Solar Eclipse On Auspicious Buddha Day

March 09, 2016 is the new moon day and it’s the Shakyamurni Buddha day according to the Tibetan calendar. On this day, the auspicious Buddha day is coinciding with a natural phenomenon as follows:-

1. Shakyamurni Buddha Day. 
2. New moon day
3. Solar eclipse.
4. Sojong practice

The maximum eclipse It is visible from across a much wider area, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, the Koreas, Japan, Philippines, Guam, northern Australia and even parts of Alaska. A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between Earth and the sun. The moon passes between Earth and the sun every month, but a total solar eclipse happens only when the three celestial bodies are perfectly aligned. This particular eclipse is even more special: It’s happening while the moon is at its closest point to Earth—called perigee.

Lucky sky watchers in Southeast Asia get a rare front-row seat to a total eclipse on March 8 and 9, and Pacific islanders will see a still-dazzling partial eclipse.

On this day, the effects of positive or negative actions are said to be multiplied by Hundred million times during Solar and lunar eclipses according to the Tibetan tradition. If one have committed a good and bad actions, and it will be multiplied by Hundred million times of such action. Therefore practices are emphasized according to the Tibetan lunar calendar of the Fire Monkey year 2143.

The Eight Mahayana Precepts or Sojong Practices

1. To refrain from killing.
2. To refrain from  stealing.
3. To refrain from sexual misconduct.
4. To refrain from lying and intoxication.
5. To refrain from taking a high or luxurious seat.
6. To refrain from singing and dancing.
7. To refrain from wearing ornaments.
8. To refrain from eating after midday.

The power of prayer is well known over centuries and in all different religious beliefs. According to Buddhism, the world in which we live and all that happens to us is a result of our past actions. Past harmful actions create unhappy results and skillful actions create happy results. 

Tadyata Om Muni Muni Maha Muniye Soha

One way to purify obstacles we experience due to our past harmful action is through prayers and pujas. A puja is a special ceremony in which prayers are offered to the Buddhas to request their blessings or invoke their help. But most importantly, making prayers and offerings to the enlightened beings, and to the Sangha community generates and increases merit, our positive potential. Merit is needed to have success in all activities. 

Pujas are performed to avert and clear the three types of obstacles which arise due to the lack of merit, which prevent us from achieving our worldly and spiritual goals. Removing these obstacles will help us to achieve happiness and good fortune in all our activities.

How to request a Puja

While some prayers are of universal benefit, there are others that help with specific problems. It is always advisable to ask a lama or other knowledgeable person for advice on what puja is suitable for one's specific situation or problem.

There are three types of obstacles:

1. Affecting our  day to day life,relationships, business, and finances. 
2. Affecting mental and physical health in the form of strong emotions, confusion, and associated physical problems.
3. Obstructing the attainment of wisdom, experienced as difficulties in Dharma practice.

Pujas can be performed for various purposes:

1. To help pacify their mind, and decrease fear during the time of death.
2. To bless and guide their mind to a higher state of rebirth and liberation. 
3. To remove obstacles to mental and physical health.
4. To remove obstacles to success in all activities, be they worldly or spiritual.

Thank you for reading, may you find peace and great bliss. With your support it helps to spread the precious Buddha’s precious Dharma and turning the Dharma wheels in the world.

Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease

But increase further and further.

Nagarjuna's Dedication of Merit

By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migrators from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

*Note

I do not own or infringe any copyright of these pictures.

Pictures courtesy and credit to the rightful owners

The best ways to predict your life is to create it.

The best ways to predict your life is to create it.

Kindness is the language

The blind can see it 

The deaf can hear it

Your little kindness goes a long way

Leave footprints of your love and kindness wherever you go

It's not always as easy to be kind to people and very often we think we are correct and another is wrong. When our thinking and emotion are wounded or our needs are not met in exclusively, people tend to express more impetuously, without considering what they say. Occasionally, we fail to remember about how the other one feels when we think what we have to say is more important. 

From time to time, in the middle of the conflict, we should be observing from the sidelines. What are they doing? Why are they talking to each other this way? Why are they both engaging in this manner?  

Problem solving is a process that is best achieved by the acceptance of a common goal and a kind heart. That does not exclude the expression of painful emotions. You can love someone and be angry. Again, it’s the way you express it. It’s how you express it that matters. The triumph of your interactions is directly related to your awareness and kindness.

Every new day we should come with a thankful thought!  For as long as you live, you have the chance to grow and be happy and for every new day must be considered a blessing, even if you are a non-believer. Try to fill the hours with optimism and contentment.

Remember these notes:- The best way to predict life, is to create it.

Do your best to have a little kindness towards others, including all beings as often as possible and let contemplate, let our love and compassion unfetter you from ignorance and sharpens your ability to appraise. Compassion and kindness are like the sanctuary that provides us a safe haven, when the storm is raging around us and naturally our reaction is to seek and find a shelter for safety. So compassion and wisdom are the wings that lighten all human’ development in many aspects of our life, whether it’s a spiritual journey or a self achievement.

Loving kindness and Bodhichitta are the messages of life, you don't learn only in institutions. Life itself is a living Journal that teaches something to those who wish to learn. This is the reason why I am always beginning my writing post of a title of THE LIVING JOURNAL. The Living Journal is related to Dharma and Dharma is a living philosophy and teaches us how significant to learn the Dharma and to apply it in our daily life.

To practice the Dharma and to apply it in our daily life, we need to study and attend the teachings and perceiving and viewing the Dharma as medicine to heal our life. When we attend teachings, we should think that “I am doing this to benefit myself and others” This is what we should do so with a Bodhichitta motivation. Besides having a positive motivation, we should try to avoid the six impediments of the path (please refer my post dated March 02, 2016)

When we attend teachings, keep a pure view; view the opportunity to attend the Dharma teaching as a perfect place, a perfect speech, a perfect assembly of gathering together to listen the precious teachings from the teacher.

In the Vajrayana tradition, you can see the bell and a dorje are frequently used during the prayer and ritual ceremonies. The bell and dorje which symbolize wisdom and skillful method. Using these hand implements in your practice symbolizes the union of skillful means and wisdom. Like using the two hands to produce a sound. Skillful means encompass rightful methods, compassion and Bodhichitta. If we do not have the implements of skillful ways of compassion and Bodhichitta, it is like a house without a kitchen.

Three common defeats of listening to Dharma

1] Listen to Dharma with full concentration, listen well and understand what is being taught. Likewise, you are like pouring water into an overturned or upside down of a pot and water will never fill or what the saying goes; “what go in one ear and out the other” we will never learn.

2] What we listen, we should revise, analyzed memorized and practiced. If we set it aside, we will not remember what was taught. Like a pot with a hole whose contents will leak and the pot will become empty.

3] Attending Dharma with the right motivation is extremely critical. However, diligent or devoted we may be, if it is only attend the Dharma for fame, fortune that motivates us, it is like a pot is contaminated and when we drink, we all will get sick. This is the poison in our mind, and then the Dharma teaching can’t really help us

When we practice diligently and followed every instruction that our Guru, the teacher has taught us, our practice should be like the sun coming out from the clouds brings brightness and charity.

Thank you for reading, may you find peace and great bliss. With your support it helps to spread the precious Buddha’s precious Dharma and turning the Dharma wheels in the world.

Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease

But increase further and further.

Nagarjuna's Dedication of Merit

By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migrators from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

*Note

I do not own or infringe any copyright of these pictures.

Pictures courtesy and credit to the rightful owners.

The Six Impediments of The Path.

The Living Journal – The six impediments of the path.

I can show you the way, but to attain the enlightenment, you have to work for yourself.- Quoted By the Buddha.

The six impediments of the path or the obscuration of the path, which affect our understanding of the Dharma.

1] Pride – to learn or to practice the Dharma, avoid pride. Once we have pride we will never learn, as we will always think that we are much better or more capable than our teachers.

2] Lack of faith [Not referring to blind faith] without faith nothing will happen, even if we have met with auspicious circumstances that allow us to practice, such as to have the time to practice, to have a good teacher and to have met the Dharma.

Why do we think that Buddhas are special ? There is absolutely no reason why we should think so. But because of faith, devotion arises. Once we have analyzed the Buddha’s teachings, and we are firmly convinced that the Buddhas really have an all-encompassing knowledge and wisdom, our faith and devotion will grow even stronger. Hence. We must have faith to learn or to even meet the Dharma and faith is an absolute pre-requisite to achieve enlightenment.

3] Lack of effort – Without right effort, we will not be able achieve our goals. Buddha Shakyamurni said to his disciples, “ I can show you the way, but to attain the enlightenment, you have to work for yourself”

If we don’t practice, even the Buddha Himself can not help us. If it possible for Buddha to liberate us all, out of compassion for us, the Buddha would have done so.

We are responsible for our own liberation, putting effort into our practice is all well and good, but right effort is also important. Right actions and efforts increase our inner realization and understanding. Wrong actions and efforts, like killing, stealing are those actions that should be avoided.

4] Outward distraction -  A distracted mind will not be able to concentrate and to improve our practice. It would be better to minimize activities that may cause us to lose our focus, such as partying, nightclubbing and gossiping. It is very easy for our mind to become attached to objects that attract our six senses or six consciousness, which are our eyes, nose, tongue, ears, touch and mind. 

[Your may refers to the Heart sutra explanations on how nature is emptiness and emptiness is nature and what is form, form is emptiness and emptiness is form]

When we are easily distracted by objects of the six senses may cause us to act rashly and irrationally. Like some animals will immerse themselves in mud to feel cool under the hot sun, but if they are becoming stuck in the mud, the animals will die. We learn to be less attached to objects and learn to let go or detached and to learn to control our mind.

5] Inward tension – If the string is too tight, it will break. If the string is too loose, it won’t work. If we focus too much, we become tense and may cause us to lose our concentration by falling asleep or becoming lazy. When we push ourselves too hard during meditation, we would become tired and confused, when we are too relaxed , we would then falling into asleep, this is the same concept should be applied to our practice..

6] Discouragement – Do not discouraged when we made effort to listen to the Dharma. Stop thinking that , “ I have wasted two hours listening to this teaching, instead of being here, is better I could be at home watching Oscar academy awards. All these thoughts serve no purpose except to discourage and prevent us from practicing.

The basic of Six Paramitas. (To be discussed separately)

Paramita is a Sanskrit word and in Tibetan words the six Paramitas, is “phar-phying-drug” it’s literally means Perfection or completeness. It’s also known as the 六度般若波羅蜜 in Mahayana traditions. In Buddhism, these virtues are cultivated as a way of purification of karma and helping the disciples to live an unobstructed life, while reaching the goal of enlightenment.

1. Generosity.

2. Virtue, morality, ethics conduct.

3. Patience, tolerance, forgiveness, acceptance, endurance.

4. Diligence, vigor, joyful endeavour.

5. One point concentration, meditative concentration.

6. Wisdom

Thank you for reading, may you find peace and great bliss. With your support it helps to spread the precious Buddha’s precious Dharma and turning the Dharma wheels in the world.

Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease

But increase further and further.

Nagarjuna's Dedication of Merit

By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migrators from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

*Note

I do not own or infringe any copyright of these pictures.

Pictures courtesy and credit to the rightful owners.

The Living Journal – Lending A Helping Hand To Inspire Others

We have two hands

One is to help yourself

The second is to help others

“Love is not patronizing and charity isn’t about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same — with charity you give love, so don’t just give money but reach out your hands instead”- Mother Teresa, A Simple Path.

Samsara is the whole round of existence, Samsara with its miseries, is the true cause of suffering. To Samsara belongs everything which proceeds from a chain of other causes and which is thus involved in Karma and delusion.

Its essential nature is misery; its function is to provide a basis for the spread of misery and by nature to attract miseries in the future. I believe in helping others. Whether it is something big or small, I think that one simple act of kindness can make a huge impact.

Life is not to be being happy alone. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, and to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well, an important part of living a blissful and fulfilling life includes being part of a caring community where you can share, help and support people you care about. It also includes being kind to strangers, and learning to replace envy and anger with understanding and empathy.

Frequently I have heard people complain about not being able to help the community because they want to live comfortably. I believe that it is possible to help those around you without sacrificing everything and barely living hand to mouth. I think it is important to donate your time, effort, and energy to improving your community and by contributing and practicing generosity to the needy if you can.

It’s easy to get so wrapped up in fixing your own life that you forget about helping others. And while it’s important to put yourself first sometimes, it’s even more important to help others whenever you can. Being generous isn’t even always about altruism – becoming more generous and compassionate will have real tangible benefits in your own life, according to the Buddha teachings of The Six Paramitas.

The basic teaching of The Six Paramitas. (To be discussed separately)

Paramita is a Sanskrit word and in Tibetan words the six Paramitas, is “phar-phying-drug” it’s literally mean Perfection or completeness. It’s also known as the 六度般若波羅蜜 in Mahayana traditions. In Buddhism, these virtues are cultivated as a way of purification of karma and helping the disciples to live an unobstructed life, while reaching the goal of enlightenment.

1. Generosity.

2. Virtue, morality, ethics conduct.

3. Patience, tolerance, forgiveness, acceptance, endurance.

4. Diligence, vigor, joyful endeavour.

5. One point concentration, meditative concentration.

6. Wisdom.

Generosity is the top priority of the six Paramitas, to practice of generosity is to give what is helpful and good and to give without selfishness. There are three ways to be moderate and generous and it is necessary to abandon improper giving and to know what is proper to give.

1) Giving material things,

2) Giving loving protection,

3) Giving loving understanding.

It certainly is not beneficial to indulge those persons crazed with desire and filled with greed. Furthermore, an appropriate generosity is giving whatever one possibly can and doing so with a pure motivation and enthusiasm. There is an inspiring story about the previous life of Buddha when He was a great Bodhisattvas who even gave their own flesh to feed animals that were on the verge of starving to death. 

One’s motivation is very important when one is charitable. It is inappropriate to give something to someone with the intention to harm, or with the intention to become famed, or out of fear of impending poverty. It is also necessary to consider what one gives. Our pure motivation is should never give anything that can hurt others and should never give anything that is helpful with wicked thoughts in mind. It is also important to reflect the recipient of one’s generosity.

Over the years, I have a small group of 10 Dharma volunteers reaching out in many places, but mostly at hospitals in the special care unit for homeless ailing * HIV patients, including the Hiv positive children that abandoned by their parents. But what most important is people who are infected with diseases need care and support from their friends, families and the community, especially when they are ill without their love ones to take care and showing love, respect and support them. 

Public discrimination is one of the main caused of these HIV patients are committing suicide at a far higher rate than the general population, and at a higher rate even than among people with other fatal disease.

*HIV is now a chronic infectious disease and treatable medical condition and most treated people remain fit and well.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them 

– By Mother Teresa.

Would you give others another chance to live?  Yes I would and would you?

Do you earnestly cherish our devoted work? Assuming this is the case, we are delighted that you are finding our blog useful. Would you consider making a donation for our Buddhist research and development?  We need your help to secure the future of scholarly interaction with Buddhism. 

Please consider showing your support. Your generosity will certainly help us to improve our works and to achieve for a better and brighter prospect to come. 

Thank you for reading, may you find peace and great bliss. With your support it helps to spread the precious Buddha’s precious Dharma and turning the Dharma wheels in the world.

Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease

But increase further and further.

Nagarjuna's Dedication of Merit

By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migrators from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

*Note
I do not own or infringe any copyright of the picture(s).
Picture(s) courtesy and credit to the rightful distributors and or studios.
Picture(s) is/are intended for editorial use only.

The Wheel of The Existence

The Living Journal – The Wheel of the existence.

(For general introduction only)

Samsara is the whole round of existence, Samsara with its miseries, is the true cause of suffering. To Samsara belongs everything which proceeds from a chain of other causes and which is thus involved in Karma and delusion.

Its essential nature is misery; its function is to provide a basis for the spread of misery and by nature to attract miseries for the future.

Samsara is divided into three worlds:-

1] The world of the senses - Beings in these worlds enjoy external sensual pleasure.

2] The world of the form – Beings can not enjoy external sensual pleasures but with the capability enjoy the undisturbed pleasure of internal contemplation.

 

3] The world of the formless – Beings in these worlds, the objects of the five senses do not exist, nor the five sensual organs with which we enjoy. There is only a bare mind or consciousness that devoid of distractions and beings exists and dwells entirely in a state of equanimity.

Samsara may also be divided according to the nature of the beings it contains and by this system, known as the Wheel of life of the six realms. Buddhist cosmology typically identifies six realms of existence, The Wheel of six realms or the Karmic Destinations, which is known as the cyclic of existence. 

Cyclic of existence is beginingless which means that each being has lived countless lifetimes and as such, there is no being that has not been our mother or father at one existence or another. 

Buddhism therefore teaches that every being is in fact a kind mother being who has, in the past, shown great love, kindness and protection to each one of us and that we should in turn be ready to repay them with similar acts of kindness. 

This is a very important aspect of Buddhist practice that will help one to develop loving compassion and this is why the first precepts of Buddhism is refrain from KILLING.

The Law of the twelve stages of causes or dependent

The law is also known as the law of Dependant origination or the Wheel of Life and is a discourse on the process of birth and death. It deals with the causes of rebirth and suffering with the view of helping mankind to get rid of their ills of life. It is not an attempt to solve the riddle of an absolute origin of life. It merely explains the “simple happening of a state, dependent on its antecedent state.

Ignorance of the truth of suffering, its cause, its end and the way to its end, is the main cause that set the Wheel of the six realms in motion. The Buddha said; ignorance is the deep delusion wherein we here so long are circling round.

The twelve Causes and their interdependent relationship are as follows:-

1] Ignorance

2] Action

3] Consciousness

4] Form and existence

5] The senses

6] Contact –Love Making

7] Sensation

8] Craving

9] Grasping

10] Existence

11] Rebirth

12] Old age and death

The Wheel of the six realms

1] The God or The Devas realms.

2] The Asura the Demi–Gods or Titan realms. 

3] The Human realm.

4] The Animal realms

5] The Preta – gati or Hungry Ghost realms

6] The Hell realms.  

1] The God realms - Include beings in the realm of celestial form and celestial formless, and  are the happiest realm as those beings who dwell there are enjoying with great power, wealth and long life. They are enjoying with continual pleasure and sensual delight, mitigated only by the fact that they too must eventually grow old and die and pass on to the other states once their karmic forces end or die out. Those beings born into the god realms are mainly due to one having lived virtuously and generously towards others.

2] The Asura the Demi–God or Titan realms - Is populated by “jealous gods” who should be as happy as the celestial beings, but their minds are clouded with anger and envy over the better fortunes of the god realm. Take a closer look at the picture of the Wheel of the six realms, there is a tree growing from the realm of the Asura to the realms of the Gods.

This is a “wish-fulfilling” tree whose fruits and flowers can fulfill every desire which the Asura or the Demi-Gods they are unable to get hold of. This causes them great frustration, anger and jealousy and therefore constantly wage against the Gods and try to claim the fruits of their tree. 

However they are always defeated because the Gods are farmore powerful due to their karmic legacy. Despite being a heavenly realm the Asuras live in a great suffering due to the delusion of anger and jealousy. The male Asura suffering is further increased by being born with a monstrous looks while the female Asura are born exquisitely beautiful and the female Asura only yearn for the love of the handsome Gods and rejecting their own kind.

3] The Human realm - Is where we are, it is filled with the up and downs of life, and we should be grateful for this conditions to be around. These bring about the awareness of the bliss of happiness and the misery of suffering and therefore become the way causes that lead to a spiritual practice.

It is the most fortunate realm to take rebirth into the world where one is able to listen to the Dharma and practice it to attain enlightenment. In the God realms the Gods are far too happily engrossed with their pleasures to bother about further cultivation while the Asura realms are too much affected by anger, jealousy and dissatisfactions of their existence. 

The Human Realm is the only realm of the six from which beings may escape samsara. Enlightenment is at hand in the Human Realm, yet only a few open their eyes and sees it. Rebirth into the Human Realm is conditioned by passion, doubt and desire.

4] The Animal realms – Born due to the result of their willful ignorance and are therefore unable to derive any benefit from the Dharma. Animals live only by instinct and must face daily reality of searching for food or mate and killing or be killed

5] The Hungry Ghost realms – The living spirits born here due to there are associated with addiction, obsession and compulsion. Who are afflicted constantly with the miseries of hunger and thirst. These beings with huge, empty stomachs, but they have pinhole mouths, and their necks are so thin they cannot swallow any food or water.

6] The Hell realms – As the name suggests, the Hell realm is the most terrible of the Six Realms. Hell beings have a short fuse; everything makes them angry. And the only way hell beings deal with things that make them angry is through aggression, violence. There are many different regions of hell, and the living beings in each of them also vary in nature, accordingly to their past Karma. Hell living beings only await the exhaustion of their karma to end their indescribable sufferings.

In the center of the Wheel of the six realms is seeing there are Three Animals which signifies the three poisons or three root causes of the suffering existence as follows:-

1] The rooster represents the passionate desire and attachment.

2] The snake represents hatred, enmity and aversion.

3] The boar represents the darkness of ignorance,ego & delusion.

Buddha 

In the top right corner, Buddha is showing the way. He is outside the Wheel of the six realms and to demonstrate that Buddha has escaped the cycle of life and death. Buddha is pointing to the Yama and the Wheel to instruct his followers the true nature of existence. 

The above explanation of the Wheel of the six realms helps us to understand clearly that our existence and sufferings are the result of the cause and effect and conditions which are without beginning of birth, death and rebirth. This Wheel of the six realms is a unique and superb representation of Samsara, the world of birth and death, it included all kind of living beings exist are classified into six types.

Mara is the king of the death and demons

The frightening figure holding the wheel of life is held between the jaws of the King the Demons, The Mara or Yama. Yama is the Lord of Death or Monster of Impermanence. He has three eyes and wears a crown of skulls.

Who always attempts to rule the mind of mankind and holding all living beings in a state of delusion.  Yama symbolises the impermanence of everything. The beings, he holds are trapped in eternal suffering by their ignorance of the nature of the universe. Buddhism teaches that death is not the end and is not to be feared. 

* Footnote *

Please consult your Guru or a qualified lineage master for Vajrayana practice! Should a devotee even want to start studying and contemplating the Vajrayana practice, then it is truly necessary to first have completed the preliminaries and to be certain and sure that bodhicitta has arisen and developed in one’s mind.

Vajrayana features countless skillful and powerful methods which, if they are practiced in the proper way, can make the process of accumulation and purification incredibly swift and direct. It is absolutely necessary to have the pure motivation and to know that Vajrayana practice is not carried out to increase one’s own power, ego and benefit.

Thank you for reading, may you find peace and great bliss. With your support it helps to spread the precious Buddha’s precious Dharma and turning the Dharma wheels in the world.

Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease

But increase further and further.

Nagarjuna's Dedication of Merit

By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migrators from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

*Note

I do not own or infringe any copyright of these pictures.

Pictures courtesy and credit to the rightful owners.