How Prajna-wisdom Helps Us In Our Daily Life

This video is on how Prajna Wisdom helps us in our daliy life by Venerable Master Sheng Yen.

Learning the Dharma helps us to apply it to daily life. 

After reading Buddhist books and listen to the Dharma, one should reflect our own life and our mindset, to see whether we are treating people and things in line with the Dharma. This is called practice. 

Buddha's teaching can be practised at any time and in any aspect of our daily life.

As long as you discover, recognise and are alert that you are troubled, this is the function of wisdom. When you feel resentful, you reflect. Is it worth it? Is this what I should be doing? 

Shakyamuni Buddha taught us to look at our mind and thought to be aware of when wrong speech was spoken and wrong action done and wrong thoughts and then to correct and adjust ourselves immediately. This is practice. 

Indeed there are so many things we have to learn in our daily life at the workplace and at home. Just let go of anger as the person is immature or maybe he or she is facing other issues. There is really no point in getting angry. Just let go and redirect your thoughts to other meaningful things like reading the Dharma.

The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of the Dharma Sutta

Today is known as the Dhamma Day when the Buddha gave the first discourse: The Four Noble Truth to his former associates, the five ascetics. In the first sermon is known as the setting in motion of the wheel of the Dhamma, the Buddha shared on the The Four Noble Truth after his enlightenment as follows:

1) There is suffering (dukkha)

2)  Suffering is caused by craving (tanha)

3) There is a state (nibbana) beyond suffering and craving

4) The way to nirvana is via the eightfold path. 

Supporting Buddhist Temples in Singapore

I am grateful for Buddha's teaching and I think the two temples namely Palelai Buddhist Temple and Kong Meng San Chor Kar See Monastery are doing a great job reaching and teaching the Buddhists the Dharma. Thus to support the sangha, I like to donate money to support the temples. 

If you would like to donate to Buddhist temples in Singapore you can donate to the following temples:

Palelai Buddhist Temple- Click here 

Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery-Click here

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum mantra is by Imee Ooi. 

I'm glad I attended the Heart Sutra concert in Singapore early this year by Imee Ooi and the JSJG.  

The 12 links of dependent arising: from ignorance to aging and death

Craving and grasping foster our attachment, and therefore forms the karmic force that will bring us to our next life in the cycle of birth, aging, and death.  

The ignorance from life to life brings about volition 行 and consciousness识 lifetime after lifetime and therefore there is consciousness going through rebirths one life after another.

After consciousness enters the womb, "name and form" begin and thus another life is started. After birth, there is contact. 

Craving starts from birth with feeling hunger, desiring and pursuing. It doesn't stop until death. And the next is " grasping". Grasping actually follows closely on craving. What do we grasp? We grasp what is good, what we like and what we want. But we also grasp what work against our end. In that case, we reject it. Craving include like and dislike. 

Craving and grasping as two elements and two stages actually last a long period from birth until death. It's all within this state of mind.  In our heart, we hope to get more and more. This continues with death. With craving and grasping, we create karma, and then existence follows on from that. Existence in what way? Existence of causes for the future. The causes for the future will then lead one to the future life. 

The force that forms the cause for the future will then already be in existence. With its existence, consciousness will form. And this consciousness will enter the womb for the next life. In the next life, there willl be birth, aging and death again. So the existence will lead to the next life, life after life. 

This is the 12 links of dependent arising throughout three periods of time. 

Spiritual consciousness and Karmic force

Is it possible that the past life, the present life and the future life , the three lifetimes exist at the same time? Or do they come one after the other? 

I find this video explaining the above question when I read Dying to be Me by Anita Moojani when in her near-death experience," she was aware of everything that pertained to her- past, present and future-simultaneously... When we are not expressing through our bodies, everything occurs simultaneously, whether past, present, or future." 

Master Sheng Yen explained that their force exists simultaneously, but as phenomena they are definitely separate. 

They are real in terms of the single thought in the current life. The infinite virtue, merit and karma of your past lives, whether good or evil are all concentrated in the present life, and are always with you. Your future is developed within the present life. All your merit, up to the moment that you become a Buddha, exists within the single thought in the present life. A soybean for example, we don't know where the soybean originated from. 

This soybean has the vital force inherited from that primal ancestor through countless generations. So this soybean is intimately linked with its ancestor 

Liberation from life and death: practicing precepts, concentration and wisdom

In this video, Master Sheng Yen on what is the meaning of liberation in Thervada Buddhism view and how to achieve it. The real liberation is to liberate sentient beings from samsara or to free sentient beings from the cycle of birth and death. 

How can we step out of the realms of birth and death? We have to practise precepts, concentration and wisdom. 

Precept is to abstain from evil deed. 

Concentration means that our mind is not affected by the external environment.

Wisdom means we can let go of everything at any time, have no attachment. 

The ultimate purpose of the Buddhist teachings is to be free of suffering and attain bliss, gaining release from birth and death.