Hoa Xuân (Mặc Không Tử)

Trắng ngần nụ hoa
Nở tung niềm tịch mịch
Chiều xuân Lanka.

Aims of Buddhist Education (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

Ideally, education is the principal tool of human growth, essential for transforming the unlettered child into a mature and responsible adult. Yet everywhere today, both in the developed world and the developing world, we can see that formal education is in serious trouble. Classroom instruction has become so routinized and pat that children often consider school an exercise in patience rather than an adventure in learning.

Trang Huyền Mộng (Mặc Không Tử)

ảnh MKT

Hoa vàng nhuộm thắm yêu thương
Bài thơ chiếc nón còn vương nắng tà
Thả trang huyền mộng trôi xa
Tặng em tri ngộ chút quà viễn phương.

Arahants, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

I. Competing Buddhist Ideals

The arahant ideal and the bodhisattva ideal are often considered the respective guiding ideals of Theravāda Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhism. This assumption is not entirely correct, for the Theravāda tradition has absorbed the bodhisattva ideal into its framework and thus recognizes the validity of both arahantship and Buddhahood as objects of aspiration. It would therefore be more accurate to say that the arahant ideal and the bodhisattva ideal are the respective guiding ideals of Early Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhism.

Accessing Jhana (Ajahn Brahmavamso)

It is important to talk about the jhànas because it links up from the 2nd stage of the meditation which I was talking about earlier. In the 2nd stage one has full awareness on the breath. That is full continuous awareness from the very beginning of the in-breath until it's end. The very clear continuous awareness of the out-breath from the beginning until it's end. And then the next in-breath and the next out-breath.

The Buddhist Way (Ven. Vinayarakkhita)

If we can avoid the greedy way

and live a life the charity way.

If we can avoid the hatred way

and live a life the loving way

If we can avoid the deluded way

and live a life the mindful way

Then know that we are living

our lives the Buddhist way.

Sri Lanka & Buddhism (Venerable Bhikkhu Vinayarakkhita)

 

In this new millennium it seems as if Sri Lanka and Buddhism have become synonyms. Why? Because in the history of Buddhism it was here in Sri Lanka that the Tripitaka was for the first time written down on palm leaves in 100 BC. Again it was here that the cutting of the original Bo-tree from Bodh Gaya was transplanted in the land of Sri Lanka in 240 BC, which is till the present day well protected and well venerated. It was here in 425 AD that Venerable Buddhagosha translated the Tripitaka commentaries from sinhela to pali, which is now available to the whole world.