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the five precepts

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS: 1. All is suffering (dukkha). 2. Suffering is caused by desire/attachment. 3. If one can eliminate desire/attachment, one can eliminate suffering. 4. The Noble Eight-fold Path can eliminate desire. Extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self- mortification should be avoided.

THE NOBLE EIGHT-FOLD PATH: 1. The true understanding of the four noble truths. 2. Right Intent. Right aspiration is the true desire to free oneself from attachment, ignorance, and hatefulness. [These first two are referred to as praj?a, or wisdom.] 3. Right Speech. Right speech involves abstaining from lying, gossiping, or hurtful talk. 4. Right Conduct. Right action involves abstaining from hurtful behaviors, such as killing, stealing, and careless sex. 5. Right livelihood. Right livelihood means making your living in such a way as to avoid dishonesty and hurting others, including animals. [The above three are referred to as shila, or morality.] 6. Right Effort. Right effort is a matter of exerting oneself in regulating the content of one's mind: bad qualities should be abandoned and prevented from arising again; good qualities should be enacted and nurtured. 7. Right Mindfulness. Right mindfulness is the focusing of one's attention on one's body, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness in such a way as to overcome craving, hatred, and ignorance. 8.Right Concentration. Right concentration is meditating in such a way as to progressively realize a true understanding of imperfection, impermanence, and non-separateness.

Eight Auspicios Symbols

The Four Noble Truths Parts 1 & 2, The 14th Dalai Lama

The Four Noble Truths Parts 3 & 4, The 14th Dalai Lama

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Mara, the God of Confusion, realized this was his last chance to stop Siddhartha from attaining enlightenment and spreading wisdom throughout the world. Mara summoned armies, filled with fearsome creatures from other realms, and caused a terrible storm in order to distract Siddhartha from meditating. Mara is said to have ten armies - sensual desire, boredom, hunger & thirst, craving, sloth, terror, uncertainty, hypocrisy, undeserved notoriety, and pride. The contrasting solo sections in this piece represent attacks by the armies of sensual desire and terror respectively, while the main theme represents Mara’s malevolence followed by Siddhartha’s peaceful reply. Eventually, Mara realized that it was impossible to distract Siddhartha from his task, so he demanded that Siddhartha move from his place underneath the tree, asking Siddhartha what right he had to sit there. Siddhartha replied that he had earned the right to sit there because he had practiced the "Ten Perfections" of generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, effort, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness and equanimity. Mara accused Siddhartha of of lying and asked him who had witnessed him practicing these perfections. Siddhartha replied by lowering his right hand and touching the earth, in a gesture referred to as "Calling the Earth To Witness". The earth’s response, represented by the gong hits, was a huge earthquake which caused the ground to split open and swallow Mara up along with all his armies."

The Ten Armies of Mara..

Meditation can be seen as a war between wholesome and unwholesome mental states. On the unwholesome side are the forces of the kilesas, also known as "The Ten Armies of Mara." In Pali, Mara means killer. He is the personification of the force that kills virtue and also kills existence. His armies are poised to attack all yogis; they even tried to overcome the Buddha on the night of his enlightenment.
Here are the lines the Buddha addressed to Mara, as recorded in the Sutta Nipata:
Sensual pleasures are your first army,
Discontent your second is called.
Your third is hunger and thirst,
The fourth is called craving.
Sloth and torpor are your fifth,
The sixth is called fear,
Your seventh is doubt,
Conceit and ingratitude are your eighth,
Gain, renown, honor and whatever fame is falsely received (are the ninth),
And whoever both extols himself and disparages others (has fallen victim to the tenth).
That is your army, Namuci [Mara], the striking force of darkness.
One who is not a hero cannot conquer it, but having conquered it, one obtains happiness.
To overcome the forces of darkness in our own minds, we have the wholesome power of satipa??hana vipassana meditation, which gives us the sword of mindfulness, as well as strategies for attack and defense.
In the Buddha’s case, we know who won the victory. Now, which side will win over you?


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Buddhism’s Ten Perfections and Nirvana....

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Giving. As a full jar overthrown pours out the liquid and keeps back nothing, even so shall your charity be without reserve - as a jar overturned.

Duty. As a yak-cow, when the hairs of her tail become entangled in anything, would rather suffer death than injury to her tail, even so should you keep to your duty - as the yak to her tail.

Renunciation . As a man in prison, suffering pain for long, knows that there is no pleasure for him but only to await release, so shall you look upon your existences on earth as in prisons, and turn your face toward renunciation and await release.

Insight. As the beggar-monk shuns no families from whom he begs, whether lowly or high or in between, and acquires his daily fare, so shall you at all times question the wise and gain insight.

Courage. As the lion, king of beasts, whether when lying down or standing up, lacks no courage, but is ever light-hearted, so also shall you in each of your individual-existences hold fast to your courage.

Patience. As the earth bears all that is cast upon it, both the pure and impure, and feels no resentment nor rejoicing, so also shall you receive favors and rebuffs alike with indifference.

Truth . As the star of healing is balanced in the heavens, and swerves not from its path in its time and its season, so shall you remain fixed on your path of truth.

Resolution . As the stone mountain, firmly based quails not before the tempest, but abides in its place, so shall you abide in your resolution once resolved.

Loving-kindness. As water quenches the thirst of the good and the bad alike, and cleanses them of dust and impurity, so also shall you treat your friend and your foe alike with loving-kindness.

Serenity. As indeed the earth looks with serenity on all the pure and impure that are cast upon it, even so shall you approach with serenity both joy and sorrow - if you are to attain wisdom.

Thus many are the things which in this world make wisdom perfect; beyond these there are no others.

When he gains perfect wisdom and becomes master of himself, it is the belief of the Buddhist that he has gained salvation and is ready to enter Nirvana.

Nirvana is probably one of the most difficult concepts to define in a way comprehensible to the Western mind. Some have defined Nirvana as the state of Not-being. This is both correct and incorrect. For Nirvana is a release from the cycle of reincarnation and the end of individual existence. Nirvana is also the blissful state in which all suffering ceases and the individual is joined with the World-Soul.

Compassion