venerable Ananda, and gave him instructions as to how he should tour the city with the Licchavi citizens reciting the discourse as a mark of protection to the people of Vesali. The Venerable Ananda followed the instructions, and sprinkled the sanctified water from the Buddha's own alms bowl. As a consequence the evil spirits were exorcised, the pestilence subsided.

Buddhist Answers to Question asked 036 : How do we teach meditation to children

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NtYtbE7rJc

Published on Oct 3, 2014

Venerable Pasura Dhantamano was born in Thailand and has over 25 years of meditation experience. He studied a master’s degree in International Relations. He is the chief of international relations division, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Thailand, an organization dedicated to spreading world peace through inner peace.

World Fellowship of Buddhists to table resolution proclaiming full moon day of September (Binara Poya Day) as the ‘International Buddhist Women’s Day’

The Buddhist Channel, Sept 27, 2016 Seoul, South Korea -- At the 28th General Conference of the World Fellowship  of Buddhists (WFB) to be held in Seoul, South Korea from 26-30 september  2016, a resolution has been proposed to proclaim the full moon day of  September (Binara Poya Day) as the ‘International Buddhist Women’s Day’ The resolution, sponsored by Senaka Weeraratna, representing the German Dharmaduta Society, proposes the following:

The Uninvited Guest of This Universe

by Andrew Hinton, syndicated from tricycle.org, Sep 20, 2016

Tashi & the Monk won the 2016 Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Short Documentary. As a tribute to the compassion at the heart of this story, the filmmakers are offering free streaming of the film in its entirety for the next seven days. You can watch it here.

Lobsang Phuntsok is a former Tibetan monk who trained with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and spent years teaching Buddhism and meditation in the West. In 2006, he disrobed and moved back to his native India, establishing a community in the Himalayan foothills for orphans and impoverished children.

Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community—“jhamtse gatsal” means “the garden of love and compassion” in Tibetan—is the scene where the 2014 filmTashi and the Monk is set.

Two itches for the price of one

New Buddhist temple opens in Boise

by Alex Livingston, KTVB, September 18, 2016

Boise, Idaho (USA) -- The Vietnamese community now has a place to worship - a brand new temple. The Linh Thuu Temple started in a three-room house on Overland Road back in 1992 to serve the hundreds of Vietnamese immigrants following the Vietnam War.

<< It was a day of celebration for the local Vietnamese community as they opened a brand new temple in Boise.

"The Vietnamese community now has a place they can call their own community center as well as a place for socializing and a place to get in touch with their heritage," said Dan Black with the Treasure Valley Dharma Friends.

It's that heritage that the Vietnamese community hopes to preserve through this new temple - located near the corner of Overland and Maple Grove roads - which boasts an open prayer space as well as an ancestral hall that honors past generations.

Buddhist Answers 035 : Does the current technology hinder the practice of meditation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxurLvb4dE4

Published on Oct 3, 2014

Venerable Pasura Dhantamano was born in Thailand and has over 25 years of meditation experience. He studied a master’s degree in International Relations. He is the chief of international relations division, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Thailand, an organization dedicated to spreading world peace through inner peace.

Ancient Buddhist scripture discovered in rural Beijing

By Wu Jin, China.org.cn, September 26, 2016 Beijing, China -- The earliest preserved edition of the "Heart Sutra" – a  Buddhist scripture translated by the famous Monk Xuanzang, known for his  fictional role in the classic novel "Journey to the West" – was recently  discovered on a stele in Beijing's rural Fangshan District. A copy of "Heart Sutra" translated by Monk Xuanzang from the stone inscription marks the value of the  stele chiseled more than 1,300 years  ago in Beijing's Rural Fangshan  District. [file photo] Extending its influence over China and  East Asia, the sutra has many interpretations, of which the edition translated by Xuanzang was one of the most credible. The sutra was chiseled on the stele in  661, three years after the Monk’s demise  and was passed down and preserved at  the Buddhist temple in rural Beijing. The massive carving of the Buddhist  sutras on steles in Beijing was initiated  by Monk Jingwan, who worried about the  prospect of Buddhism due to anti-Buddhism  mania in North Wei (386-557) and North  Zhu (557-581) and so preserved the sutras on stone in Fangshan amid Sui  Dynasty (581-618). Following their predecessor’s endeavor, Buddhist monks in the temple have inscribed 3,572 volumes of Buddhist sutras totaling more than 30 million words, ranking as one of today’s biggest and oldest stone libraries.

Mahasi Sayadaw on soul or self

"The knowing and thinking mind (nāma) is considered as a soul or self. Even among Buddhists those who are not learned have this kind of misconception. The soul of a dead person is wrongly believed to have left the body to reside in another. It is said to be the same soul that has passed on to the new existence and stays in the womb of the mother. This is how people generally presume the arising consciousness as a self, which is wrongly believed as existing dependent on the material body. In fact, according to the Buddha’s teaching there is no such thing as a self, soul, or a living being. There is only a continuous process of mind and matter arising and disappearing, the physical and mental elements being in a state of continual flux, according to circumstances."

First Asian Buddhist Animal Rights Conference to be held in Seoul, South Korea

The Buddhist Channel, Sept 26, 2016 Seoul, South Korea -- The first Asian Buddhist Animal Rights Conference co-hosted by Dharma Voices for Animals (DVA) and Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth (CARE) will be a single whole day event on September 30, 2016 and will be held at Hotel Skypark Kingstown, Dongdaemun in Seoul, South Korea immediately after the 28th World Fellowship of Buddhists Conference in the same city. The keynote speaker will be a well-known Buddhist monk and animal advocate Venerable Master Hai Tao from Taiwan and he will be speaking on Compassion for All Beings. Other speakers include a Sri Lankan Buddhist veterinarian Dr. Chamith Nanayakkara who with his team have generously given free treatment to more than 50,000 animals and  DVA President, Bob Isaacson who will speak on the Buddha's Teachings on Sentient Beings and How We Can Live Kinder.

True Gain and Fortune

Buddhist Answers 034 : What does Buddhism teach when we are confronted with difficult problems

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kYLrQMngso

Published on Oct 3, 2014

Venerable Pasura Dhantamano was born in Thailand and has over 25 years of meditation experience. He studied a master’s degree in International Relations. He is the chief of international relations division, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Thailand, an organization dedicated to spreading world peace through inner peace.

Practise the good in others

On Ignorance of the Buddha’s Power and Compassion

By Alan Kwan Buddhistdoor Global | 2016-09-15

From nasa.gov

Master Tanluan, an eminent Pure Land patriarch from the 6th century CE, wrote the Commentary on the Treatise of Rebirth. He utilized and integrated many profound concepts to form a solid theoretical foundation for Pure Land Buddhism. When he explained the concept of “praising” the second of the Five Gates of Amitabha-invocation* (which is actually the teaching of name-recitation), he wrote:

Goenkaji on dealing with fear and worry

"Whenever you feel anxious and fearful just observe it – ‘Oh fear has arisen, now let me watch what sensations it brings’. At that time the sensations that arise will be linked to and filled with fear. Observe that. A part of the mind will be rolling in that fear, yet another part will be aware of sensations. 

Maybe just 5% of the mind will be aware, the remaining 95% will be rolling 
in fear, yet that 5% is powerful enough to cut the roots of the fear.

Buddhist Answers to Question asked 033 : Stress and how meditation can relieve it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7s6eyVNwkw

Published on Oct 3, 2014

Venerable Pasura Dhantamano was born in Thailand and has over 25 years of meditation experience. He studied a master’s degree in International Relations. He is the chief of international relations division, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Thailand, an organization dedicated to spreading world peace through inner peace.

Blessing form the Buddha

10 Inspirational Quotes from Ajahn Brahm

Ajahn Brahm is a British Theravada Buddhist monk who is currently the Abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery in Western Australia. He is also the Spiritual Director of Buddhist Society of Western Australia, Spiritual Advisor to the Buddhist Society of South Australia, Patron of the Brahm Center and Buddhist Fellowship in Singapore, to name just a few.

Born as Peter Betts, Ajahn Brahm won a scholarship to study Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University in the late 1960s. After graduating from Cambridge he taught in high school for one year before traveling to Thailand to be ordained as a monk at the age of 23. He subsequently spent 9 years studying and training in the forest meditation tradition under Venerable Ajahn Chah.

Ajahn Brahm is well-known for his jolly expression and his light-hearted preaching which never fail to inspire joy, peace, and hope to many of his followers. Here are the 10 inspirational quotes from Ajahn Brahm:

99.9999999% of your body is empty space

Ali Sundermier

 

Philippe Wojazer

Some days, you might feel like a pretty substantial person. Maybe you have a lot of friends, or an important job, or a really big car.

But it might humble you to know that all of those things — your friends, your office, your really big car, you yourself, and everything in this incredible, vast universe — are almost entirely, 99.9999999%, empty space.

Here's the deal: As I previously wrote in a story for the particle physics publication Symmetry, the size of an atom is governed by the average location of its electrons — how much space there is between the nucleus and the atom's amorphous outer shell. Nuclei are around 100,000 times smaller than the atoms they're housed in.

If the nucleus were the size of a peanut, the atom would be about the size of a baseball stadium. If we lost all the dead space inside our atoms, we would each be able to fit into a particle of dust, and the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube.

So then where does all of our mass come from?

WISDOM SPRINGS FROM MEDITATION

Wisdom springs from meditation; without meditation, wisdom wanes.
Acknowledging these ways of progress or decline, guide yourself so that wisdom increases ~ Dhammapada 282

MEDITATION: Recollection

Buddhist Answers to Question asked 032 : Scary images or feelings during meditation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1WRkzI2bT8

Published on Oct 3, 2014

Venerable Pasura Dhantamano was born in Thailand and has over 25 years of meditation experience. He studied a master’s degree in International Relations. He is the chief of international relations division, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Thailand, an organization dedicated to spreading world peace through inner peace.

The Four Divine Messengers

Mahāpa­desa­sutta (AN 4.180)

"“Then a bhikkhu might say: ‘In such and such a residence one elder bhikkhu is dwelling who is learned, an heir to the heritage, an expert on the Dhamma, an expert on the discipline, an expert on the outlines. In the presence of that elder I heard this; in his presence I learned this: “This is the Dhamma; this is the discipline; this is the Teacher’s teaching!”’ That bhikkhu’s statement should neither be approved nor rejected. Without approving or rejecting it, you should thoroughly learn those words and phrases and then check for them in the discourses and seek them in the discipline. If, when you check for them in the discourses and seek them in the discipline, [you find that] they are not included among the discourses and are not to be seen in the discipline, you should draw the conclusion: ‘Surely, this is not the word of the Blessed One, the Arahant, the Perfectly Enlightened One. It has been badly learned by that elder.’ Thus you should discard it." 

The Lion’s Roar : Anagarika Dharmapala & The Making of Modern Buddhism

Sarath Amunugama Vijitha Yapa Publication (2016), 728 pp.

"What emerged from Dharmapala’s syncretism was not a mere transformation of contemporary Buddhist practices, referred to in sociological literature as "Protestant Buddhism", but a modernist interpretation of Buddhism which has had a profound impact on present day Buddhist thought and action." [p.6]

Buddhist Answers to Question asked 031 : Buddhist view on rebirth (Ven. Pasura Dhantamano)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIoAXDTs6CM

Published on Oct 16, 2014

Venerable Pasura Dhantamano was born in Thailand and has over 25 years of meditation experience. He studied a master’s degree in International Relations. He is the chief of international relations division, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Thailand, an organization dedicated to spreading world peace through inner peace.

MN 108 (Gopakamoggallana Sutta)

“Is there, Master Ananda, any single bhikkhu who was appointed by Master Gotama thus: ‘He will be your refuge when I am gone,’ and whom you now have recourse to?”

Jhana: The Spice Your Meditation Has Been Missing

Meditation teacher and political columnist Jay Michaelson explains how jhana meditation is a transformative and vital part of the eightfold path.

By Dr. Jay Michaelson 

SEP 22, 2016

Buddha in Phitsanulok, Thailand | Photo by Andrea Kirkby http://tricy.cl/2dmkC4M

Meditation” is a vague term.

Even in English it has two opposing meanings: thinking and not-thinking. But unsurprisingly, since the word meditation is derived from Latin, the term can be even more confusing when it comes to Buddhist meditation and its recent offshoot, secular mindfulness.

"People want to go to Nibbana but when you tell them there is nothing there, they begin to have second thoughts."

Ajahn Chah

Why Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta in this order

"A beginner who starts on the path has to work. You are being taught to reach the stage that is without "I" (anattā), and when there is no "I" there is no doer. But if we say there is no "I" in the beginning, you could become confused and think you do not need to work. You must first understand, "Well, I have to take steps on the path."A time will come when you understand, "There is a path but there is nobody to walk over it, there are only steps being taken on the path." That stage has to come naturally. If the "I" is still there in you and you try to impose a feeling that the "I" is not there, it is not helpful.“That is why the Buddha’s teaching is to work first with anicca. When you get established in anicca, then dukkha will naturally become clear to you, and you will understand that however pleasant a feeling may be it passes away. If you develop attachment to it you will become miserable. So misery is inherent in even the most pleasant experience. Understanding of dukkha becomes more and more predominant once you are established in anicca.“When you are established in anicca and dukkha, then the third stage—an understanding of anattā—develops, and you think, "What is this phenomenon? Where is ‘I’? Things are just happening, there is just a flow of mind and matter interacting." When the "I" dissolves at the experiential level it is helpful. An imposed conception of anattā will not help. That is why the Buddha never advised us to start with anattā. Start with anicca, then dukkha will follow, and anattā will develop." ~ S.N.Goenka