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Effects Of Ten Unwholesome (Evil) Karmic Paths (十恶业道)
Nov. 13 | Those with great greed become hungry ghosts.Those with great hatred become hell-beings.Those with great delusion become animals. Of the Ten Unwholesome Karmic Paths, the most severe are causes for the hells, the average degrees are causes...
Do Animals Who Kill Create Negative Karma?
Nov. 12 | Question: Do animals who kill other animals create negative karma, or are they ‘excused’? Answer: Animals might kill with less actual viciousness; with more instinctive violence for food. (However, some animals like cats do catch and...
How Comedies Can Become Scary Movies
Nov. 11 | Naturally, we think of comedies as the direct opposite of horror films. The first is for fun and laughter, the latter for terror and shrieks. Then again, there is a way in which a brainless comedy can morph into an absolute horror movie, before you...
Clarity Haiku
Nov. 9 | If you assume there is no need to clarify at all, you might already be confused.Loving-Kindness & Compassion 慈与悲
Nov. 8 | 佛心者慈与悲：大慈则与乐，大悲则拔苦。 – 空海大师（性灵集） Those with the Buddha’s hearthave loving-kindness and compassion:with great loving-kindness thus giving joy,with great compassion thus uprooting...
Are You Plugging Into The Right ‘Machine’?
Nov. 7 | The American philosopher Robert Nozick proposed a thought experiment, where people can choose to plug into a machine that induces exclusively pleasurable experiences. This Experience Machine (EM) guarantees only pleasures in the mind, free from...
Arrange Things Simply To Simplify Your Mind
Nov. 6 | When getting what needed, you only need to get what is good enough, and it is good enough. – Shilashanti The relationship between the mind and the body is like that between the chicken and the egg. If you cultivate a simplified mindset, your body, too,...
Will I Be Ready For Refuge & Precepts?
Nov. 5 | Question: If I hesitate taking the Threefold Refuge and committing to the Five Precepts, am I belittling their importance? Will I ever be ready? Answer: It might be so, that there is ‘belittlement’, especially if you already think so....
What To Make Of ‘Wounds’?
Nov. 4 | It is tricky trying to know what to make of ‘Wounds’. There is the idea that there are ancient rituals that see wounds as portals for summoning ‘higher beings’ to enter this world, which leads to the question of how to have...
Impact Haikus
Nov. 2 | Not braced for impact, the less impactful feels more so. Having braced for impact, the more impactful feels less so. Just as you brace yourself for physical impact, brace for the emotional too.
How Two Grandsons Married Their ‘Grandmothers’ 二孙如何娶’祖母’
Oct. 31 | 古古怪，怪怪古，孙子娶祖母。 猪羊炕上坐，六亲锅里煮。 女吃母之肉，子打父皮鼓。 众人来贺喜，我看真是苦！ – 志公禅师 How oddly strange, how strangely odd, that a grandson is marrying his father’s...
Eat Clean With Your Whole Heart
Oct. 30 | Consume mindfully with compassion and wisdom or consume mindlessly with greed and delusion. – Shilashanti Do not neglect your meals: Make your meals about the eating When you eat, are you focused on the act of eating? Breakfast is something you race...
What Creates The Most Positive Karma?
Oct. 29 | Answer: Killing creates the most negative karma. But if ways of breaking other precepts create equivalent harm, they are the same in negativity. Refraining from killing creates some positive karma but the true opposite of killing is liberating sentient...
‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s Lack Of Logic On Balance
Oct. 28 | A key philosophical problem with the Star Wars universe is that it is ‘romantically’ yet unrealistically portrayed in terms of balance. For example, Luke Skywalker explains the force as so to Rey, ‘The force is not a power you have....
