If you just take one minute to read this, It will change the way you think…

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room’s only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.. Hospital window.

Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window. The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and colour of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every colour and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine this picturesque scene. One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.

Although the other man could not hear the band – he could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words. Days, weeks and months passed. One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone. Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed.

It faced a blank wall.

The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.

She said, ‘Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.’

Epilogue:

There is tremendous happiness in making others happy, despite our own situations. Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled. If you want to feel rich, just count all the things you have that money can’t buy.

 Source: http://www.trulybuddha.com/if-you-take-just-1-miniute-to-read-this-it-will-change-the-way-you-think/

Listen with your own wisdom

Meditation is learning how to listen with your own wisdom, so that you can see. I think why meditation is amazingly important, is that somehow our unconscious world is much bigger. It is huge, universal, and we don't understand that one. Meditation allows this world to be light and knowable, understandable. That is why it is important. 

Normally we are totally robbed by the egotistic, conventional mind, not allowing the fundamental mind to be functioning. That is why one should have confidence, truly... through experience, one has confidence in one's spiritual journey.

~ Lama Thubten Yeshe ~

If Buddhism is so good why are some Buddhist countries poor?

If by poor you mean economically poor, then it is true that some Buddhist countries are poor. But if by poor you mean a poor quality of life, then perhaps some Buddhist countries are quite rich. America, for example, is an economically rich and powerful country but the crime rate is one of the highest in the world, millions of old people are neglected by their children and die of loneliness in old people’s homes, domestic violence and child abuse are major problems. One in three marriages end in divorce, pornography is easily available. Rich in terms of money but perhaps poor in terms of the quality of life. Now if you look at some traditional Buddhist countries you find a very different situation. Parents are honoured and respected by their children, the crime rates are relatively low, divorce and suicide are rare and traditional values like gentleness, generosity, hospitality to strangers, tolerance and respect for others are still strong. Economically backward, but perhaps a higher quality of life than a country like America. But even if we judge Buddhist countries in terms of economics alone, one of the wealthiest and most economically dynamic countries in the world today is Japan where 93% of the population call themselves Buddhist.

Good Questions and Good Answers

With Ven.S. Dhammika

"Why am I so poor?"

A poor man asked the Buddha,

“Why am I so poor?”

The Buddha said, “you do not learn to give.”

So the poor man said, “If I’m not having anything?”

Buddha said: “You have a few things,

The Face, which can give a smile;

Mouth: you can praise or comfort others;

The Heart: it can open up to others;

Eyes: who can look the other with the eyes of goodness;

Body: which can be used to help others.”

So, actually we are not poor at all, poverty of spirit is the real poverty.

(From Internet)

The Lost Watch

A farmer had lost his watch in the barn and he was doing with all effort to look for it but it seemed that every of his attempt is not well deserved. The watch isn't a valuable one to him, yet it carries a lot of his good memories.

After a hopeless time looking for the watch, the farmer had made up his mind to ask all the kids from neighborhood to help him seek for it with a promise of a reward for the one who would be able to bring it back to him. However, despite all the effort, the kids were not able to find it and they gradually gave it up. Then another boy came up suggesting to help him out.

''Why not?''-thought the man. ''Anyway, he looks sincere with his suggestion'' Then the farmer took the little boy into the barn and the seek began. After a while, the boy ran to him with the watch in his hand. The ecstasy appeared on the man's face and he asked how the boy could find it.

The boy answered: ''I did nothing but sitting still in silence to listen. There, I realized the ticking sound of the watch's arms and then I got it''.

The silence in your soul could be better than a continuously working mind. Just keep your mind in relaxation and mindfulness and see how effective it works.

 (From Internet)

I AM GOOD!

An African tribe does the most beautiful thing.

When someone does something hurtful and wrong, they take the person to the center of town, and the entire tribe comes and surrounds him.

For two days they'll tell the man every good thing he has ever done.

The tribe believes that every human being comes into the world as Good, each of us desiring safety, love, peace, happiness.

But sometimes in the pursuit of those things people make mistakes. The community sees misdeeds as a cry for help.

They band together for the sake of their fellow man to hold him up, to reconnect him with his true Nature, to remind him who 

he really is, until he fully remembers the truth from which he'd temporarily been disconnected:

“I AM GOOD.”

(From Internet)

There is no-self

“Nope, never said that, either.”—The Buddha

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

The Buddha was careful to classify questions according to how they should be answered, based on how helpful they were to gaining awakening. Some questions deserved a categorical answer, that is, one that holds true across the board. Some he answered analytically, redefining or refining the terms before answering. Some required counter-questioning, to clarify the issue in the questioner’s mind. But if the question was an obstacle on the path, the Buddha put it aside.

When Vacchagotta the wanderer asked him point-blank whether or not there is a self, the Buddha remained silent, which means that the question has no helpful answer. As he later explained to Ananda, to respond either yes or no to this question would be to side with opposite extremes of wrong view (Samyutta Nikaya 44.10). Some have argued that the Buddha didn’t answer with “no” because Vacchagotta wouldn’t have understood the answer. But there’s another passage where the Buddha advises all the monks to avoid getting involved in questions such as “What am I?” “Do I exist?” “Do I not exist?” because they lead to answers like “I have a self” and “I have no self,” both of which are a “thicket of views, a writhing of views, a contortion of views” that get in the way of awakening (Majjhima Nikaya 2).

So how did we get the idea that the Buddha said that there is no self? The main culprit seems to be the debate culture of ancient India. Religious teachers often held public debates on the hot questions of the day, both to draw adherents and to angle for royal patronage. The Buddha warned his followers not to enter into these debates (Sutta Nipata 4.8), partly because once the sponsor of a debate had set a question, the debaters couldn’t follow the Buddha’s policy of putting useless questions aside.

Later generations of monks forgot the warning and soon found themselves in debates where they had to devise a Buddhist answer to the question of whether there is or isn’t a self. TheKathavatthu, an Abhidhamma text attributed to the time of King Ashoka, contains the earliest extant version of the answer “no.” Two popular literary works, the Buddhacharitaand Milinda Panha, both from around the first century CE, place this “no” at the center of the Buddha’s message. Later texts, like the Abhidharmakosha Bhashya, provide analytical answers to the question of whether there is a self, saying that there’s no personal self but that each person has a “dharma-self” composed of five aggregates: material form, feelings, perceptions, mental fabrications, and consciousness. At present we have our own analytical answers to the question, such as the teaching that although we have no separate self, we do have a cosmic self—a teaching, by the way, that the Buddha singled out for special ridicule (MN 22).

“There is no self” is the granddaddy of fake Buddhist quotes. It has survived so long because of its superficial resemblance to the teaching on anatta, or not-self, which was one of the Buddha’s tools for putting an end to clinging. Even though he neither affirmed nor denied the existence of a self, he did talk of the process by which the mind creates many senses of self—what he called “I-making” and “my-making”—as it pursues its desires.

In other words, he focused on the karma of selfing. Because clinging lies at the heart of suffering, and because there’s clinging in each sense of self, he advised using the perception of not-self as a strategy to dismantle that clinging. Whenever you see yourself identifying with anything stressful and inconstant, you remind yourself that it’s not-self: not worth clinging to, not worth calling your self (SN 22.59). This helps you let go of it. When you do this thoroughly enough, it can lead to awakening. In this way, the not-self teaching is an answer—not to the question of whether there’s a self, but to the question that the Buddha said lies at the heart of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” (MN 135). You find true happiness by letting go.

Some ways of selfing, the Buddha and his disciples found, are useful along the path, as when you develop a sense of self that’s heedful and responsible, confident that you can manage the practice (Anguttara Nikaya 4.159). While you’re on the path, you apply the perception of not-self to anything that would pull you astray. Only at the end do you apply that perception to the path itself. As for the goal, it’s possible to develop a sense of clinging around the experience of the deathless, so the Buddha advises that you regard even the deathless as not-self (AN 9.36). But when there’s no more clinging, you have no need for perceptions either of self or not-self. You see no point in answering the question of whether there is or isn’t a self because you’ve found the ultimate happiness.

The belief that there is no self can actually get in the way of awakening. As the Buddha noted, the contemplation of not-self can lead to an experience of nothingness (MN 106). If your purpose in practicing is to disprove the self—perhaps from wanting to escape the responsibilities of having a self—you can easily interpret the experience of nothingness as the proof you’re looking for: a sign you’ve reached the end of the path. Yet the Buddha warned that subtle clinging can persist in that experience. If you think you’ve reached awakening, you won’t look for the clinging. But if you learn to keep looking for clinging, even in the experience of nothingness, you’ll have a chance of finding it. Only when you find it can you then let it go.

So it’s important to remember which questions the not-self teaching was meant to answer and which ones it wasn’t. Getting clear on this point can mean the difference between a false awakening and the real thing. 

Thanissaro Bhikkhu is the abbot of Metta Forest Monastery and the author and translator of numerous meditation guides. His latest book is Meditations 6.

Source of the article.

Parents' care

At age seventeen, Sarah was sure parents were over protective. They always wanted to know exactly where she was, whom she was with, and what time she would be home. If she was going to be even ten minutes late, she had to phone her parents so they wouldn't worry that she had been in a car accident. Her parents, on the other hand, loved Sarah and wanted to make sure she was safe. They were concerned that she may not yet be able to assess and handle potentially difficult situations. Sarah and her parents fought regularly over this, making all their lives unpleasant. The more Sarah tried to assert that she was capable of making decisions, the more her parents seemed to try to restrict her movements, and the more her parents did that, the more she asserted herself. They were caught in a vicious circle.

Several years later Sarah encountered the Dharma and began to meditate. When the situation with her parents kept distracting her during her meditation, she knew she had to look at it more closely. In doing so, Sarah saw that she and her parents were talking past each other and quarreling over two different issues. For her, the conflict was about autonomy and independence. She felt like she was an adult and knew how to make wise decisions. She resented what she perceived to be her parents' lack of trust, their interference in her life, and their trying to control her. She then realized that for her parents, the conflict was about safety. Looking at the situation from their view point, she began to see that her parents were not trying to control her life. Rather, because they loved her, they wanted her to be safe. Once she saw this, Sarah was able to let go of her resentment and stop quarreling with her parents. Once one partner in an argument has resigned, the argument can no longer occur, so her parents also relaxed.

In this instance, it was Sarah who realized that the needs and concerns of the conflicting parties were different. It could equally have been her parents. Had they realized that their daughter had tools to make decisions and was not simply being brash and rebellious, they would have spoken to their teenager with more respect, which would have elicited a different response from her.

Although Sarah's parents, from time to time, still seemed overly concerned about her, Sarah stopped being annoyed. An incident between her grandmother and her father confirmed her understanding of her parents' concerns and the foolishness of becoming angry at them. One day, when her father was sixty five, his mother reminded him to put on a sweater before he went out so he didn't catch cold. Sarah chuckled at this and realized that her parents would probably check on her in a similar way her whole life, no matter how old she was.

Years later, when Sarah was in her thirties, her mother asked her to wear a certain dress to the family Christmas party that evening. Sarah happily complied. Her cousin, who had overheard the conversation, later said to her, "I was aghast that your mother told you what to wear when you're thirty five, and I'm even more surprised that you didn't explode at her for doing so." Sarah explained to her cousin,"Unlike when I was a teenager, I'm now confident of myself as an independent adult. My mother's saying that doesn't threaten my confidence of my autonomy. In fact, now I'm happy to do something small to please her, for she and my dad cared for me with so much love when I was young."

(From Internet)

Why sickness in Buddhist view? Ven. Thich Chan Quang

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