Fly the Buddhist Flag

Wesak 2017 is approaching and is on 10 May 2017.

Fly the Buddhist Flag from our Homes to promote awareness for Rational Faith, Global Unity and World Peace, from the Full moon Uposatha on 11 April, one lunar month to Wesak, till the Full moon Uposatha on 9 June 2017, one lunar month after Wesak.

Dhammapada. 42-43

Whatever harm an enemy can do to an enemy,

Or a hater to a hater,
An ill-directed mind
Causes oneself even greater harm.

No mother or father
Or any other kin
Can do greater good for oneself
Than a well-directed mind.

The mind and the body exist in different planes of existence

Question:  Are life and death pre-destined and is it useful to know about our past lives?

Than Ajahn:  ‘Life and death’ is a process. Once there is birth, then there will be aging, sickness and death. So if you don’t want to have aging, sickness and death then you should not have birth. In order not to be reborn, you have to stop all your desires.

Knowing about past lives doesn’t make any difference to your practice. The only thing it can help you is to tell you that life is endless, that suffering is endless if you keep continuing to be reborn. So if you don’t want to have this endless suffering then you have to stop rebirth and the way to stop rebirth is to practise meditation so you can get rid of your desires.

Possessed of four qualities, one can be considered a good person. What four?

Possessed of four qualities, one can be considered a good person. What four?

The Buddha and the sick

What Happens When We Die? Here's What e-Buddhism Says!

e-Buddhism

The Buddha’s teachings offers the most satisfactory explanation of where man came from and where he is going. When we die, the mind, with all the tendencies, preferences, abilities and characteristics that have been developed and conditioned in this life, re-establishes itself in a new being. Thus the new individual grows  and develops a personality conditioned both by the mental characteristics that have been carried over from the previous life and by the new environment. The personality will change and be modified by conscious effort and conditioning factors like education, parental influence and society but once again at death, it will re-establish itself as life in a new being. This process of dying and being reborn will continue until the conditions that cause it, the mental factors of craving and ignorance, cease. When they do, instead of being reborn, the mind attains a state called Nirvana.

Regular Everything, by John Aske

BY BUDDHISM NOW on 24 FEBRUARY 2017 

We all like things to be regular, and what’s wrong with that, you might reasonably ask? We all want stable conditions as well. We don’t want anything to change, either — we want it to stay the same — or more or less, always.

Having a regular job, regular meals and somewhere regular to sleep at night can only be good, better than sleeping in a ditch and being hungry all the time. The gravedigger at Drewsteignton preferred to sleep under a hedge, he told me, because a roof ‘made the place stuffy,’ but he was an unusual man.

But these are all physical conditions, and though they can strongly affect the way we behave and think (our views and opinions), we must be careful that they do not blind us to what is really happening. It is not so much what we have, but what we depend upon having, now and in the future, that gives us problems.