Right Attitude

When we meditate, we let go of our present preoccupations. Normally the mind is always preoccupied with the various objects that the eye sees, the ear hears, the nose smells, the tongue tastes, and the body comes into contact with. But when we want peace of mind, we have to see these objects as coarse and gross. We try to let go of things that are gross, things that are sensual. We focus instead on things that are more refined and of more lasting value, step by step.

We keep on getting the mind to gather in stillness, keep on letting go of everything else. It's like when we go to sleep: we have to let go of distracting thoughts, we have to stop thinking, have to cut those things away if we're going to sleep in comfort. As long as the mind is in a turmoil over those things and can't let them go, it won't be able to fall asleep. It'll have no sense of ease, won't gain any strength. Even more so when we meditate: we have to cut away all our other preoccupations, let them all go, leaving only buddho.

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နိဳင္ငံေရးဆုိတာ ဘာလဲ?

* ေဖေဖ ၊ သားေက်ာင္းစာကုိ ကူပါဦး။"ႏုိင္ငံေရးဆုိတာ ဘာလဲတဲ့"
ေမာင္ျဖဴစင္က သူ႔ဖခင္အား အကူအညီေတာင္းလုိက္သည္။

ဖခင္က… ေအး သားသား သေဘာက္ေပါက္ေအာင္ အတုိခ်ဳပ္ ရွင္းျပမယ္၊

ေဖေဖကပုိက္ဆံရွာၿပီး အိမ္ယူလာတယ္၊ 
ေဖေဖ့ကုိ အရင္းရွင္လုိ႔ ေခၚႏုိင္တယ္။
သားေမေမက ဒီပုိက္ဆံ ေတြကုိ စနစ္တက် စီမံခန္႔ခြဲၿပီးသုံးစြဲတယ္။
ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ သားေမေမကုိ အစုိးရ လုိ႔ေခၚႏုိင္တယ္။ 
ေဖေဖတုိ႔က သားကုိျပဳစုေစာင့္ေရွာက္တယ္၊ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ သားကုိ ျပည္သူလုိ႔ေခၚရမယ္။
သားရဲ႕ ညီေလးကုိက်ေတာ့ အနာဂတ္လုိ႔ေခၚရမယ္။ 
ရွင္းရဲ႕လားသား။ ဒါဟာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပဲ"

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ျမန္မာဗုဒၶဘာသာ၀င္ေတြ ဘာလို႔မခ်မ္းသာၾကတာလဲ

မိမိစိတ္ထဲမွာ ဘယ္လုိမွ ေမ့လုိ႔မရေသာ စကားတစ္ခြန္းရွိ၏။ “အရွင္ဘုရား ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ဆင္းရဲတာဟာ တုိးတက္ႀကီးပြားလုိတဲ့ ဆႏၵနည္းလုိ႔ပါဘုရား၊ ဘာေၾကာင့္အဲဒီလုိျဖစ္ရသလဲလုိ႔ စဥ္းစားလုိက္ေတာ့ "ပစၥည္း ဥစၥာဆုိတာ ေသရင္ ကိုယ့္ေနာက္မပါဘူး၊ ကိုယ့္ေနာက္ပါမွာက တရားပဲ၊ ဘ၀ဆုိတာ အႏွစ္ရွာလုိ႔မရဘူး၊ အကာ သက္သက္ပါ၊ ဘယ္ဟာမွ အၿမဲမရွိ၊ ခ်မ္းသာတဲ့လူလဲ ေသရမွာပဲ၊ ပညာတတ္ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ႀကီးလဲ ေသရမွာပဲ" စတဲ့ တရားေတြေၾကာင့္ပါ၊ ဒီတရားေတြကို နာေနရေတာ့ လူေတြဟာ စိတ္ဓာတ္ တက္ၾကြမလာပဲ တုိးတက္ႀကီးပြားလုိ တဲ့ဆႏၵနည္းသြားၾကတယ္၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ၀င္ေတြ ဆင္းရဲၾကတာဘုရား”ဟူေသာစကားပင္တည္း။ 

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လူငယ္ႏွင္႔ ကုိးကြယ္မွႈ

လူငယ္ဆုိတာ ဖ်က္လတ္တက္ၾကြေသာ၊ ရဲရင့္ေသာ၊ သန္စြမ္းေသာ၊ ခိုင္မာေသာ၊ သတၱိရွိေသာ၊ ႏိုးၾကား၍ဇြဲရွိေသာသူကို လူငယ္ဟု ေခၚပါသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ထုိလူငယ္၏ ဂုဏ္ပုဒ္မ်ားသည္ ေကာင္းမြန္ေသာ၊ အက်ိဳးရွိေသာ ေနရာမ်ားတြင္သာ အသံုးခ်သင့္ပါသည္။ အမ်ိဳးဘာသာကို ထိခိုက္ေစႏိုင္ေသာ၊ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈကို ပ်က္ျပားေစႏိုင္ေသာ အမႈကိစၥမ်ားတြင္ အသံုး ခ်မည္ဆုိပါက မသင့္ေတာ္ႏိုင္ေပ။ အမ်ိဳးကိုဆက္မည့္၊ ထိန္းသိမ္းမည့္ သစ္လြင္ရဲရင့္ေသာ မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္ လူငယ္မ်ားသာ ျဖစ္သင့္ပါသည္။ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ တမ်ိဳးသားလံုး၏ ေကာင္းမြန္ေသာ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈမ်ား၊ ဓေလ့စ႐ိုက္မ်ား၊ ထံုးတမ္းစဥ္လာမ်ား ကိုအေမြဆက္ခံမည့္ “ေမြခံထိုက္ေစ လူငယ္မ်ား” ျဖစ္ဖို႔ရန္မွာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ ေထရ၀ါဒဗုဒၶဘာသာ ျမန္မာလူငယ္မ်ား အားလံုးတြင္ တာ၀န္ရွိပါသည္။ ေကာင္းသည့္အေမြမ်ားအား ဆက္ခံသင့္သလို မေကာင္းသည့္အက်င္၊့ စ႐ိုက္ဆုိး မ်ားကိုလည္း ပယ္ရွားပစ္ရမည့္ တာ၀န္မွာ အမ်ိဳးကေပးေသာ အမ်ိဳးသားေရးတာ၀န္ပင္ျဖစ္ေပေတာ့သည္။

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General keyboard shortcuts

• CTRL+C (Copy)
• CTRL+X (Cut)
• CTRL+V (Paste)
• CTRL+Z (Undo)
• DELETE (Delete)
• SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin)
• CTRL while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
• CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
• F2 key (Rename the selected item)
• CTRL+RIGHT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word)

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The Mind

Our mind is something that we change, keep things in, and sometimes go out of. But what is our mind? We cannot discuss mind unless we define it. If we ask ten psychiatrists to define mind we will probably get ten different answers. My dictionary, a good friend but not a psychiatrist, defines mind as "the ability to think, feel emotions, and be aware of things." If we ask our psychiatric friends what are thoughts, emotions, and awareness, they will start talking about activity in the brain; they cannot distinguish between the mind and the body.

According to Buddhism, mind and body are mutually dependent but different entities. The substance of mind has nothing to do with atoms and molecules it is awareness itself. Thoughts, emotions, and awareness are mind. Buddhism defines mind as that which is clear and aware.

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LOVE

            Everybody wants to be loved.  Love is something all people need; our society obsesses about it in movies, books, poetry and song.  Yet, in spite of all the enthusiasm displayed, the sad truth is that most people never experience much real love in their lives. 

Far too many people settle for a shoddy imitation of love and lead lives filled with misery and needless suffering.   At first they are drawn to one another by a strong sexual attraction.  When this initial attraction fades what they are left with is often an unpleasant or possibly ugly relationship that can even become violent.   Jealousy is not a symptom of love; it is a demonstration of immaturity and improper attachment. 

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Transform Your Life

We live in one of the most affluent countries in the world. Look how many people are desperate to live in the United States, to pursue the American dream, to own stuff and to consume. While we can see that wealth has brought a certain amount of ease and material comfort, a certain amount of happiness, it is obvious that it has not brought enough. No matter how much we own there is still so much suffering and discontent in our lives. People require more and stronger drugs, both legal and illegal, to stay sane and to escape the pressures of modern life. Many of our families are dysfunctional, resulting in mental, physical and sexual abuse. Depression is becoming as normal as the common cold as we tirelessly pursue the empty materialistic path of 'more is better.' By searching endlessly for external sources of happiness on our hedonistic treadmill we are steadily destroying our planet and have made our lives incredibly complicated and dissatisfying. As a New York Times' article recently asked, 'If richer isn't happier, what is?' Why when we have so much are we still so dissatisfied? What are we missing?

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What is the Mind?

I was recently listening to a radio talk show in which a psychotherapist was saying that 90% of our illness starts in the mind. The interviewer asked him to define what he meant by mind, and he replied that he meant 'soul'. However, he did not offer any more explanation. It seems that in western science, religious thought and our modern culture there is a great deal of confusion about the mind. What exactly is the mind? What is the nature of consciousness? What is this ethereal thing that determines our experiences and reality?

Buddha's teachings can help us to gain both an intellectual understanding and personal experience of the nature of mind. In Kadampa Buddhism mind is defined as that which is clarity and cognizing. Clarity carries the meaning that the mind is non-physical, it does not possess any physical characteristics whatsoever. You cannot see it with your eyes, touch it with your hands, smell it, taste it nor hear it. It is immaterial and insubstantial. In his latest book, Transform Your Life, renowned Buddhist teacher Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes,

"Some people think that the mind is the brain or some other part or function of the body, but this is incorrect. The brain is a physical object that can be seen with the eyes and that can be photographed or operated on in surgery. The mind, on the other hand, is not a physical object. It cannot be seen with the eyes, nor can it be photographed or repaired by surgery. The brain therefore is not the mind but simply part of the body."

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Compassion

Compassion, sympathy for the misfortune and suffering of others and the wish to help them, is a virtuous quality admired and advocated by all great religions. It is one of the two foundations of the Buddhist life-style; the other is wisdom understanding the origin of suffering and how to achieve temporary and ultimate relief. As all sentient beings are seen to participate in the Wheel of Life, sometimes born human, sometimes an animal, a denizen of hell, a hungry spirit, or a divine being, and nowhere in this Wheel is there total relief from suffering, all beings throughout the universe are recognized as objects of compassion.

One of my first teachers, Lama Thubten Yeshe, upon observing the bickering, competitiveness, jealousy, anger, and so on among his western students, said, "You people amaze me, it seems that you have more compassion for animals than you have for each other."

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Death

Every human culture that we know anything about has speculated about the true nature of death and have also wondered what happens to the individual when death occurs. This is something all people think about at some point in their lifetime.
Some people believe in reincarnation or dependent origination, while others believe that they would go to some sort of paradise after death if they lived decent lives. A minority believes that death is actually permanent and that once you are dead, you simply vanish forever.
According to Buddhist teachings, when you die, you enter a state ‘in-between’ lives called Ku. It can be described like this: You are running across a very long rope bridge. While you are running, you are alive. Then, at regular intervals, you come across a point where several of the bridge’s planks are missing. It is too large to simply step over, so you jump. The jump itself represents death while the time you are in the air represents the state between lives, called "Ku." Then you land at the other side, and continue running until the next jump.

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ANGER

I once read that, after a domestic argument, an angry husband rented a bulldozer and reduced his family home to rubble. Can you imagine what was going through his mind? And can you imagine how he felt when he calmed down and realized the folly of his action?

Anger is the most destructive force in the universe, it destroys our inner peace and causes us to inflict irrational verbal and physical abuse upon our family and friends, to destroy our possessions, and even to destroy our own bodies through excessive drinking, smoking, reckless behavior, or suicide. Anger makes even the most handsome face look ugly; it harms our physical health and leads to isolation and loneliness because nobody can bear to be near us anymore. Buddha taught that the worst effect of anger is not immediately obvious: anger destroys our accumulated virtue, thus preventing any chance of future happiness, and it leads to future lives of misery.

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All in one, One in All

Good morning, my dear friends, today is the 11th of August 1997, and we are in the upper hamlet of Plum Village. I guess that everyone here has seen the lotus pond in the lower hamlet. Yesterday I conducted a walking meditation to the lotus pond, and then we went to the plum trees. It was very nice. We enjoyed the lotus and we also enjoyed the plum trees. Many of you were not there. But it looked like Paradise, it was Paradise, and it still is available. Later, you will realize that the lotus pond is not only in the lower hamlet, but in your heart. When you go home to your town and to your house, and every time you sit down quietly and you focus your attention on the lotus pond and the lotus pond will be born again from within you.

 

Our mind has all kinds of seeds in it. You have a seed of the lotus pond within you. Every time you use your mindfulness and you touch the seed of the lotus pond in you, you can see the lotus pond with all these flowers and big leaves like this. You don't have to go to the lower hamlet to really have the lotus pond. You may ask the question "Where has the lotus pond come from?" I will tell you.

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ကိစၥသံုးရပ္

(၁) တံခါးပိတ္တတ္ရမယ္

"မေန႔က"နဲ႔ "မနက္ျဖန္"ရဲ႕ တံခါးႏွစ္ခ်ပ္ကိုပိတ္ၿပီး "ဒီကေန႔"တိုင္းကို
ေကာင္းေကာင္းမြန္မြန္ ေက်ာ္ျဖတ္တတ္ရမယ္။ "ဒီကေန႔"တိုင္းကို
ေကာင္းေကာင္းမြန္မြတ္ ျဖတ္ေက်ာ္တာဟာ "ဒီတစ္သက္"ကို ေကာင္းေကာင္းမြန္မြန္
ျဖတ္ေက်ာ္တာနဲ႔ အတူတူျဖစ္တယ္။

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Buddha image

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