A participant who completed Project Rebirth (Round 2) asked me what would be three key takeaway tips to sum up the whole course. This is my reply: 1. What we all truly want is True Happiness and that is Buddhahood. 2. The path to True Happiness (Buddhahood) comes from bringing happiness to oneself and others [...]

Linkin Park’s ‘In the End’ has a part that can ‘accidentally’ seem Zenny upon reinterpretation: I tried so hard And got so far But in the end It doesn’t even matter I had to fall To lose it all But in the end It doesn’t even matter If despite your many efforts, they don’t seem [...]

Part 1: True Happiness as an attained goal (of Buddhahood) is not conditioned by anyone (including one’self’),* or it would not be unconditional. But the path to True Happiness is conditioned by guiding others to attain True Happiness (as the Bodhisattva path). Part 2: Even after attaining True Happiness, one continues to unconditionally guides others [...]

Ubuntu (Zulu): People become people through other people. Humanity (English): Human beings are humanised through being humane to one another. Buddhahood (Sanskrit-English): Beings become Buddhas through helping other beings become Buddhas too. Paraphrased from a friend’s notes: Ven. Heng Sure once visited slum villagers who were really connected to one another despite being really poor. [...]

Since we inadvertently kill some beings in daily life, such as accidentally stepping on ants, does it mean it is alright to intentionally buy other beings for food? Since we already unwittingly kill some beings in daily life, this makes it even all the more important to conscientiously minimise our connections to the deaths of [...]

Question: A teacher mentioned that the Lotus Sutra is fictional, that some of its contents do not accord with the Buddha’s instruction (e.g. making fun of the Arahants/Arhats). What do you think? Answer: Some teachers of Theravada Buddhism tend to say Mahayana sutras are not true. But this in the view of Mahayana teachers, is [...]

True confidence arises only when one becomes one with the true/truth.* – Stonepeace * Total confidence is attained by realising the total truth, when one becomes fully enlightened – a Buddha

It is partly due to the ‘endless’ clinging to self-delusion, to constant wondering about the nature of the ‘self’, which is really an illusion, that perpetuates our rebirths in Samsara (via attachment to this non-existent ‘self’). The subtlest attachment we have to the idea of ‘self’ will lead to rebirth because rebirth is due to [...]

In ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’, the first emperor of China (Qin Shihuang), after his conquest of the whole of China, felt compelled to conquer what he perceived to be his last enemy – death, because he wanted for more than the span of a single normal life to fulfill his further ambitions. [...]

In the book ‘The Meaning of Life’ by Terry Eagleton is this passage – “… we are in something like the situation of the narrator of Henry James’ story ‘The Figure in the Carpet’, who is told by a celebrated author he admires that there is a concealed design in his work, one implicit in [...]