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Buddhist Wisdom

A Careless Life

 

Anyone who lives carelessly will incline towards evil,
and will always be vulnerable to the effects of bad kamma.

A Good Teacher

A teacher must be able to gauge the ability of his pupils. Some of them are more intelligent than the teacher. However, there will be confusion if the teacher is not efficient.

A teacher must live by high moral standards or he cannot admonish his pupils. If a teacher has defective morality he will never be able to guide and instruct his pupils.

First, you must be well-behaved. Then only can you make others well-behaved.

A Good Turn

If you do a good turn, you will naturally get thanks.

A Heedless Life

If asked to show someone leading a heedless life,
point out someone who neglects to do meritorious deeds.

A Kind of Arrogance

People say that a person is arrogant if he wears a stern face, shouts at people, spurns them, or being power-drunk, doesn’t care to behave politely. I don’t mean that kind of arrogance. What I mean is that you should be high-minded about your status as you wander through samsāra.

A Leader Must Go Straight

The leading bull must go straight, or the following cattle will fall victim to the tiger. If the abbot goes up to the loft, the novice will climb on the roof of the monastery.

A Long Journey

The round of rebirths is the physical and moral journey to nibbāna. It is a long one. If you take a long view, you will no longer regard anything as strange. To have the wisdom for continuing on the journey steadily is important. Never mind the transient events of just one existence, look to the destination of the journey — nibbāna.

The journey is long;
Travellers are fools;
The food has gone rotten;
Companions are bad.
Interference of passions leads one to hell,
where once there, escape is difficult.

Explanation: The round of rebirths is a long journey and those taking the road are foolish. The food that they carry for the journey such as pride, prestige, charity, morality, and meditation, have gone rotten. Their constant companion is craving, so when they go down to Hell the chances of redemption are remote since craving cannot be eradicated.

A Lost Day

A day in which meritorious deeds, wealth, health, education, power, and position, or at least one of them, cannot be achieved is a lost day, to be regretted. It is a kind of death while being alive.

A Noble Teacher

Just as one who gives others food and water will never starve or go thirsty, so also one who teaches others so that they may be wise and polite will never attain an inferior position throughout samsāra.

A Person’s Value

If a person’s value lies in his grave, then there is not much to reckon with.

Abandon Greed

Misery is always the result of passion and greed. More greed, more misery; less greed, less misery. Those who have attained perfection (the Arahants) do not have the slightest greed, so they are free from misery.

Adore the Buddha

Focus your adoration on the Buddha; it is like living with the Buddha.

If you deeply adore the Buddha, you will faithfully follow his admonition.

Contemplation of the attributes of the Buddha will make the devotee powerful, intellectually developed, and influential. So you should contemplate the attributes of the Buddha and visualise the Buddha as still living.

Radiate loving-kindness to all beings while adoring the Buddha. The person who does this will have a better destiny. So always radiate loving-kindness.

Aging, Disease, and Death

Just as the cowherd drives the cattle to the pasture by prodding them with a stick, so too old age, disease, and death are always prodding people to the grave.

Aiming Too High

People are not satisfied with their own position in life, and are always aiming too high.

Heed the Buddha’s Advice

The Buddha cannot save you if you take shelter in this dispensation without heeding his advice.

An Honourable Death

As a Buddhist monk, you should do the work of a monk and behave like one, so that you will lead a good life and die an honourable death. Then you will have a significant gain in the round of rebirths.

If one conducts oneself according to the Buddha’s teaching one becomes noble and attains happiness in this existence. One can leave this existence without fear because one has committed no sin.

Annihilationism

It is owing to the doctrine that death is the end of things that immorality flourishes in the world.

Are You Lucky?

Determine whether you are lucky or not by examining your personality, wealth, intelligence, and social status.

Arrogance

People who think that they can do what they like with impunity, think highly of themselves.