Forwarded from Buddha Dharma books
Free Buddha Dharma ebook
Prisoners of Karma: A Story
By Suvimalee Karunaratna
Free download available:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/karunaratna/bl125.pdf
===
Prisoners of Karma: A Story
By Suvimalee Karunaratna
Free download available:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/karunaratna/bl125.pdf
===
❤1👍1🥰1👏1
Forwarded from Buddha Dharma books
Free Buddha Dharma ebook
Prisoners of Karma: A Story
By Suvimalee Karunaratna
Suvimalee Karunaratna was born in Sri Lanka in 1939 and received her early education in Washington, D.C. and in Colombo. While living in Rangoon, where her father was posted as the Sri Lankan ambassador to Burma from 1957-61, she received meditation instructions from the Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw and the Ven. Webu Sayadaw. Her first volume of short stories was published in 1973, and several of her short stories have appeared in anthologies of modern writing from Sri Lanka as well as in literary journals. She is the author of The Walking Meditation (Bodhi Leaves No. 113) and Prisoners of Karma (Bodhi Leaves No. 125).
Free download available:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/karunaratna/bl125.pdf
===
Prisoners of Karma: A Story
By Suvimalee Karunaratna
Suvimalee Karunaratna was born in Sri Lanka in 1939 and received her early education in Washington, D.C. and in Colombo. While living in Rangoon, where her father was posted as the Sri Lankan ambassador to Burma from 1957-61, she received meditation instructions from the Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw and the Ven. Webu Sayadaw. Her first volume of short stories was published in 1973, and several of her short stories have appeared in anthologies of modern writing from Sri Lanka as well as in literary journals. She is the author of The Walking Meditation (Bodhi Leaves No. 113) and Prisoners of Karma (Bodhi Leaves No. 125).
Free download available:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/karunaratna/bl125.pdf
===
👍1👌1
Benefits of meditation retreat :
1. Deepened Meditation Practice
Deepen concentration (samadhi) and insight (vipassana).
Refine techniques like mindfulness (sati), loving-kindness (metta), and breath (anapanasati).
2. Mental Clarity and Emotional Healing
Silence and introspection clear mental clutter and promote emotional processing.
Reduces stress, anxiety, and overthinking through stillness and awareness.
3. Spiritual Insight and Self-Understanding
Helps you observe your thoughts and habits, leading to greater self-awareness.
Insights into impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anatta).
4. Disconnection from Distractions
A break from technology, social media, and daily responsibilities allows you to reset and recharge.
Encourages presence and appreciation for the moment.
5. Cultivation of Compassion
6. Being around experienced teachers and like-minded practitioners can inspire and guide your path.
7. Can lower blood pressure, improve sleep, and enhance immune function.
1. Deepened Meditation Practice
Deepen concentration (samadhi) and insight (vipassana).
Refine techniques like mindfulness (sati), loving-kindness (metta), and breath (anapanasati).
2. Mental Clarity and Emotional Healing
Silence and introspection clear mental clutter and promote emotional processing.
Reduces stress, anxiety, and overthinking through stillness and awareness.
3. Spiritual Insight and Self-Understanding
Helps you observe your thoughts and habits, leading to greater self-awareness.
Insights into impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anatta).
4. Disconnection from Distractions
A break from technology, social media, and daily responsibilities allows you to reset and recharge.
Encourages presence and appreciation for the moment.
5. Cultivation of Compassion
6. Being around experienced teachers and like-minded practitioners can inspire and guide your path.
7. Can lower blood pressure, improve sleep, and enhance immune function.
👌1🕊1😇1
Forwarded from Words of the Buddha
MITTA
…friend, companion
Kalyàna Mitta – Spiritual friends and friendship.
The purpose of friendship is to grow mutually, to improve spirituality in faith (saddhà), generosity (càga), virtue (sãla), knowledge and wisdom (pannà).
It is the forerunner of goodness in life such as happiness, wealth, opportunity, etc. It is the supporting condition for the growth of all goodness.
A real friend is a friend who helps when in need, who shares the same weal and woes with you, who gives good counsel and who sympathizes.
An enemy disguised as a friend is one who associates for gain (a taker), who render lips services (a talker), who flatters (a flatterer) and who brings ruin to your wealth (a spender).
The qualities of a good friend are, one who...
1. gives what is hard to give (dàna)
2. does what is hard to do
3. hears what is hard to hear or bear
4. confesses (shares) his, or her, own secret with you
5. keeps others’ secrets
6. in need, forsakes one not
7. despises one not when one is ruined.
…friend, companion
Kalyàna Mitta – Spiritual friends and friendship.
The purpose of friendship is to grow mutually, to improve spirituality in faith (saddhà), generosity (càga), virtue (sãla), knowledge and wisdom (pannà).
It is the forerunner of goodness in life such as happiness, wealth, opportunity, etc. It is the supporting condition for the growth of all goodness.
A real friend is a friend who helps when in need, who shares the same weal and woes with you, who gives good counsel and who sympathizes.
An enemy disguised as a friend is one who associates for gain (a taker), who render lips services (a talker), who flatters (a flatterer) and who brings ruin to your wealth (a spender).
The qualities of a good friend are, one who...
1. gives what is hard to give (dàna)
2. does what is hard to do
3. hears what is hard to hear or bear
4. confesses (shares) his, or her, own secret with you
5. keeps others’ secrets
6. in need, forsakes one not
7. despises one not when one is ruined.
🥰1🤗1
Chapter 2
Appamada Vagga
Heedfulness
4. Uññhanavato satimato
sucikammassa nisammakarino
Sañatassa ca dhammajivino
appamattassa yaso'bhivaddhati.
THE ENERGETIC PROSPER
4. The glory of him who is energetic, mindful, pure in deed, considerate, self-controlled, right-living, and heedful steadily increases.
Story
A rich but humble young man who pretended to be very poor, living like a labourer, was later elevated to a high position by the king. When he was introduced to the Buddha by the king He described the characteristics of those who prosper.
===
Buddha dharma teachings channel:
https://invite.viber.com/?g2=AQAKw1y3rv%2F6sk61PI2W4izuIiaEZj8YZujhY1tSzL%2B07s7rFnVFDAd0bAYFaMLw
===
Appamada Vagga
Heedfulness
4. Uññhanavato satimato
sucikammassa nisammakarino
Sañatassa ca dhammajivino
appamattassa yaso'bhivaddhati.
THE ENERGETIC PROSPER
4. The glory of him who is energetic, mindful, pure in deed, considerate, self-controlled, right-living, and heedful steadily increases.
Story
A rich but humble young man who pretended to be very poor, living like a labourer, was later elevated to a high position by the king. When he was introduced to the Buddha by the king He described the characteristics of those who prosper.
===
Buddha dharma teachings channel:
https://invite.viber.com/?g2=AQAKw1y3rv%2F6sk61PI2W4izuIiaEZj8YZujhY1tSzL%2B07s7rFnVFDAd0bAYFaMLw
===
Viber
Buddha
Buddha dharma teachings from the suttas and commentaries from Theravada tradition
👏1💯1
Forwarded from Words of the Buddha
Buddham Saranam Gacchami
Dhammam Saranam Gacchami
Sangham Saranam Gacchami
I go to the Buddha for refuge.
I go to the Dhamma for refuge.
I go to the Sangha for refuge.
बुद्धं शरणं गच्छामि। धर्मं शरणं गच्छामि। संघं शरणं गच्छामि।
Dhammam Saranam Gacchami
Sangham Saranam Gacchami
I go to the Buddha for refuge.
I go to the Dhamma for refuge.
I go to the Sangha for refuge.
बुद्धं शरणं गच्छामि। धर्मं शरणं गच्छामि। संघं शरणं गच्छामि।
🙏2👌1😇1
How the Brahmaviharas Can Help Us Shed Our Egoism
Scholar Jay Garfield discusses how the brahmaviharas can restructure our moral landscape and support us in leading happier, more meaningful lives.
By Jay L. Garfield, PhD.
One of the dangers of the illusion of self is that it lays the foundation for moral egoism. Moral egoism is the idea that my own narrow self-interest is prima facie motivating and justifying. In other words, if I do something and explain that I did it because it made me happy, that by itself constitutes at least a basic justification for the action. The moment we allow a self into the picture, moral egoism is just hiding in the closet. As soon as I’ve got a self and everything else is an object for that self, there’s a fundamental ontological divide in the nature of being between me and everything else. I’m the subject; everything else is my object. I’m the agent of those actions; everything else is the patient of my actions. There’s something very special about me, and that becomes the unspoken justification for the morally egoistic attitude.
Once I have a morally egoistic attitude, the interests of others have to be defended as somehow overriding my own interests, and that can be very hard to do. I can always find reasons that my interests are actually more important, and that can give way to an attitude of every person for themselves—I might see another person and think, “She can pursue her own interests, but I don’t need to worry about them. I’ll pursue mine. Each to their own.” It’s a short step from there to seeing all of life as a competitive social arrangement where everything is a race, where the person who’s fastest wins. Under this arrangement, it’s acceptable for me to win goods and resources and leave everyone else impoverished because if they had competed harder, they would have gotten more.
When we buy into this model, it breeds not just a lack of interest in the welfare of others but possibly a kind of disregard for the welfare of others completely. We might hope that everything is remediated by an invisible hand that will result in all of this selfish, competitive behavior somehow generating equitable prosperity and happiness. But it won’t. It simply leads to self-alienation, alienation from others, and a deeply misleading reduction of happiness to possession or pleasure. This is what Karl Marx called commodity fetishism, when we think that somehow just having goods makes us happy. This leads to our alienation of our own being in the pursuit of what looks like success. None of this is good, and all of it, I think, is inevitably grounded in the self illusion.
My hope is that if we can extirpate the self illusion, we can take some strides in the direction of social justice. We can move toward caring for others, cultivating friendliness, having greater impartiality, and being able to take joy in the success of others and not only in our own vanquishing of them. In other words, we can move beyond the self illusion and generate a healthier society through practicing the brahmaviharas, or divine states.
The brahmaviharas are maitri, or friendliness; karuna, or care; mudita, the ability to take joy in the success and the accomplishments of others; and upeksha, or impartiality and equanimity. When we take those four together, they constitute a vision of the moral landscape that is antithetical to the landscape of moral egoism. Moral egoism gives us a sense of the moral landscape that is structured by my own identity and the relation of everybody else to me. In Buddhist philosophy, this is called the twofold self grasping of “I” and “mine.” That is, I grasp myself as a self, and I see the existence and the importance of everything else in terms of its relationship to me: Is that my friend or my enemy, close to me or far from me, useful to me or unimportant to me? Moral egoism thus encourages us to see ourselves as at the center of the moral universe, where we care less and less about others the further they are from us.
Scholar Jay Garfield discusses how the brahmaviharas can restructure our moral landscape and support us in leading happier, more meaningful lives.
By Jay L. Garfield, PhD.
One of the dangers of the illusion of self is that it lays the foundation for moral egoism. Moral egoism is the idea that my own narrow self-interest is prima facie motivating and justifying. In other words, if I do something and explain that I did it because it made me happy, that by itself constitutes at least a basic justification for the action. The moment we allow a self into the picture, moral egoism is just hiding in the closet. As soon as I’ve got a self and everything else is an object for that self, there’s a fundamental ontological divide in the nature of being between me and everything else. I’m the subject; everything else is my object. I’m the agent of those actions; everything else is the patient of my actions. There’s something very special about me, and that becomes the unspoken justification for the morally egoistic attitude.
Once I have a morally egoistic attitude, the interests of others have to be defended as somehow overriding my own interests, and that can be very hard to do. I can always find reasons that my interests are actually more important, and that can give way to an attitude of every person for themselves—I might see another person and think, “She can pursue her own interests, but I don’t need to worry about them. I’ll pursue mine. Each to their own.” It’s a short step from there to seeing all of life as a competitive social arrangement where everything is a race, where the person who’s fastest wins. Under this arrangement, it’s acceptable for me to win goods and resources and leave everyone else impoverished because if they had competed harder, they would have gotten more.
When we buy into this model, it breeds not just a lack of interest in the welfare of others but possibly a kind of disregard for the welfare of others completely. We might hope that everything is remediated by an invisible hand that will result in all of this selfish, competitive behavior somehow generating equitable prosperity and happiness. But it won’t. It simply leads to self-alienation, alienation from others, and a deeply misleading reduction of happiness to possession or pleasure. This is what Karl Marx called commodity fetishism, when we think that somehow just having goods makes us happy. This leads to our alienation of our own being in the pursuit of what looks like success. None of this is good, and all of it, I think, is inevitably grounded in the self illusion.
My hope is that if we can extirpate the self illusion, we can take some strides in the direction of social justice. We can move toward caring for others, cultivating friendliness, having greater impartiality, and being able to take joy in the success of others and not only in our own vanquishing of them. In other words, we can move beyond the self illusion and generate a healthier society through practicing the brahmaviharas, or divine states.
The brahmaviharas are maitri, or friendliness; karuna, or care; mudita, the ability to take joy in the success and the accomplishments of others; and upeksha, or impartiality and equanimity. When we take those four together, they constitute a vision of the moral landscape that is antithetical to the landscape of moral egoism. Moral egoism gives us a sense of the moral landscape that is structured by my own identity and the relation of everybody else to me. In Buddhist philosophy, this is called the twofold self grasping of “I” and “mine.” That is, I grasp myself as a self, and I see the existence and the importance of everything else in terms of its relationship to me: Is that my friend or my enemy, close to me or far from me, useful to me or unimportant to me? Moral egoism thus encourages us to see ourselves as at the center of the moral universe, where we care less and less about others the further they are from us.
Telegram
Dhammapada - Buddha Dharma Teachings
Daily teachings of the Dhammapada, beloved and favorite teachings of the Buddha
💯1🤗1
The world is full of sources of happiness, and most of them aren’t me.
Now, if you think for a moment, you’ll realize that that is a terrible distortion of what the moral landscape looks like. We can’t each be the center of the moral universe. The idea that we simply live our lives in disconnected moral universes, each of them centered on another self, makes the possibility of community and morality completely incomprehensible. Instead, we should be thinking of the moral universe as a kind of uniform space where our own position is no different in kind and no more or less special than any other position in that landscape. This is what happens when we think in terms of upeksha, or impartiality. When we do that, we see that our sources of happiness aren’t just our own achievements but also those of the people we are connected to. That allows us a much greater scope for joy. This is mudita, or sympathetic joy. It also enables us to recognize our interconnectedness with others and hence the fact that we’re bound by friendship, or maitri. It causes us to react to others’ distress with care and not with callousness, and that’s karuna.
These four aspects can help us reorient ourselves in the moral landscape. They ask each of us to recognize that the only way that I can succeed is if we succeed. The only way I can be happy is if we’re happy. And the only way my life can be meaningful is if our lives are meaningful. The recognition that the only kind of identity that we have is interdependent allows us to respond to others with gratitude, with care, and with friendship. And that’s the moral attitude that I think we ought to be encouraging. No matter how egoistic we might be, I think each of us will find that we’re happier when we shed our egoism and discover that the world is full of sources of happiness, and most of them aren’t me.
===
Jay L. Garfield is Professor of Philosophy, Logic, and Buddhist Studies at Smith College and a visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School. He has written, translated, and edited several books, including Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika and Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy.
===
Dhammapada, beloved and favorite teachings of the Buddha channel:
https://news.1rj.ru/str/dhammapadas
===
Now, if you think for a moment, you’ll realize that that is a terrible distortion of what the moral landscape looks like. We can’t each be the center of the moral universe. The idea that we simply live our lives in disconnected moral universes, each of them centered on another self, makes the possibility of community and morality completely incomprehensible. Instead, we should be thinking of the moral universe as a kind of uniform space where our own position is no different in kind and no more or less special than any other position in that landscape. This is what happens when we think in terms of upeksha, or impartiality. When we do that, we see that our sources of happiness aren’t just our own achievements but also those of the people we are connected to. That allows us a much greater scope for joy. This is mudita, or sympathetic joy. It also enables us to recognize our interconnectedness with others and hence the fact that we’re bound by friendship, or maitri. It causes us to react to others’ distress with care and not with callousness, and that’s karuna.
These four aspects can help us reorient ourselves in the moral landscape. They ask each of us to recognize that the only way that I can succeed is if we succeed. The only way I can be happy is if we’re happy. And the only way my life can be meaningful is if our lives are meaningful. The recognition that the only kind of identity that we have is interdependent allows us to respond to others with gratitude, with care, and with friendship. And that’s the moral attitude that I think we ought to be encouraging. No matter how egoistic we might be, I think each of us will find that we’re happier when we shed our egoism and discover that the world is full of sources of happiness, and most of them aren’t me.
===
Jay L. Garfield is Professor of Philosophy, Logic, and Buddhist Studies at Smith College and a visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School. He has written, translated, and edited several books, including Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika and Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy.
===
Dhammapada, beloved and favorite teachings of the Buddha channel:
https://news.1rj.ru/str/dhammapadas
===
Telegram
Dhammapada - Buddha Dharma Teachings
Daily teachings of the Dhammapada, beloved and favorite teachings of the Buddha
❤1👍1🙏1
Free Buddhism Dharma ebook
Your Questions, My Answers
On Buddhism and Experience
By Venerable S.M. Sujano
Free download available:
https://ftp.budaedu.org/ebooks/pdf/EN388.pdf
===
Your Questions, My Answers
On Buddhism and Experience
By Venerable S.M. Sujano
Free download available:
https://ftp.budaedu.org/ebooks/pdf/EN388.pdf
===
❤1👏1🤗1
Free Buddhism Dharma ebook
Your Questions, My Answers
On Buddhism and Experience
By Venerable S.M. Sujano
This book is a collection of questions and answers about Buddhism and my life as a Buddhist monk and how I deal with worldly matters. The first part is an interview about me and the work of the Varapunya Meditation Centre in the community.
The personal incline reveals much of my life and how Buddhism has helped me. Simona, a student of journalism writes her intension of interview in her appointment message; 'We've met before, ...I came a few times to your house [Varapunya Meditation Centre] for a meditation session.... I am a Journalism student at RGU and as a coursework for university I have to write a feature interview. I thought about interviewing you, if you are interested, because I believe you are a person that would inspire people, that has something to say, or that simply people would be curious to read about.'
I have also included few other questions and answers that I have encountered on different occasions. They are directly related to the teachings of the Buddha and the practice of meditation. I have answered these to the best of my knowledge and my limited understanding of Buddhist philosophy! I welcome any comments or suggestions. There are still many questions that yet to answer, which I intend to answer them in due future. I hope that this helps to deepen your understanding of the Buddha's teaching and guides you to use in your daily life for a happy life.
Free download available:
https://ftp.budaedu.org/ebooks/pdf/EN388.pdf
===
Your Questions, My Answers
On Buddhism and Experience
By Venerable S.M. Sujano
This book is a collection of questions and answers about Buddhism and my life as a Buddhist monk and how I deal with worldly matters. The first part is an interview about me and the work of the Varapunya Meditation Centre in the community.
The personal incline reveals much of my life and how Buddhism has helped me. Simona, a student of journalism writes her intension of interview in her appointment message; 'We've met before, ...I came a few times to your house [Varapunya Meditation Centre] for a meditation session.... I am a Journalism student at RGU and as a coursework for university I have to write a feature interview. I thought about interviewing you, if you are interested, because I believe you are a person that would inspire people, that has something to say, or that simply people would be curious to read about.'
I have also included few other questions and answers that I have encountered on different occasions. They are directly related to the teachings of the Buddha and the practice of meditation. I have answered these to the best of my knowledge and my limited understanding of Buddhist philosophy! I welcome any comments or suggestions. There are still many questions that yet to answer, which I intend to answer them in due future. I hope that this helps to deepen your understanding of the Buddha's teaching and guides you to use in your daily life for a happy life.
Free download available:
https://ftp.budaedu.org/ebooks/pdf/EN388.pdf
===
👏1💯1
Forwarded from Words of the Buddha
Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan Buddhist temple, Thonburi, on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok, Thailand.
🤩2🙏1😍1🏆1
Chapter 2
Appamada Vagga
Heedfulness
5. Uññhanenappamadena
sañamena damena ca
Dipam kayiratha medhavi
yam ogho n'abhikirati. 25.
BY THEIR EFFORTS THE WISE CREATE THEIR OWN HEAVENS
5. By sustained effort, earnestness, discipline, and self-control let the wise man make for himself an island, 9 which no flood overwhelms. 25.
Story
A young monk, named Culapanthaka, could not memorize a verse of four lines despite trying for four months and he was advised by his brother monk to leave the Order. But he was reluctant to do so. The Buddha understanding his temperament, gave him a clean piece of cloth and asked him to handle it gazing at the morning sun. By his constant handling of it with his sweating hands it soon got soiled. This perceptible change made him reflect on the impermanence of life. He meditated and attained Arahantship.
===
Words of the Buddha channel:
https://invite.viber.com/?g2=AQAFqzqlj7FmI061PX17rxWMAtZ%2BRuso%2FH2KmHKZSgnv7v9DD8X0bDkKnZDr9JDq
===
Appamada Vagga
Heedfulness
5. Uññhanenappamadena
sañamena damena ca
Dipam kayiratha medhavi
yam ogho n'abhikirati. 25.
BY THEIR EFFORTS THE WISE CREATE THEIR OWN HEAVENS
5. By sustained effort, earnestness, discipline, and self-control let the wise man make for himself an island, 9 which no flood overwhelms. 25.
Story
A young monk, named Culapanthaka, could not memorize a verse of four lines despite trying for four months and he was advised by his brother monk to leave the Order. But he was reluctant to do so. The Buddha understanding his temperament, gave him a clean piece of cloth and asked him to handle it gazing at the morning sun. By his constant handling of it with his sweating hands it soon got soiled. This perceptible change made him reflect on the impermanence of life. He meditated and attained Arahantship.
===
Words of the Buddha channel:
https://invite.viber.com/?g2=AQAFqzqlj7FmI061PX17rxWMAtZ%2BRuso%2FH2KmHKZSgnv7v9DD8X0bDkKnZDr9JDq
===
Viber
Words Of The Buddha
Daily teachings from Buddha Dharma
❤1👏1
Forwarded from Words of the Buddha
White dragons of Wat Huay Pla Kang Buddhist temple complex, Chiang Rai, Thailand which has the tallest Guan Yin / Avalokiteshvara statue in Thailand.
❤3😍1🏆1