I find the article below quite meaningful from a free Buddhism magazine. If you find it helpful to your friends, do share with them.
Extreme attachment to something or someone only bring suffering to oneself and others. Letting go will bring something better. Just like the greedy monkey refusing to let go of banana enticed by the hunter as it choose to cling to its desire thus staying trapped in unhappiness. Just let go and you experience freedom.
Thank you for the free magazine. I will donate money for the free distribution. Hopefully it can help more people.
Buddha was compassionate and taught the Noble Eightfold path to both human beings and heavenly beings as the practice lead to liberation from samsara. Good action leads to good result.
In the video below, Ajahn Keng shared about Right Livelihood. He shared about a devotee who worked in poultry business and he had neck pain. Ajahn Keng asked him how he killed it and he said first he had to bend and break it's neck first. The devotee earns about $2000 per day (about $5 per livestock) but he had to pay few thousands dollars for medical consultation.
Despite paying so much money to see doctor to treat his neck, his neck pain persisted. The devotee after reflecting on Ajahn Keng's questions and advice to stop this livelihood. In the end he decided to stop this livelihood and his neck miraculously healed after a few months and he didn't have to see doctor anymore.
If someone is making livelihood that harm lives like selling illegal drugs like cocaine, heroine, it will not bring peace and one day wealth might be taken away from the person such as in the example above on the poultry seller. One should not make a living at the expense of other suffering.
At 1:27:18, Ajahn Keng talked about Right Livelihood
The eight Buddhist practices in the Noble Eightfold Path are (From Wikipedia):
Right View: Our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death. The Buddha followed and taught a successful path out of this world and the other world (heaven and underworld/hell). Later on, right view came to explicitly include karma and rebirth, and the importance of the Four Noble Truths, when "insight" became central to Buddhist soteriology, especially in Theravada Buddhism.
Right Resolve or Intention: the giving up of home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will (to loving kindness), away from cruelty (to compassion).[36] Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and non-Self.
Right Speech: No lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him to cause discord or harm their relationship, no idle chatter.
Right Conduct or Action: No killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual misconduct, no material desires.
Right Livelihood: Livelihood must not harm lives. No trading in weapons, living beings, meat, liquor, illegal drugs and poisons.
Right Effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and generating wholesome states, the bojjhagā (Seven Factors of Awakening). This includes indriya-samvara, "guarding the sense-doors", restraint of the sense faculties.
Right Mindfulness (sati; Satipatthana; Sampajañña): a quality that guards or watches over the mind; the stronger it becomes, the weaker unwholesome states of mind become, weakening their power "to take over and dominate thought, word and deed. In the vipassana movement, sati is interpreted as "bare attention": never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; this encourages the awareness of the impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five aggregates (skandhas), the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening
Right samadhi : practicing four stages of dhyāna ("meditation"), which includes samadhi proper in the second stage, and reinforces the development of the bojjhagā, culminating into equanimity and mindfulness.[43] In the Theravada tradition and the vipassana movement, this is interpreted as concentration or one-pointedness of the mind, and supplemented with vipassana meditation, which aims at insight.
In life, there are people who will do anything to get what they want. Some will spend money to cast spell to get what they want. Read this Asiaone article here on their interview with someone who is paid to do.
That is why I will not accept when someone especially the opposite gender wants to give me bottle of liquid that could masquerade as perfume, hand sanitizer spray, or ointment. You never know what is inside. I also won't accept drinks from people I don't know well. Never place your personal things that you use as it could be easily replaced.
If you suspect you are a victim of spell, you can go to your religion and seek help. In Buddhism, when Ananda, the handsome monk who was Buddha's attendant was cast a love spell by a lady, Buddha had to save Ananda from breaking his monk precept.
I came across the following by Joseph Polansky, a western astrologer and I think it is really well written. " Karma is the law of cause and effect which governs all phenomena. We are all where we find ourselves because of karma- because of actions we have performed in the past. The universe is such a balanced instrument that any act immediately sets corrective forces into motion-karma. Never do bad thing. It will bounce back to the owner of the action.
The world is very fair. You do good, good result will follows and vice versa. It's just a matter of time.
