How to Live with an Appointment With Death

8/31/2019

APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH (Marananussati)

What state of mind do you want to be in at the moment of your death. It could be fifty years
away. It could be today. The exact time cannot be predicted, but we can choose our state of
mind while we live.

Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero from the Hillside Hermitage explains:

Applying the 4 Noble Truths & 8 Fold Path to life in the modern world

9/12/2018

The Four Noble Truths

Applied Buddhism

Gaining a clear understanding of the Buddhas Four Noble Truths, which leads you onto the Eight Fold Path, brings about not only greater insight into your own state of being, but also greater wisdom on how to retain an overall state of calm as you navigate the events that arise as you journey through your day-to-day. With this wisdom and by following the eight fold path, you are able to focus on a much deeper level with a more profound state of peace and a more radiant heart. Gil Fronsdal and The Insight Meditation Center offer a short and easy to grasp look into the topic.

Listen

Four Noble Truths

8/1/2018

The End of Suffering

Better to Face the Music

7/22/2018

The person resolute in the Way must strive not to lose sight of it, whether in a place of calm or in a place of strife. Beware of clinging to quiet places and shunning those where there is disturbance. If you try to take refuge from trouble by running to some quiet place, you will fall into confusion.

- Daikaku (1213-1279)

Essays In Idleness

10/7/2017

If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. Consider living creatures—none lives so long as man. The May fly waits not for the evening, the summer cicada knows neither spring nor autumn. What a wonderfully unhurried feeling it is to live even a single year in perfect serenity! If that is not enough for you, you might live a thousand years and still feel it was but a single night's dream. We cannot live forever in this world; why should we wait for ugliness to over take us? The longer man lives, the more shame he endures. To die, at the latest, before one reaches forty, is the least unattractive. Once a man passes that age, he desires (with no sense of shame over his appearance) to mingle in the company of others. In his sunset years he dotes on his grandchildren, and prays for long life so that he may see them prosper. His preoccupation with worldly desires grows ever deeper, and gradually he loses all
sensitivity to the beauty of things, a lamentable state of affairs.

*from ESSAYS IN IDLENESS by The Surezuregusa of Kenko. Translated by Donald Keene

Notes to Self