If you haven’t made any mistake and still they are complaining, don’t try to prove them wrong. When our mind gets deluded, or when our mind is covered by anger, we shut our eyes and ears and open our mouths. We cannot see anything, we cannot hear anything. So what is best is to stay silent. Silence can give answers to many problems.

If you need to prove them wrong, prove them wrong with your success, not with your words. That is how we do it. The best practice that you can do to generate skill is to practice the mind of loving-kindness. If you love yourself, you will never enjoy making yourself angry. If you love yourself, you will have the opportunity to love others. And if you love others, you will never try to hurt those people with rude and angry words. Practice loving-kindness, practice compassion. Love, compassion, care—these things can provide many answers to the problems that pop up in our life. You always need to be kind. You always need to be humble. And, most importantly, remember being humble is not being weak.

These situations require mental skill. Now, this can be built by visualizing to yourself how you’re going to face such a situation. Try to visualize a situation like that now, if you can. If you can see that you have a good smile on your face, and you are fearless in listening to those people, then you are handling that situation very successfully. This visualization will help you to deal in a real situation like that. Practice that.

This is how we deal with toxic people: Never provide what they want. When they come to you, they need anger from you. They need to hurt you. Do not provide that. If you do not provide it, you will handle it successfully. Namo Buddhaya.

Adapted from a dharma talk noscriptd “How to Deal With Toxic People” by Ven. Mahindasiri Thero, a Sri Lankan monk and the CEO of Shradda Media Network.

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Dhammapada Verse 399
Akkosakabharadvaja Vatthu:

https://news.1rj.ru/str/dhammapadas/2381
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Vajrasana at Mahabodhi temple, Bodh Gaya, Bihar, Bharat Ganarajya.

Big Buddha Phra Phutthasuwanmongkhon Mahamuni, Wat Phikun Thong Buddhist temple, Sing Buri, Thailand.

3. Pheuupamam kayamimam viditva
marãcidhammam abhisambudhano
Chetvana marassa papupphakani
adassanam maccurajassa gacche. 46.

LIKE A MIRAGE IS THIS BODY

3. Knowing that this body is like foam, 8 and comprehending its mirage-nature, 9 one should destroy the flower-shafts of sensual passions (Mara), and pass beyond the sight of the king of death. 10 46.

Story

The sight of a mirage and bubbles of foam induced a monk to meditate on the impermanence and non-substantiality of life. The Buddha read his thoughts and, appearing before him, confirmed his views.
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Buddha dharma teachings channel:

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Tathagata Tsal, Buddha park of Ravangla, Sikkim, India.

pacchima-vaca:

Vaya-dhamma sankhara,
appamadena sampadetha.

All compounded things are impermanent.
Work out your own salvation with diligence.

DN 16: Maha Parinibbana sutta

Free Buddha Dharma ebook

Jesus And The Buddha, A Study of Their Commonalities and Contrasts

By Bhante Shravasti Dhammika

Free download available:

https://budblooms.org/2020/05/28/jesus-and-the-buddha/
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Free Buddha Dharma ebook

Jesus And The Buddha, A Study of Their Commonalities and Contrasts

By Bhante Shravasti Dhammika

During the last hundred years it has increasingly been said that all religions are actually pointing to the same reality. Now there are numerous books claiming that the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha are just different versions of the same truth. Is this true or is it the outcome of a superficial examination of the facts or perhaps a genuine but misguided attempt to encourage inter-religious understanding? This book is the first in-depth comparison of the life and teachings of Jesus and the Buddha and presented in the New Testament and the Tipitaka, the Buddhist noscriptures. The result is portraits of the two great religious figures very different from how they have traditionally been seen and the question ‘Are Christianity and Buddhism compatible?’ is answered in a way that may surprise many readers. Bhante Shravasti Dhammika is well placed to write this comparative study having been brought up a Christian and later becoming a Buddhist and a monk.

Free download available:

https://budblooms.org/2020/05/28/jesus-and-the-buddha/
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4. Pupphani h'eva pacinantam
byasattamanasam naram
Suttam gamam mahogho'va
maccu adaya gacchati. 47.

DEATH TAKES THE SENSUAL UNAWARES

4. The man who gathers flowers (of sensual pleasure), whose mind is distracted, death carries off as a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village. 47.

Story

Provoked by a disparaging remark, king Vidudabha wreaked vengeance on the Sakyas, kinsmen of the Buddha, by killing them wholesale. On his return journey he camped with his followers on the bed of a river. At night an unexpected flood swept them all to the sea. Hearing of their tragic end, the Buddha remarked that people come to ruin without accomplishing their objects.
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Words of the Buddha channel:

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If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions I ask their forgiveness.

If anyone has harmed me in any way either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions I forgive them.

And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive
I forgive myself for that.

For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions
I forgive myself.

"Asking for forgiveness" Buddhist prayer

Borobudur temple, world largest lava stone stupa, Java island, Indonesia.

5. Pupphani h'eva pacinantam
byasattamanasam naram
Atittam yeva kamesu
antako kurute vasam. 48.

WITH UNGRATIFIED DESIRES THE SENSUAL DIE

5. The man who gathers flowers (of sensual pleasure), whose mind is distracted, and who is insatiate in desires, the Destroyer 11 brings under his sway. 48.

Story

A woman offered alms to the monks in the morning and died in the evening of that very day. When this pathetic incident was reported to the Buddha He spoke on the fleeting nature of life and added that men succumb to death with insatiate desires.
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Dhammapada, beloved and favorite teachings of the Buddha channel:

https://invite.viber.com/?g2=AQBLD6phsgvP%2F061YjEM3K%2BNeH1Yb372b9mtfQX2EmuBpgoLUoc99BDMfzHghrme
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Free Buddha Dharma ebook

Selves & Not-self: The Buddhist Teaching on Anatta
By Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Free download available:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.pdf

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Free Buddha Dharma ebook

Selves & Not-self: The Buddhist Teaching on Anatta
By Thanissaro Bhikkhu

In May of thar year, members of Le Refuge, a Buddhist group located in Eguilles, near Aix-en-Provence, invited me to lead a ten-day retreat on the topics of breath meditation and anatta, or not-self. The retreat provided me with the rare opportunity to gather my thoughts on the topic of not-self under one framework. The result was a series of eight evening talks; edited trannoscripts of these talks form the body of this book.

For people unfamiliar with the Thai forest tradition, you should know that it is a meditation tradition founded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by Ajaan Mun Bhuridatto. The other ajaans mentioned in the talks trained under him. Of these, Ajaan Fuang and Ajaan Suwat were my teachers. Ajaan Fuang, although he spent some time training directly under Ajaan Mun, spent more time training under one of Ajaan Mun’s students, Ajaan Lee.

Free download available:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.pdf

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Tanah Lot temple on a rock, Bali, Indonesia.

heṭṭhā ... pādatalesu cakkāni jātāni, sahassārāni sanemikāni sanābhikāni sabbākāraparipūrāni...

Under the soles of His feet there are wheels, with a thousand rims and naves, complete in every way...


Thirty-two marks of a Great Man (mahā purisa lakkhaņa) in The Digha Nikaya, "Discourse of the Marks" (Pali: Lakkhaṇa Sutta) (DN 30)

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

The Karma of Now

Why the present moment isn’t the goal
By Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Part 1 of 3

Have you ever wondered why Buddhist meditation focuses so much attention on observing the mind in the present moment? It’s because of the way the Buddha taught karma (Pali, kamma), or action.

His teachings on karma were so central to all of his teachings that when he classified himself as a teacher, he used the label kamma-vadin: someone who teaches action. This was to distinguish himself from the many contemporary teachers in India who taught that action was unreal or had no consequences.

But he also found it necessary to distinguish himself from other kamma-vadins, and he emphasized two main points where his teachings departed from theirs: (1) the issue of how karma shaped the present moment, and (2) the issue of which kind of action, physical or mental, was more important in shaping experience.

With regard to the first question, a kamma-vadin group called the Niganthas taught that the present moment was shaped entirely by your past actions. In other words, your present actions can have an influence on the future, but not on what you’re experiencing right now. The Niganthas also believed that all karma resulted in suffering, which meant that the only way to put an end to suffering would be to stop acting. So their practice consisted of austerities in which they endured sharp pains in the present moment without reacting to them. That way, they believed, they would burn off past karma while creating no new karma. Freedom from suffering would come when all past karma was burned away.

If you envision the Buddha as uttering nothing but sweetness and light, it may come as a shock to learn how thoroughly he ridiculed the Niganthas for holding to their beliefs. To paraphrase some of his remarks (Majjhima Nikaya 101), he once asked them if they could possibly measure how much karma they burned off through their practice, or how much remained to be burned. If they couldn’t measure it, how could they know it was burned away? As for their claims that suffering in the present came entirely from past karma, he asked them if they hadn’t noticed that the pain caused by their austerities stopped when they stopped doing them.

In other words, he was pointing to the fact that what you do in the present moment can have an influence not only on the future, but also on what you experience right now. Past actions may have some role in shaping your present experience of pleasure and pain, but they don’t totally determine it. In fact, present actions can make all the difference between whether a past bad action leads to a lot of suffering right now or only a little (Anguttara Nikaya 3.101). This means that the present moment doesn’t arrive ready-built. We’re constantly constructing it as it’s happening, with greater or less skill, out of the raw materials provided by past karma.

As for the second question, the Niganthas taught that physical action was more important than mental action. This is why they made no attempt to understand the psychology of action. All they had to do with past karma, they thought, was to believe that it existed and to burn it off through austerities. The Buddha, however, taught that mental action was more important than physical action in leading toward suffering or away from it.

These two features of the Buddha’s teaching on action—the role of present action in shaping the present in addition to the future, and the central importance of mental actions—explain why Buddhist meditation focuses on observing and understanding the mind in the here and now. But they explain even more. They tell us what we can expect to see in the here and now, what we can do with it, and—because the present moment, like the past and future, is by definition an ongoing construction site—why we have to go beyond it if we want to put an end to all suffering and stress.The present moment is never simply to be accepted as it is.