Vacation in the summer

On 28^th March, 2012, I went on vacation with my friend Khemasiri to Singapore. It took us about two hours to drive from Bangkok to Singapore by flight but it was worth it. We stayed at a Temple called Jayamangala Buddha Vihara. During our stay of 26 days, the abbot of temple was very kind to us. Some days, we went to have a relaxing time at Marina Bay and Sentosa Island of beach which were, just like the name suggests, beautiful and clean.  And also we happily felt fresh air and the view of Island.  We toured the whole area to see something which is very different between one and another country. We saw many people who were from different countries. After a fun day, we returned to the temple to chant evening.  This is a wonderful thing which always is a good memory for me.

Zoroastrianism

By varabuddhi

Introduction

Zoroastrianism is one the oldest religions in the world. It is definitely one of the first monotheist religions. It was founded by Zoroaster and it believes in one God, Ahura Mazda. There are very few Zoroastrians in the world today but it still holds an important place. A large part of their population is divided between Iran and India. The Zoroastrians living in India are called Parsis.

Why we need to learn English

English is an International language and a very important one in communicating. Nowadays the world is a big global village. It is like one of big family too.  The people find different cultures and have different ways of doing things. A simple motion can have different meaning s in different cultures.  Someone who is totally acceptable in some cultures, yet some have difficulties to accept it of some of the unfamiliar ways.  In International relations and communication, differences like this can cause serious misunderstandings. These misunderstandings can destroy relationships.

Why I choose to become a Buddhist Monk

One day in 1997 on Sunday afternoon, I keep in mind when nobody was at home apart from me. I was doing my homework. Suddenly, an old man walked into my home when I was thoughtful an arithmetic problem. I did not know that old man at all and his purpose in coming because I had never seen him before. At that time I was only tenth, and that old man looked like about eighty years old. He wore his hair in a bun and wore a set of grey patched clothes. He sat on my bed and said to me with a kind and pleasant countenance, “My lovely little boy, I want to tell you something.

A part of journey into human life

In all over the world, a person who should has his /her biography in life so, as for me I have to write down and  was born in human being.  In accordance with our parents recorded I was born on 10^th July 1985 in Padethar Village, Ponnagyun Township, and Arakan State, which located west of Myanmar. My parents named me that U Tun Win according to our culture yet it is not same to the day of Tuesday but actually was born in that day. In Arakan State, people give the name in accordance with the day he was born so my name is a little bit awry in this sense. Anyway it is no problem as a name in layman life but in Sasana must same day and name.

Message for a Globalized World

by Bhikkhu Bodhi

Over the past three decades the world has been dramatically transformed in ways that none but a handful of prophets and visionaries could have foreseen even a hundred years ago. From a multitude of loosely connected nation-states it has quickly evolved into a tightly knit global community linked together by rapid means of transportation and instantaneous media of communication. Old barriers of space and time have dropped away, confronting us with new vistas of self-understanding and forcing us to recognize the hard truth that we all face a common human destiny. The claims to special privilege of a particular people, nation, race, or religion now sound hollow. As occupants of the same planet -- a bright blue jewel suspended in the frigid blackness of infinite space -- we either flourish together or perish together. In the long run between these two alternatives no middle ground is feasible.

Aims of Buddhist Education

by 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. Even the brightest and most conscientious students easily become restless, and for many the only attractive escape routes lie along the dangerous roads of drugs, sexual experimentation, and outbursts of senseless violence. Teachers too find themselves in a dilemma, dissatisfied with the system which they serve but unable to see a meaningful alternative to it.

Giving Dignity to Life

by Bhikkhu Bodhi

To ask what it means to live with dignity may sound strange in an age like our own, when our frantic struggle to make ends meet hardly allows us the leisure to ponder such weighty matters. But if we do pause a moment to give this question a little thought, we would realize soon enough that it is not merely the idle musing of someone with too much time on his hands. The question not only touches on the very meaning of our lives, but goes even beyond our personal quest for meaning to bore into the very springs of contemporary culture.

A Look at the Kalama Sutta

by Bhikkhu Bodhi

In this issue of the newsletter we have combined the feature essay with the "Sutta Study" column as we take a fresh look at an often quoted discourse of the Buddha, the Kalama Sutta. The discourse -- found in translation in Wheel No. 8 -- has been described as "the Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry," and though the discourse certainly does counter the decrees of dogmatism and blind faith with a vigorous call for free investigation, it is problematic whether the sutta can support all the positions that have been ascribed to it. On the basis of a single passage, quoted out of context, the Buddha has been made out to be a pragmatic empiricist who dismisses all doctrine and faith, and whose Dhamma is simply a freethinker's kit to truth which invites each one to accept and reject whatever he likes. But does the Kalama Sutta really justify such views? Or do we meet in these claims just another set of variations on that egregious old tendency to interpret the Dhamma according to whatever notions are congenial to oneself -- or to those to whom one is preaching? Let us take as careful a look at the Kalama Sutta as the limited space allotted to this essay will allow, remembering that in order to understand the Buddha's utterances correctly it is essential to take account of his own intentions in making them.

Dhamma Without Rebirth?

by Bhikkhu Bodhi

In line with the present-day stress on the need for religious teachings to be personally relevant and directly verifiable, in certain Dhamma circles the time-honored Buddhist doctrine of rebirth has come up for severe re-examination. Although only a few contemporary Buddhist thinkers still go so far as to suggest that this doctrine be scrapped as "unscientific," another opinion has been gaining ground to the effect that whether or not rebirth itself be a fact, the doctrine of rebirth has no essential bearings on the practice of Dhamma and thence no claim to an assured place in the Buddhist teachings. The Dhamma, it is said, is concerned solely with the here and now, with helping us to resolve our personal hangups through increased self-awareness and inner honesty. All the rest of Buddhism we can now let go as the religious trappings of an ancient culture utterly inappropriate for the Dhamma of our technological age.

ျမစ္တြယ္ရင္တြင္း

ႏွစ္တိကူးေျပာင္း ခုႏွစ္ေဟာင္းလည္း

ေခတ္ေဟာင္းပုံုျပင္ ရာဇ၀င္မွာ

မိန္႔ပင္ေအာက္မွာ မေပ်ာက္ပါေ၀။

Brief History of the Buddha

The place of Birth

On full moon day of May, there was born Shakya Prince named Siddhattha or Bhodhisatta, in the small Kingdom of Kapilavastu, the birth place of Lumbini, the border of Nepal and India, now which is located in Nepal,. His father was a King, Sudhodana, the leader of Shakya, the mother, queen Mahamaya was a Koliyan princess. When she got a pregnancy, she wanted to visit to her hometown and to show it her parents and relatives.

What is Buddhism and what are the main teachings of the Buddha?

Introduction

In fact, these two questions are very significant and difficult to answer for Buddhist people because those are the highest questions, I think.  As you know, I am a new learner and ordinary people, but not noble one so I cannot write and mention so completely. But I will try to do them as far as I can.

What is Buddhism?

Buddhism is a faith based on the tradition of Siddhartha Gautama, who lived about 2500 years ago in what is now Nepal and northeastern India. He came to be called "the Buddha," which means "awakened one," after he experienced a deep realization of the nature of life, death and existence. In English, the Buddha was said to be enlightened, although in Sanskrit it is bodhi, "awakened."

Social action and the problem of suffering

In modern Western society, humanistic social action, in its bewildering variety of forms, is seen both as the characteristic way of relieving suffering and enhancing human well-being and, at the same time, as a noble ideal of service, of self-sacrifice, by humanists of all faiths.

Buddhism, however, is a humanism in that it rejoices in the possibility of a true freedom as something inherent in human nature.

Buddhist political theory and policy

Buddhism and politics meet at two levels — theory and practice. Buddhism has no explicit body of social and political theory comparable to its psychology or metaphysics. Nevertheless, a Buddhist political theory can be deduced primarily from basic Buddhism, from Dharma. Secondly, it can be deduced from the general orientation of scriptures which refer explicitly to a bygone time. We have already argued, however, that this can be done only in a limited and qualified way.