Humility

By nature, all people are equal; thus, no person is, by nature, superior to another. Cognizant of just how often we give in to negative emotions like greed, anger, impatience, and jealousy, we will realize that we have little to be arrogant about. It would be much wiser to develop humility, recognizing that with our many faults we need to focus on correcting them. And as we get compliments for our improvement in correcting our faults, we must work even harder to put aside our pride and to practice humility.

Go Veggie and Help Others

·   The first precept is to not kill. When we eat animals, we are asking those who do not understand cause and effect to plant the seeds for much future suffering. 

·   Approximately 60 million people a year die of starvation. Those lives could be saved because those people could eat grain used to fatten cattle and other farm animals - if Americans ate 10% less meat.

·   It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. If we all just ate the grain, everyone in the world would have enough to eat.

·   About 20 percent of the world's population, or 1.4 billion people, could be fed with the grain and soybeans fed to U.S. cattle alone. (Mark Gold and Jonathon Porritt, "The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat," 2004, p. 22.)

·   The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported in 2006 that 854 million people across the world are hungry.

·   According to Dr. Waldo Bello, executive director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, "[t]here is enough food in the world for everyone. But tragically, much of the world's food and land resources are tied up in producing beef and other livestock—food for the well-off—while millions of children and adults suffer from malnutrition and starvation. In Central America, staple crop production has been replaced by cattle ranching, which now occupies two-thirds of the arable land." Jeremy Rifkin, "The World's Problems on a Plate," The Guardian Unlimited, 17 May 2002.

·   Roughly 1,000 species a year become extinct because of the destruction of the rainforests.

·   Each of us switching to a vegetarian diet will eliminate the killing—and suffering—of more than 100 animals a year. It will also help to lessen the demand for future suffering as fewer animals are raised for our consumption.

No Perfection Here in Samsara

Our lives will never be perfect here in samsara, in the cycle of rebirth. We can easily forget this when we find our path and our teacher. Striving to be a better person, to follow the guidance we receive to the best of our abilities, we become frustrated to find that we still run into difficulties. That we still encounter obstacles and seeming contradictions.

It is at this point that people can become discouraged. They may think that their good actions are failing to produce good consequences. They may think that they should have progressed more than they have.

It takes time, it takes patience, it takes hard work to remain focused on our vow to end suffering and attain happiness for all beings. But we are so ego-oriented, so wrapped up in our concept of self that we can lose track of this goal.

There will always be obstacles in samsara. There is a Chinese saying "Good work, more trouble." Just because we are sincerely trying to improve does not mean that all our karmic consequences and obstacles will fall away and we will progress smoothly in our practice.

Nothing is easy here in samsara and there is no perfection either. Accepting this will help us to hang in there when we seem to encounter endless obstacles. The obstacles are temporary and will be overcome as long as we do not give up.   

To Teach Others

In one of his discourses, Venerable Sariputta said, 'When one who teaches wishes to teach another, let him establish five good qualities and then teach. Let him think:

• I will speak at the right time, not at the wrong time.
• I will speak about what reality is, not about what is not.
• I will speak with gentleness, not with harshness.
• I will speak about the goal, not about what is not the goal.
• I will speak with a mind filled with love, not with a mind filled with ill-will. 

~ (A, lll, 195 translated by Ven. S. Dhammika)

How Long Should I Chant?

In chanting. as with most things we do, it's not the time involved as much as the focus and quality. If I sit on a meditation cushion in the chanting hall and chant for an hour with wandering thoughts one after another, I may look impressive but my chanting will be mediocre.

If however, I find that I have five minutes before I need to do something and quickly settle into my chanting, the benefits of my focused chanting can far outweigh my hour of wandering thoughts chasing one another around my head. Our focus should be on both quality and quantity, not just quantity.

This question of how long leads to another question, "When should I chant?"

With so much to do today, it can be difficult to find the ideal time to practice. It is tempting to wait until we can do some "serious" chanting. When we are home or at our Buddhist center and have a few hours to really get into our practice.

If we wait for ideal conditions, we will end up spending very little time chanting. Most of us do not yet have enough good fortune to have ideal conditions. So we need to be appreciative and work with what we do have. It's far better to chant for ten or twenty minutes a day than wait for that one long weekly chanting session. As with all our practice, we are training to do things more effectively. As we become more skilled at focusing on "Amituofo," we will create the goodness that can result in improved practice conditions. With better conditions, comes more chanting time and more focused chanting.