Buddha teaching Master Chin Kung in SriLanka Buddha talk

Master Chin Kung is now sharing his wisdom in the SriLanka girl school. Yes, Master Chin Kung had already reached SriLanka to give talk about Buddhism. Master Chin Kung was invited by SriLanka's President to give Buddha teaching for one month. I hope SriLanka can become the model peaceful country that all different group, different faiths can live harmoniously, happily. All help each others regardless of what races, religions....This not wealthy country stress the importance of quality life, simply and fulfilling life. that people have the happy, healthy life. Yes, SriLanka can bring hope to the whole world. I am now enjoying the live talk Singapore time 12pm to 2pm.From 29-May-2013 onwards, We have the golden chance to hear Master Chin Kung Buddha talk and great advice to all human beings. I personally will watch the live show at below link for one month. On 29 May 2013, Master chin kung told us how to have happy life. His own experiences is to have clean heart, eat vegetarian food and help others through sharing his thought of happy living. Master Chin Kung is now 87years old and these few days, he tirelessly give lectures to enlighten human beings 4hours everyday. Many people are benefiting from his teaching. Even Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak like to listen to his advice. Master Chin Kung united 9 religions in Singapore at year 2000. In year 2005, he spread  the  traditional teaching in his home town China Anhui province, within one year, people there became very cultured, good manners and the occurrence was presented in united nation. Now, he have sucessfully united many religions in Australia Toowoobai.   Today there is the live broadcast here Master Chin Kung in SriLarnka Buddha talk 

Buddha teaching: Peter Morrell on detachment

Peter Morrell is the good Buddhist and he knows the path of non-attachment or detachment. We can see his web link  Peter Morrell

Let's see some of Peter Morrell's view on non-attachment
Trying to be a good Buddhist in the modern world is not easy; there is much that conspires against one on every side. Out of all the various concepts of the Buddhist faith, only two or three really stand out as central and dominant. In this respect, I suppose impermanence, bliss and compassion stand out to me as being really central ideas, about which much else revolves peripherally. Karma and rebirth are both concepts Buddhism has taken from Hinduism.

 

It is hard to find one axiom within Buddhism that illustrates this fact so well, as that of non-attachment. It sums up the whole religion in so many ways and serves to illustrate the theme of how hard it is to be a good Buddhist. In recent days I have found myself increasingly contemplating how central and important non-attachment is, and have therefore chosen to write about it quite spontaneously as an abiding theme, which acts much like a key to many other aspects of Buddhist philosophy and its application to life.

 

‘Attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering.’ [1]

 

The starting point can be how difficult it is to be a good Buddhist. It is difficult for many reasons, but chief among them is the way most people view this world. To me, it is a fleeting thing, ever-changing and I am aware every day of its transient nature. Every day I think of death in general, danger and uncertainty, like that very day I could die, it could be my last. These are not idle dreams; they occur as serious thoughts all the time. I check my life for danger as I wake up; check myself over for symptoms of impending illness; check my mind for bad thoughts and review critically all my recent interests and activities to see if everything is OK. I check my motives for doing or saying things. I correct my wrongs and right any errors if I can. In this way I have become deeply habituated over many years now in following a certain inner path, a certain practice, if you like. It is a certain way of engaging with the world.

 

This daily practice of mine is entirely rooted in Buddhist principles. I would have it no other way. It is what passes for my religion and has been for over thirty years. I have no problem with it, have resolved myself to it and commit myself to it wholeheartedly. It has given me great pleasure and I have learned all I know about life, people and the world from its teachings. I feel as though I am firmly embedded in it, enveloped comfortably in it as a world view and would fey adopt any other set of ideas to live by.

 

It is difficult to be a Buddhist, chiefly because the rest of humanity does not approach life like this. Two overwhelming internal forces largely drive the rest of humanity: desire and hatred. Everything people do - virtually - can be reduced to these two strong impulses. Almost everything they say and do, most of the interests they pursue and most of their speech and activity are motivated by and absorbed into whom they like, what they like, and what they hate. Thus, they are strongly pulled towards what they like and repelled from what they hate. We are all like this. I include myself in this stream of people I am talking about. I do not exclude myself or raise myself up onto some morally superior holier-than-thou dais. I am much of the time just as absorbed by this as anyone else. Nevertheless, it is useful to know this and to carry this idea around with one inside every day. It leads to many insights almost on a daily basis and can lead one to moderate the excesses of one’s attractions and repulsions. It allows one to understand what one is looking at in the world.

 

We look at people and lament their selfishness, without realising that we are just the same. We lament their hating this and wanting that, without realising that we are just the same. Therefore, compassion and love arise from this awareness, as it pulls us all together as human beings. We are all selfish and hate this and want that; this is our nature. Knowing this gives us a great basis for forgiveness, love and compassion for just about anyone. Any ‘wrong’ people do is based upon desire or hate, and thus knowing that we all share these passions, make it easier to accept and forgive such ‘wrongs’. They can be distinguished only in their degree of wrongness, but they all share the same basis; thus no-one is more deserving of forgiveness, than anyone else. No ‘sin’ is worse than any other is: they all derive from the same desire and hate.

 

‘...it is said that as long as one is in cyclic existence, one is in the grip of some form of suffering.’ [2]

 

To know that we are all based in desire and hatred is to know humanity in all its strengths and weaknesses. It is true to say that you do not know someone very well until you know what they really like, what they most earnestly desire or hate. Moreover, it is true. For the most part, people are simple beings, driven mostly by these two forces. We want this and we don’t want that. That is how we move through life drifting towards one desire after another and away from one hatred to another. In this way, our life evolves [or stands still] and then we die. We experience pleasure and pain continuously in varying degrees and in varying forms, some coarse and some subtle, but that is the pattern of our lives, of everyone’s life. It is observably so and how things actually are. Buddhism is a religion based upon a profound view of how people actually are.

 

‘Non-attachment...views desire as faulty, thereby deliberately restraining desire...’ [3]

 

Yet to be a Buddhist is to cultivate detachment, a separation from all this, to view the world as less enticing and less permanent, to be detached from its pains as much as its pleasures. This is the fundamental essence of how a Buddhist lives, tasting the pleasures and pains infrequently, cultivating a sort of detachment as if you are holding the world at arms length slightly and looking askance at it. Buddhists can apprehend the general unsatisfactoriness of life. We can see that much work needs to be done on ourselves. The nature of the world cannot be changed, but the nature of ourselves can. That is where the work sits.

 

Like so many aspects of Buddhism, the view of non-attachment arises to some extent from the core experience of Buddha’s enlightenment. Like impermanence and bliss, non-attachment is a basic aspect of his experience. It can be seen as a part either of the fruit or a part of the path; or indeed, both. It is an aspect of both. It is an aspect of the Buddhist path to gaining enlightenment, and it is at the same time an aspect of the behaviour of a Buddha. It arises from the enlightenment experience, primarily as a reaction towards the nature of impermanence. Because things are impermanent, so it behoves one to deal with this fact. It is the way things are. Inescapably, this is how life is: nothing is permanent, everything changes and will disappear. Knowing this changes our perception of the world and the priorities we find in being here. One reaction, therefore, is to view the world somewhat sceptically, in a nonchalant and detached manner. Knowing that someone you love is going to die, changes your love for them somewhat. Knowing you will pass from this world, and never be seen again, inevitably changes your love for it; your attachment to it is correspondingly diminished by this knowledge. This forms one basis for non-attachment.

 

‘...when you have attachment to, for instance, material things, it is best to desist from that activity. It is taught that one should have few desires and have satisfaction - detachment - with respect to material things...’ [4]

 

Every day we see things we like, people we like, foods we like, and attractive things we would like to buy or share our lives with. To fill our lives with these things we love seems natural, but in truth, it is path to pain, and not to peace. If given complete freedom, we would most certainly get rid of certain things in our lives that we dislike, certain objects and certain people. We would shoo them all out of our lives, if we could, if we had the choice, because we do not like them. In addition, we would fill our lives with pleasant things, nice people, beautiful persons who we enjoy and who we like the look and feel of. This is what we would all do if only we could, if we had the chance and freedom. Instead, we suppress some of our great desires to remain socially acceptable and decent, and suppress also some of our aversions. In this way, we manage to remain in a socially acceptable bandwidth of normality and accepted conduct.

 

Those who do not accept these norms become deviants and criminals and come to occupy a subculture that has rejected the norms of society. >From a purely Buddhist perspective, that is a painful and unhappy path to follow, as it leads to misery and friction with others almost daily. If the aim of life is to become content and happy, then there are certain rules we must follow, one of them being to acknowledge the fundamental social nature of all human beings. Therefore, to turn your back on society inevitably leads to great pain and loneliness. This increases one’s suffering and that cannot be a good path to follow.

 

One attitude towards life is therefore to keep active desires and hatreds dampened down like fires, which could at any moment, and with only a few puffs, be suddenly set blazing up again. That is the nature of mind. This is how we are. It is how we behave. The Buddhist view is slightly different, as it is to work through this manifestly unsatisfactory way of living - of being little more than a slave to these impulses - and to try and become more detached, more neutral, less engaged with those alluring things we want, and less averse and enraged by the things we dislike.

 

‘...the sense of an object as being attractive, unattractive, or neutral...feelings of pleasure, pain, or neutrality arise. Due to such feelings, attachment develops, this being the attachment of not wanting to separate from pleasure and the attachment of wanting to separate from suffering...’ [5]

 

Non-attachment gives us the much-needed space to contemplate what we want and what we hate so as to more fully reflect upon whether these things we love or loathe will truly bring us the pain or pleasure we believe they contain. By reflecting in this way we can choose what to do and what not to do - it puts the brakes on to some degree. It is a path of abstention most of the time because it recognises the fundamental unattractiveness of most things. Excess pleasure leads to pain and thus on reflection there is little that is worth enjoying to excess. This is the dominant theme. Non-attachment can therefore be seen as the general antidote for all excesses and indulgences. It attempts to wake us up to the actual state of things and provides us with a kind of barrier to place between ourselves and the world we engage with. It dampens our drives and cools our passions in order to reflect on what is or is not a good path to follow. It forces us to contemplate the probable consequences inherent in every action we are considering. Overall, Buddhists wish to choose actions that will increase happiness for all and reduce suffering for all. Actions, words and thoughts can therefore be graded into those that increase happiness and those that do not. Those that do not are either neutral or they are harmful to self or others.

 

‘...the mental factor of desire...accompanies the perception of an attractive object...’ [6]

 

The Buddhist view is to try to dampen and work through our innate urges. It is to build a more peaceful inner world, that does not indulge these selfish impulses, but which constructs a more compassionate viewpoint, a still centre. Over the last ten or 15 years I have become accustomed to this approach and it amazes me some days how successful I have become in cultivating this detachment and I have set up sort of internal alarm systems to stop me going beyond certain limits with food, drink and the alluring things of the world. It is hard work and boring work, but it is a task I have set myself, which has now become entrenched. What alternative is there? There is no other method of restraining these impulses and restrained they must be, if we wish to achieve some modicum of spirituality.

 

It is useful work and hard work, but one must be ever watchful in the hope that one dies a better person, that one can look back at ones life and remind oneself how there have been certain improvements and that one has become a better person, a more detached, more controlled and more compassionate person. My aim is to die peacefully and to truly regard my life in its entire vicissitudes, and see it as successful in this sense of it being better than it was and that I die a more rested and more contented person than I was before. I hope that is the case and wish it to be so. I take daily action to build that type of future for myself. I call that a Buddhist path and so I would call myself a Buddhist, one who tries constantly to be kind and happy, to be restful and contented as far as is possible, and also to look back at the many positive things I have done and to truly know that I have improved and become a better person. A better person with fewer desires, with less hatred and filled with more compassion, more peace, more love and more contentment than I had before.

 

If I can measure my life at all, this is how I would choose to measure it. Moreover, what progress there has been, if any, I would measure precisely in those terms. If I am less desirous, more contented, less hateful, more loving, more peaceful, more contented, then I can die happy. That is the nature of non-attachment, a path worth cultivating. In terms of being selfish or being kind, I would say I am kinder. In terms of being more loving, I would say I have moved a long way. I am much more compassionate than I ever was. In terms of anger, I have done much work, and can truthfully say that I rarely get angry and try to remove the poison of anger from my mind and my life. In terms of hatred, I have worked hard to purge it from my life. I feel lucky to never have been a very hateful person; unforgiving at times, but not hateful. In terms of desire, I have made some limited progress, though I would be a liar if I said I desire nothing. Much work needs to be done on this, but some discernible progress has been made. Thus, in all these ways, I do consider myself to be a good Buddhist, and to have successfully cultivated a form of non-attachment in my life, which works for me.

 

In all these ways, I therefore do view this world with little real interest. I am detached much of the time. I do know that I will one day die, and though I do not wish it, I have come to accept it. I try to see every day as my last. Every day I try to be kinder and more compassionate and to play down the negative forces within me. Every day I try to be a better person and to be less desiring, less hating, less judging of others and to feel myself closer to humanity as a whole, and all living things. This is the way I have chosen to live. I do consider it to be a religious life, a good life and a life worth living. In small ways, I do believe it has been successful.

 

Sources

[1] The Dalai Lama at Harvard, 1988, Snow Lion USA, p.37

[2] ibid., p.48

[3] ibid., p.76

[4] ibid., p.153

[5] ibid., pp.86-7

[6] Geshe Lhundup Sopa & Jeffrey Hopkins, Cutting through Appearances: Practice and Theory of Tibetan Buddhism, 1989, Snow Lion, USA, p.188

Buddha teaching on detachment

Buddha teaching on detachment is so important. The great Buddha taught us human beings two ways, one is convenient way and the other is real or true way. This is because human beings basically has two types, one is talented, the other one is not so talented and full of silly mind set. To teach those blurred one, Buddha used convenient methods, for those talented one who can understand deeper, Buddha taught real or true methods. Both methods aimed at enlighten them sooner or later. When Buddha taught us detachment, this is the true and real way. Buddha said that he had uttered nothing. He just want to awaken people and utter the wisdom words.  Training the Mind: Verse 2 . Dalia Lama is the person with great wisdom, we can see the writing from him, the link here Buddha teaching on detachment and now we read some of his writing as below.

Whenever I interact with someone,
May I view myself as the lowest amongst all,
And, from the very depths of my heart,
Respectfully hold others as superior.

The first verse pointed to the need to cultivate the thought of regarding all other sentient beings as precious. In the second verse, the point being made is that the recognition of the preciousness of other sentient beings, and the sense of caring that you develop on that basis, should not be grounded on a feeling of pity toward other sentient beings, that is, on the thought that they are inferior. Rather, what is being emphasized is a sense of caring for other sentient beings and a recognition of their preciousness based on reverence and respect, as superior beings. I would like to emphasize here how we should understand compassion in the Buddhist context. Generally speaking, in the Buddhist tradition, compassion and loving kindness are seen as two sides of same thing. Compassion is said to be the empathetic wish that aspires to see the object of compassion, the sentient being, free from suffering. Loving kindness is the aspiration that wishes happiness upon others. In this context, love and compassion should not be confused with love and compassion in the conventional sense. For example, we experience a sense of closeness toward people who are dear to us. We feel a sense of compassion and empathy for them. We also have strong love for these people, but often this love or compassion is grounded in self-referential considerations: "So-and-so is my friend," "my spouse," "my child," and so on. What happens with this kind of love or compassion, which may be strong, is that it is tinged with attachment because it involves self-referential considerations. Once there is attachment there is also the potential for anger and hatred to arise. Attachment goes hand in hand with anger and hatred. For example, if one's compassion toward someone is tinged with attachment, it can easily turn into its emotional opposite due to the slightest incident. Then instead of wishing that person to be happy, you might wish that person to be miserable.

True compassion and love in the context of training of the mind is based on the simple recognition that others, just like myself, naturally aspire to be happy and to overcome suffering, and that others, just like myself, have the natural right to fulfill that basic aspiration. The empathy you develop toward a person based on recognition of this basic fact is universal compassion. There is no element of prejudice, no element of discrimination. This compassion is able to be extended to all sentient beings, so long as they are capable of experiencing pain and happiness. Thus, the essential feature of true compassion is that it is universal and not discriminatory. As such, training the mind in cultivating compassion in the Buddhist tradition first involves cultivating a thought of even-mindedness, or equanimity, toward all sentient beings. For example, you may reflect upon the fact that such-and-such a person may be your friend, your relative, and so forth in this life, but that this person may have been, from a Buddhist point of view, your worst enemy in a past life. Similarly, you apply the same sort of reasoning to someone you consider an enemy: although this person may be negative toward you and is your enemy in this life, he or she could have been your best friend in a past life, or could have been related to you, and so on. By reflecting upon the fluctuating nature of one's relationships with others and also on the potential that exists in all sentient beings to be friends and enemies, you develop this even-mindedness or equanimity.

The practice of developing or cultivating equanimity involves a form of detachment, but it is important to understand what detachment means. Sometimes when people hear about the Buddhist practice of detachment, they think that Buddhism is advocating indifference toward all things, but that is not the case. First, cultivating detachment, one could say, takes the sting out of discriminatory emotions toward others that are based on considerations of distance or closeness. You lay the groundwork on which you can cultivate genuine compassion extending to all other sentient beings. The Buddhist teaching on detachment does not imply developing an attitude of disengagement from or indifference to the world or life.

Moving on to another line of the verse, I think it is important to understand the expression "May I see myself lower than all others" in the right context. Certainly it is not saying that you should engage in thoughts that would lead to lower self-esteem, or that you should lose all sense of hope and feel dejected, thinking, "I'm the lowest of all. I have no capacity, I cannot do anything and have no power." This is not the kind of consideration of lowness that is being referred to here. The regarding of oneself as lower than others really has to be understood in relative terms. Generally speaking, human beings are superior to animals. We are equipped with the ability to judge between right and wrong and to think in terms of the future and so on. However, one could also argue that in other respects human beings are inferior to animals. For example, animals may not have the ability to judge between right and wrong in a moral sense, and they might not have the ability to see the long-term consequences of their actions, but within the animal realm there is at least a certain sense of order. If you look at the African savannah, for example, predators prey on other animals only out of necessity when they are hungry. When they are not hungry, you can see them coexisting quite peacefully. But we human beings, despite our ability to judge between right and wrong, sometimes act out of pure greed. Sometimes we engage in actions purely out of indulgence--we kill out of a sense of "sport," say, when we go hunting or fishing. So, in a sense, one could argue that human beings have proven to be inferior to animals. It is in such relativistic terms that we can regard ourselves as lower than others. One of the reasons for using the word "lower" is to emphasize that normally when we give in to ordinary emotions of anger, hatred, strong attachment, and greed, we do so without any sense of restraint. Often we are totally oblivious to the impact our behavior has on other sentient beings. But by deliberately cultivating the thought of regarding others as superior and worthy of your reverence, you provide yourself with a restraining factor. Then, when emotions arise, they will not be so powerful as to cause you to disregard the impact of your actions upon other sentient beings. It is on these grounds that recognition of others as superior to yourself is suggested.

Nirvana Buddha teaching

Nirvana is the extremely important word for Buddhists. Because the ultimate aim for Buddhists is to attain Nirvana. That's why we need to know the meaning of Nirvana in the first place. If we search Nirvana from Internet, we can see something like Nirvana memorial services or Nirvana rock music, these companies are using Nirvana for their companies' name. Let's type Nirvana for its meaning. The meanings are as follow:

A transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the subject is released from the effects of... Liberation of the soul from the effects of karma and from bodily existence. From the on line dictionary, its definitions are as follow:   Nirvana is a place of perfect peace and happiness, like heaven. In Hinduism and Buddhism, nirvana is the highest state that someone can attain, a state of enlightenment, meaning a person's individual desires and suffering go away. The origin of the word nirvana relates to religious enlightenment; it comes from the Sanskrit meaning "extinction, disappearance" of the individual to the universal. Achieving nirvana is to make earthly feelings like suffering and desire disappear. It's often used casually to mean any place of happiness, like if you love chocolate, going to Hershey's Park would be nirvana. On the other hand, if you're a Buddhist monk, it may take you years of meditating to reach nirvana. If we think that a Buddhist has attain Nirvana is something going to heaven, this is completely wrong because heaven is one of the Incarnation cycle, this is not complete. Nirvana is beyond than that, it is out of the incarnation cycle. Nirvana Nirvana is the most misunderstood term in Buddhism. Those in the West recognise the term as meaning Heaven, or a Heaven on Earth, or perhaps a famous rock band. The Buddha described Nirvana as the ultimate goal, and he reached that state during his enlightenment. At this point, he chose to teach others so that they might also experience this realisation, and so when he died, forty-five years later, he then passed through pari nirvana, meaning completed nirvana. Nirvana literally means extinguishing or unbinding. The implication is that it is freedom from what ever binds you, from the burning passion of desire, jealousy, and ignorance. Once these are totally overcome, a state of bliss is achieved, and there is no longer the need the cycle of birth and death. All karmic debts are settled. The Buddha refused to be drawn on what occurred then, but implied that it was beyond word and without boundaries. Certainly, he saw it in a much different state than our current existence, and not a simple parallel to the process of individual rebirth. Let's learn something about birth. Rebirth In the process of becoming enlightened, the Buddha is said to have recognised all his previous lives. At the same time, he also said that nothing from one life goes on to the next. Quite a paradox really! Buddhists understand life as samsara, meaning perpetual wandering, and describe the transition like a billiard ball hitting another billiard ball. While nothing physical transfers, the speed and direction of the second ball relate directly to the first. So the term most often used is rebirth, rather than reincarnation. Reincarnation implies the transfer of an essence, or a soul, while rebirth follows the law of causality, or dependant origination, where this arises because of circumstances which happened before. A primary aim of Buddhism is to break free of the wheel of samsara, and to reach a new level called Nirvana. Thanks for the information from Buddha teaching site Nirvana