Everyone must live his or her life day by day. Food,
clothing, shelter, and transportation as the basic necessities
of life. However, everyone has different demands when it
comes to material life - some want to eat nothing but exotic
delicacies, live in luxury high rise, wear only silk and satins,
and drive only the most luxurious car; for others, coarse tea,
plain food, and homemade things are sufficient for a happy,
carefree life. Therefore, no objective material standard for a
happy life exists - everyone is different.

In using resources for daily life, Buddhism does not
demand asceticism from all believers. Regarding food, one
should eat one’s fill; regarding clothing, one should dress
appropriately. However, one should not use resources
wastefully. Materialism can easily awaken our desires, giving
rise to greed. Material things can be exhausted, bu is
endless. Once seduced by materialism, suffering will only
increase. For this reason, followers of Buddhism opt for a
simple life of a few material possessions. Traveling monastics
can roam the world over with nothing but “three robes and
an alms bowl” and the “eighteen objects of dhuta”
including willow branches, soap, water bottle; mat, monastic
suck, incense burner, and water filter.(to be contd)

COMPREHENSIVE PALI COURSE LESSON 7 Exercise 2 continued

LESSON 7

Exercise 2 (Continued)

6.                 
Lord Buddha
said: “Monks you go and preach the

Teachings.”

Bhagavā Buddho
abhāsi: ‘Bhikkhavo tumhe

Gacchatha Dhammanca desethi.

7.                 
The
Teachings will be for the happiness and for the

welfare of gods and men.

Dhammo devānañcs manussānañca sukhāya ca

hitaya ca bhavissati.

8.                 
The monks
went all over India
and preached the

Truth.

Bhikkhavo sabbattha jambudīpe sabbattha

agamiṁsu Dhammanca 
desiṁsu.

9.                 
Many men and women became saints through
these

Sermons.

Bahū purisā ca itthiyo ca imāhi
Dhammadesanāhi

Ariya abhaviṁsu.

10.                 
There were happiness and well-being in the
world.

Lokssmiṁ sukhañca kalyānañca ahesuṁ.

11.              People voluntarily undertook the precepts
and

Cultivated the mind through
meditation and became

Wise.

Paja sikkhapadāni samadiyiṁsu ceva
cittañca

Bhavanaya bhavayiṁsu, Paṇḍitā ca abhaviṁsu.

FREE ONLINE TRAINING ON
BUDDHISM FOR CHILDREN -13

The Golden Plate
[Greed and
Honesty]

Once upon
a time in a place called Seri, there were two salesmen of pots and pans and hand-made
trinkets. They agreed to divide the town between them. They also said that after
one had gone through his area, it was all right for the other to try and sell
where the first had already been.

One
day, while one of them was coming down a street, a poor little girl saw him and
asked her grandmother to buy her a bracelet. The old grandmother replied, “How
can we poor people buy bracelets?” The little girl said, “Since we don’t
have any money, we can give our black sooty old plate.” The old woman agreed
to give it a try, so she invited the dealer inside.

The salesman saw
that these people were very poor and innocent, so he didn’t want to
waste his time with them. Even though the old woman pleaded with him,
he said he had no bracelet that she could afford to buy. Then she
asked, “We have an old plate that is useless to us, can we trade
it for a bracelet?” The man took it and, while examining it,
happened to scratch the bottom of it. To his surprise, he saw that
underneath the black soot, it was a golden plate! But he didn’t let
on that he had noticed it. Instead he decided to deceive these poor
people so he could get the plate for next to nothing. He said, “This
is not worth even one bracelet. There’s no value in this. I don’t
want it!” He left, thinking he would return later when they would
accept even less for the plate.

Meanwhile
the other salesman, after finishing in his part of town, followed after the first
as they had agreed. He ended up at the same house. Again the poor little girl
begged her grandmother to trade the old plate for a bracelet. The woman saw that
this was a nice tender looking merchant and thought, “He’s a good man, not
like the rough-talking first salesman.” So she invited him in and offered
to trade the same black sooty old plate for one bracelet. When he examined it,
he too saw that it was pure gold under the grime. He said to the old woman, “All
my goods and all my money together are not worth as much as this rich golden plate!”

Of
course the woman was shocked at this discovery, but now she knew that he was indeed
a good and honest fellow. So she said she would be glad to accept whatever he
could trade for it. The salesman said, “I’ll give you all my pots and pans
and trinkets, plus all my money, if you will let me keep just eight coins and
my balancing scale, with its cover to put the golden plate in.” They made
the trade. He went down to the river, where he paid the eight coins to the ferry
man to take him across.

By then the greedy salesman had returned, already adding up huge imaginary profits
in his head. When he met the little girl and her grandmother again, he said he
had changed his mind and was willing to offer a few cents, but not one of his
bracelets, for the useless black sooty old plate. The old woman then calmly told
him of the trade she had just made with the honest salesman, and said, “Sir,
you lied to us.”

The
greedy salesman was not ashamed of his lies, but he was saddened as he thought,
“I’ve lost the golden plate that must be worth a hundred thousand.”
So he asked the woman, “Which way did he go?” She told him the direction.
He left all his things right there at her door and ran down to the river, thinking,
“He robbed me! He robbed me! He won’t make a fool out of me!”

From
the riverside he saw the honest salesman still crossing over on the ferry boat.
He shouted to the ferry man, “Come back!” But the good merchant told
him to keep on going to the other side, and that’s what he did.

Seeing
that he could do nothing, the greedy salesman exploded with rage. He jumped up
and down, beating his chest. He became so filled with hatred towards the honest
man, who had won the golden plate, that he made himself cough up blood. He had
a heart attack and died on the spot!

The
moral is: “Honesty is the best policy.”

The Four Noble Truths

The foundation of Buddhism is the four noble Truths:

• Suffering – birth, old age, disease, death, 5 aggregates of attachment of the 5 senses
• Cause – craving for pleasure. Origin of suffering is karma and defilements.
• End – Annihilation of this craving
• Path – middle path or the noble Eightfold Paths.

The Dhamma may be called the law of cause and effect.
A Buddhist is aware of future consequences. He refrains from evil
because it retards and he does good because it aids progress to awaken-ness. There is no one to reward or punish. Pain and happiness
are inevitable results of one’s action.

Buddhism
is saturated with the spirit of free inquiry and tolerance. It also
gives the greatest freedom of choice. One can do anything as long as
one is willing to face the effect. As long as there is Kamma, there is
rebirth.

The doctrine of rebirth denies
the existence of an unchanging or eternal soul created by god or
emanating from Divine Essence (Paramatma). Instead, mind is nothing but
a complex compound of fleeting mental states. It is always in the
present and is ever slipping into the irrevocable past. When life
ceases, the Kamma energy re-materializes itself in another form.

‘PIL against statue will fuel bad blood’
Staff Reporter

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy





Taking no chances: Police personnel stand guard as
labourers work at statue of Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar in Bangalore on
Thursday.

BANGALORE: Expressing deep anguish over the manner in which society
and country is sought to be divided on the lines of caste, religion and
region, the Karnataka High Court on Thursday orally observed that a
public interest litigation (PIL) petition against the unveiling of a
statue of Tamil saint-poet Thiruvalluvar in Bangalore would only fuel
bad blood and led to strained relations between Tamil Nadu and
Karnataka.

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice P.D. Dinakaran and Justice
V.G. Sabhahit made these observations when several pro-Kannada
organisations moved a PIL in the morning seeking early hearing of the
case.

The petitioners, Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha leader Vatal
Nagaraj, the former MLA Prabhakara Reddy, Kannada Rakshana Vedike
(Praveen Shetty faction) chief Praveen Shetty and Dalit leader N.
Murthy had filed the petition against the unveiling of the statue at
Ulsoor in Bangalore on Sunday.

The Chief Justice sought to know how the unveiling is in public interest.

When the petitioners informed the court that the function to unveil
the statue was a private one, the Chief Justice said the invitation
printed by the Government mentioned that it is a Government programme.

When the petitioners persisted in saying that the unveiling is by a
private agency, the Chief Justice asked them to place some deposit
before the court. “You will lose the deposit if it is proved that the
function is a Government one”, he said.

He then said when the petitioners could have filed a PIL against the
unveiling of the Thiruvalluvar statue in Bangalore, they should have
filed a petition in the Madras High Court against the installation of a
statue of Sarvajna in Chennai.

The Bench refused to take up hearing of the matter in the afternoon,
saying that it is not urgent. It said the matter could be posted on
Friday and adjourned further hearing of the case.

‘Elephants statues have nothing in common with BSP symbol’

Lucknow, Aug 5 (IANS) The 60 red-stone elephants
installed in the Rs.750 crore Ambedkar Park cum memorial here have
nothing in common with the election symbol of Chief Minister Mayawati’s
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), party general secretary Satish Chandra Misra
said Wednesday.

Reacting to an Election Commission notice to BSP, Misra said in a
statement: “The elephants installed at the Ambedkar memorial are in a
typically traditional welcome position with their trunks raised up in
the air, while the elephant in the party symbol has its trunk in the
normal posture.”

Criticising the opposition parties for raising the issue before the
poll panel, he argued, “We have introduced a scheme to gift bicycles to
young girls. Would that be construed as promoting the Samajwadi Party,
since bicycle is that party’s symbol?”

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