Dharma Buddha Teachings - the truth taught by the Buddha

In the vast expanse of spiritual literature, the concept of Dharma, as expounded by the Buddha, stands as an enduring pillar of wisdom. Dharma, often translated as “law,” “duty,” or “righteousness,” represents the universal truth and the inherent nature of reality. At its core, it is the path of virtue and right living that the Buddha taught as a means to alleviate suffering and attain enlightenment.

The relevance of Dharma in our current society is profound. In an age characterized by rapid technological advancement and global interconnectedness, the principles of Dharma offer a stabilizing force. They provide an ethical compass amidst the moral ambiguities of the modern world. The Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are as applicable today as they were in ancient times, addressing the root causes of human discontent and prescribing a way of life that promotes harmony and balance.

Dharma encourages mindfulness and self-reflection, virtues that are indispensable in a culture often dominated by consumerism and the pursuit of fleeting pleasures. It calls upon individuals to consider the consequences of their actions, not only for themselves but for the greater community and environment. This sense of interconnectedness and responsibility is crucial in addressing the pressing issues of our time, such as climate change, social inequality, and the quest for sustainable living.

Furthermore, Dharma Buddha wisdom advocates for compassion and loving-kindness, qualities that are essential in fostering a more inclusive and empathetic society. It challenges us to transcend our narrow self-interests and to cultivate a spirit of generosity and service.

In essence, the Buddha’s Dharma is a call to awaken to a life of purpose and meaning. It invites us to examine our lives with rigor and sincerity, to live with intention, and to strive towards a greater understanding of ourselves and the world. As we grapple with the complexities of the 21st century, the timeless wisdom of Dharma remains a guiding light, steering us towards a future rooted in ethical integrity and profound insight.

Dhamma Wisdom: “A Bird in a Cage”

"Use the mind to contemplate the body so that you’re familiar with it. When you’re familiar with it, you’ll see that it’s not for sure—every part of it is inconstant. When you see in this way, your mind will give rise to a sense of disenchantment—disenchanted with the body and mind because they’re not for sure, they’re unreliable. So you ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “A Fish on Land”

"Our different postures hide pain. When you’ve been sitting a long time and then switch positions because of the pain, the pain disappears. That’s why we don’t see the pain. It’s like youth hiding old age inside. The mind is taken with the looks, the sounds, the smells, the tastes of youth, but if you stay with it for a ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “A Road Through the Wilderness”

"Training the mind is something we have to do. As you train the mind over time, it’s like making a road into the wilderness. At first, you’re walking in the wilderness, but if you keep walking along the same path every day, every day, the path gradually changes. The dirt gets harder. Stumps get worn down, and the road becomes ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Addicted to Curry”

"It’s like a dog. If you feed it plain rice every day, it’ll get fat like a pig. But if one day you start mixing some curry in with the rice, just one or two meals, then after that if you give it plain rice again, it won’t eat it. It gets addicted to the curry really fast. Sights, sounds, ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Awakening to the Cobra”

"Most of us, when we hear the words, “awakening to the Dhamma,” understand that it’s something so high and far away that we probably won’t awaken in this lifetime. That’s how we understand things. Actually, if something is evil and we don’t clearly see that it’s evil, then we can’t abandon it. That means we haven’t awakened much to the ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Awakening to the Dhamma”

"Reaching the Dhamma, awakening to the Dhamma: These things sound awfully exalted, too exalted to talk about. But actually, people like us are on a level where we can reach the Dhamma. Reaching the Dhamma is understanding, “This is evil. It’s wrong and doesn’t benefit me or anyone else at all.” When you understand in this way, that’s called reaching ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Barking at Leaves”

"When you go for alms in the village, put on your robes neatly before you go. Exercise restraint as you go for alms. I’ve seen new monks and novices who don’t know anything. When they eat in someone’s house, they have to look around, all over the place. Why do they have to look around? Some of them even stare—it’s ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Better & Better”

"When discernment arises, you can abandon your defilements. As your discernment grows, your behavior will change. You’ll abandon your old ways. It’s like going into the forest to look for fruit. At first you find some fruit that’s not especially good, but even though it’s sour, you take it. You carry it in your basket until you find fruits that ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Chickens Coming to the Monastery”

"Some people come to the monastery but never come to the meditation hall to hear the Dhamma. They sit way out there, chatting with their children and grandchildren, and don’t understand anything. This isn’t coming into the monastery like people. This is coming into the monastery like chickens. Chickens bring their baby chicks into the monastery, scratching around for dog ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Cleaning the House”

"When you construct a house, then when it’s finished, only the construction of it is finished, right? The next step is that you have to live in the house and always keep cleaning it. It’s not the case that when you finish constructing the house you can rest at your ease. That’s not the case at all. You have to ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Coconut Water”

"The crude, beginning level of the practice is a little hard to maintain, but the refined levels of virtue, concentration, and discernment all come out of this. It’s as if they’re distilled from this same thing. To put it in simple terms, it’s like a coconut tree. A coconut tree absorbs ordinary water up through its trunk, but when the ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Complete Food for the Mind”

"Virtue, concentration, and discernment are like our food. If virtue were food, we’d say that it’s sweet but without any richness. If you add concentration, that adds some richness. Now it’s both sweet and rich. It’s good that way. But if all you have is sweet and rich, it’s still not complete. It has to be good-smelling, too. If you ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Counting the Rootlets”

"Some people have to keep thinking: “What is the mind? What is the heart?”—all kinds of things, keeping at it, back and forth until they go crazy. They don’t understand anything. You don’t have to think that far. Just simply ask yourself, “What do you have in yourself?” There are physical phenomena and mental phenomena; or there’s a body and ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Don’t run along”

"Meditation means contemplating in a way that solves problems at the same time. Look at yourself a lot. Keep track of the mind, your sensitivity, your thought-fabrications. Actually, all your thoughts are an affair of fabrication. To put it in simple terms, don’t run along with them. Don’t follow in line with them. They’re just an affair of mental fabrication ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Drop after Drop”

"When contemplating a meditation object, check to see which object is right for you. It’s like food on a tray. You have to contemplate for yourself to choose which foods are right for the conditions of your body. In the same way, you choose a meditation object right for you. The in-and-out breath. Or you can contemplate the body. In ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Dye in the Mind”

"It’s like rain water, which is water that’s clear and clean. Its clarity is normally clean. But if we put green or yellow dye into it, the water will turn green or yellow. It’s the same with the mind. When it meets up with a preoccupation it likes, it’s at ease. When it meets up with a preoccupation it doesn’t ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Dyeing the Cloth”

"Our Lord Buddha wanted us to get our foundation in good shape first, get everything clear and clean first. It’s like building a house or a building. We have to inspect the ground, the area where we’re going to put up the building, so that it’s in proper shape. Or like dyeing cloth: If you want to dye a piece ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Eating Out of the Shit-pot”

"To see things as empty means seeing that there’s nothing there. You see that this spittoon is there, you see a cup and a plate, and the cup and the plate are there. It’s not that they’re not there, but they’re there in emptiness. They’re empty. If you ask this spittoon what it is, it won’t answer you—because it’s not ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Eating the Hook”

"When people are deluded, they deludedly see that hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, and skin are wonderful things. Beautiful. It’s like a fish biting a hook. Whether it’s biting the hook or biting the bait, it doesn’t know. It wants to bite the bait, but what comes into its mouth is the hook, snagging its ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Everything Gathers in the Ocean”

"The water in the ocean comes from little rivers. They flow into the ocean from different directions, but they all come together there. It’s the same when we meditate. We all bring the mind to stillness, and then we practice not clinging. Big rivers, small rivers, all gather in the same ocean. It doesn’t matter where they come from, they ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Feeding Through the Mouth”

"People who are intelligent: You don’t have to teach a lot. People who are not intelligent: No matter how much you teach them, they don’t understand. But this depends on the teacher, too. By and large, we teach when we’re in a bad mood. As when we teach our children: It’s only when we’re angry with them that we “teach” ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Filling the Glass”

"The way that people think once they’re born is that, having been born, they don’t want to die. Is that the right way to think? Take this glass here. If we pour water into it and yet don’t want it to be full—if we keep on pouring water into it and yet don’t want to be full—can we get what ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Fix It Right Here”

"This practice is called the practice of the Dhamma. If you can see every day, if you can try to see continually into your mind, then even if you’re doing work, you’ll see. Try to see with every moment. You might say, “Oho, Venerable Father, I don’t have any time to meditate. I can’t meditate. I’m always busy.” That’s how ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Forcing the Fruit”

"Don’t get angry with people who can’t yet do the practice. Just keep on teaching them. When their faculties mature, they’ll be ready to accept what you say. If you keep on acting in this way, problems fall away. It’s like a fruit that’s still unripe. You can’t force it to become sweet, because it’s still unripe, still sour. It’s ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Genuine Wealth”

"Silena bhoga-sampada: A person with virtue has wealth. In terms of external wealth, all the things that we search out for our livelihood will be Right Livelihood. The things we gain from Right Livelihood, even if they’re not much, are large. They’re large because they have value. That’s why they count as bhoga-sampada: consummation in terms of wealth. Like diamonds ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Goodness Without Discernment”

"Skillfulness doesn’t focus only on pleasure or happiness. It has to see where that happiness comes from and what it’s like. You have to use your discernment to see what it comes from. Some people think that gaining a lot of wealth is goodness. Not gaining a lot is bad. It doesn’t matter to them how you gain it, just ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Grabbing Hold of a Dog”

"Even when you see that something is true, you can’t grab hold of it. It’s like a dog: Try grabbing hold of a dog’s leg without letting go, and it will turn around and bite you. Or a snake: Try grabbing hold of its tail, grabbing hold without letting go. It’ll simply bite you. So don’t hold on. Let it ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Healing the Wound”

"Tranquility is stillness that lasts only for a little while. The stillness is the foundation for insight. Insight is seeing clearly, understanding more clearly than you did before. Insight is not simply still. The stillness of tranquility is like running away from noises to a wilderness where there’s no noise. If you have lots of children, you run away to ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Hiding in the Mind”

"When a child is born, we don’t see any good or bad kamma. There’s just a body. It comes naked. This shows that the things in one life can’t be held in our hands to see in the next life. This is why, when a child is born, it doesn’t bring anything along in its hands. But there are things ...

Dhamma Wisdom: “Husk & Not-husk”

"When they say, “Admonish yourself,” “self” is atta. As for yourself, it’s not like that. Suppose that some water is murky. You filter it and see the clear water that comes from the murky water: “That’s clear water.” If you filter yourself, it’ll be anatta, not-self, coming out of self. You’ll see that it’s not- self. That’s when it’s anatta ...

Leonardo da Vinci, the quintessential Renaissance polymath, continues to captivate the world with his unparalleled contributions to art, science, and technology. Born in the small town of Vinci in Tuscany, Italy, in 1452, da Vinci’s life was a testament to human potential. His relentless curiosity and inventive spirit led him to explore a staggering array of fields, leaving a legacy that remains unmatched.

Da Vinci’s most significant contributions include revolutionary works of art such as the “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper,” which have left an indelible mark on the art world with their innovative techniques and profound emotional depth. Yet, his impact extends far beyond the canvas; his extensive studies in anatomy, flight, and engineering prefigured many modern advancements.

His quote, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” captures a profound truth that transcends disciplines. This principle is crucial as it highlights the elegance and clarity that simplicity brings to both thought and creation. In an era marked by information saturation and complex technology, da Vinci’s embrace of simplicity becomes a guiding principle for innovation, design, and communication.

Today, this quote remains as relevant as ever. It encourages a stripping away of the unnecessary, advocating for the purity of form and function that defines timeless work. In a society often seduced by the allure of the new and the complicated, da Vinci’s wisdom is a call to seek the power and beauty in simplicity. It is a reminder that the most impactful ideas and solutions are often those that are deceptively straightforward, resonating through their clarity and precision. Leonardo da Vinci’s legacy, therefore, is not just in what he created, but in the enduring philosophy that what is most profound is often that which is most simple.