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BUDDHA AND HIS DHAMMA IS PERMANENT
The way of home life
โ Ethics
Ethics serve an
important function in the hormonising of human relations. In a family there are
close relationships between father and mother, brothers and sisters, uncles and
aunts, husband and wife, brothers and sisters-in-law, among many others.
However, order and harmony in a family can only be guaranteed aintaining
hierarchical ethical relationships based on love and respect between young and
old.
Buddhism is made of
four groups โ bhikkus, bhikkunis, upasikas, upasakas and it stresses the value
of ethics. Family members โshould treat one another with love and respect.โFamily
members should share things with each other. In our daily lives together, we
should be tender in word and look. Buddhaโ teachings are deeply and concretely
imbued with humanistic charecterand the
strength of life.
The family is at the
center of every personโs life.Human ethics begin with filial piety, which is
practical basis of ethics and morality. For this reason, BVuddhism advocates
filial piety as the first and foremost of all human relationships. Buddhism
holds the filial devotion to oneโs parents and repaying parental kindness is
one of the four great kindnesses to oneโs elders.
Buddhism holds that a
person should โdo oneโs utmost oneโs entire life to care for oneโs parentsโ.
โcare for your parents and elders amiably and with respectful wordsโ. Buddha
goes a step further and teaches that
โfood, drink and even treasure are not sufficient to repay the kindness of
oneโs parents ; leading them to know and believe the right Dhamma is the only
way to repay oneโs parents for their kindnessโ.
Filialness could be
divided into three levels. The caring of oneโs parents during their lifetime
and cremating them with the properties
upon death. Which is lesser filialness.; Honouring oneโs parents and ancestors
is moderate filialness. And only leading oneโs parents from the cycle of birth
and death can be counted as greater filialness. Converting oneโs parents is the
truest way to repay parental kindness. In other words, If oneโs parents are not
upholding the precepts, then lead them to dwell with the prohibitions; if oneโs
parents are by nature stingy, then awaken in them wisdom. If a child can do this,
then that is the first step towards repaying parental kindness.
MAYAWATI OUR BEST HOPE
Despite all the charges levelled against her, Mayawati remains our
hope, our only hope, our best hope in a Hindu dominated India.
It has been said that when Lord Buddha lay dead underneath a twin
sal tree at Kushinara, the sal tree blossomed out of season and
showered flowers on his body, and celestial music rent the air. When
Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), lay dead at
Delhi, 42 monks from all corners of India came and chanted Buddhist
hymns. His protรฉgรฉ,
Kumari Mayawati, never missed recalling our Buddhist past in every
message that went out from her in the just concluded Parliamentary
elections. Her appeals to restore Buddhism to the land of its birth
fell on deaf ears. Her critics merely saw her as a political rival who
needed to be dumped along with her statues and the statues of her
mentors.
No party, no politician ever mentioned our ancient religion of
Buddhism and our glorious past, nor criticized the present caste-ridden
and deity-infested religion breeding superstitions, promoting bribery
and corruption, sexual misconduct, and the taking of alcohol and drugs.
Buddhism has been dumped along with its moral code Panch Shil.
A few years ago, it was unthinkable that a Scheduled Caste woman would ever
become the Chief Minister of the largest Brahmin dominated State of
Uttar Pradesh. What was wrong in a Chief Minister aspiring to be the
Prime Minister, when no one else would even think of sponsoring an
untouchable, not even Jagjiwan Ram of the past who was magnanimously
given the title of Deputy Prime Minister ? How misleading is our
mainstream media! if Rajiv Gandhi,
forget Bofors. But remember Brahmin
bribe-giver Narasimha Rao. Not Buddha Dhamma, but dhamma of Jagatguru
Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati!
When salt loseth its taste, with what shall it be salted? We found
fault with the Britishers for all our faults, and when they left and we
governed ourselves for the last 62 years, we gave free vent to our
wild, beastly, instinct of stealing left and right that led to the
worldโs largest stolen money, a massive Rs 75 lakh crores, stashed away
in secret Swiss bank accounts. At the height of the public agitation
that surfaced, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh advised “hush, hush!” for
fear that account holders might transfer away those funds. In the
elections just concluded, Election Commission officials have seized
hundreds of bagfuls of currency notes, bottles of drugs and alcohol and
arrested many of the party workers. Is this the kind of battle that we
should be fighting in an election? In our country, political battle
inevitably brings in all kinds of immoral ammunition. An association of
the election watching NGOs, called NEW, have disclosed that 533 newly
elected members of the Lok Sabha have among them 150 criminals, of
which Congress has 41, BJP 42, Shiv Sena 8. There are 300 crorepatis (1
crore=10 million) in the new Lok Sabha, 138 with Congress, 58 with BJP,
14 with Samajwadi Party, and the rest with other parties and
independents. Acclaimed as the largest free democracy in the world, it
also mirrors, among other things, our criminals, our black money,
alcohol and drugs, bribery and corruption that have tained it.
Kumari Mayawati has begun an ethical struggle, short of a religious
war - a war between morality and immorality, a war between Buddhist
ethics and the ethics of Narasimha Rao and Jagatguru Sankaracharya
Jayendra Saraswati on one side and Lord Buddha, Narayana Guru, Periyar,
Ambedkar and Kumari Mayawati herself on the other. Knowingly and
unknowingly, frustrated against powerful opponents, an unsophisticated
rural rustic untouchable of yesterday, Kumari Mayawati seem forced to
do tit-for-tat not only in the political compulsions of elections but
remain in power as the Chief Minister of the largest State of Uttar
Pradesh with a population larger than the populations of Britain,
France and Germany combined. She has succeeded and would continue to
succeed even in her imperial dreams, but I wonder if she would not like
to follow her distant mentor Emperor Asoka who at the height of his
successful military conquests stopped to think and pause, and thought
of conquering himself.
The phenomenal success of BSPโs unique electioneering campaign in
the State assembly elections of of Uttar Pradesh in 2007 has given us
many lessons. Waking up the local voters to the memories of fallen
heroes of the locality - not fossil characters from the puranas -
through stirring songs and slogans, by bands of trained, disciplined
volunteers in uniforms from the state level to the district, way down
to the booth levels, supported by the vigilant camera-equipped election
officials are the sights and sounds still fresh in the minds of the
voters in U.P. If repeated in Uttar Pradesh as well as in other States,
that kind of campaigning is bound to yield unimaginable results. The UP
campaign covered idols, loud and clear, from not only Uttar Pradesh but
also from other States like Ambedkar from Maharashtra, Periyar from
Tamil Nadu, Narayana Guru and Ayyankali from Kerala, and others, with
the overriding presence of Lord Buddha everywhere. It needs no
retelling that Buddhaโs footprints are everywhere in Uttar Pradesh and
the neighbouring State of Bihar. BSP needs to re-energize itself on its
success of the 2007 elections, taking corrective actions on its lapses
in the 2009 parliamentary elections.
Most of us who campaigned for Mayawati and BSP remain buoyant on the
future prospects. We Buddhists had also cherished a dream that one of
the first acts of Mayawati on becoming the Prime Minister would be her
embracing Buddhism.
The next general election however is five years away. The country
can wait. Mayawati would still be young at 58 in 2014. Some of us
however are far too old as octogenarians. What a blessing it would be
if Kumari Mayawati fulfills the dream of her mentor Kanshi Ram and
millions of her admirers if she decides to embrace Buddhism now,
reigning as the Chief Minister of the mighty State of Uttar Pradesh, as
Emperor Ashoka of Pataliputra did and initiated a Buddhist missionary
crusade that reached far and wide. It would be a landmark event in the
history of Buddhist revival in India. It would be a sarvajan function
for all the peoples of all the States in India, and for all the
countries of the world whose heads of state would also be invited.
Buddhaโs teachings would be a beacon of hope for a world in turmoil.
We all wish well for a second term for Dr Manmohan Singh at the helm
of affairs in India. Some of his recent utterances do keep ringing in
our ears - about the apartheid in our country, about his deep concern
for internal security rather than external, and so on.
Lakshman
May 25, โ09
pplakshman08@ gmail.comTel:
917-664-6566
After ministers, Maya grills legislators
25 May 2009, 0223 hrs IST, TNN
LUCKNOW: Sunday saw BSP MLAs getting chief minister Mayawati’s piece
of mind. She held separate meetings with party legislators at her
official
residence here — 5 Kalidas Marg — to review the progress of
development works being carried out in their respective areas and to
assess the reason for BSP’s poor show in the Lok Sabha elections.
Sources said that MLAs, particularly those in whose constituencies BSP
did not do well in the Lok Sabha elections, were pulled up by the
chief minister. She, however, also listened to their woes. These MLAs,
in a collective meeting on Friday last, had blamed bureaucrats for not
cooperating with them. They repeated the same on Sunday. Subsequently,
Maya directed officers to ensure quick disposal of the difficulties
pointed out by the legislators. She has already transferred district
magistrates and police chiefs of many districts where BSP suffered
defeat.
The chief minister also asked the legislators to coordinate with the
officers for quick disposal of people’s problems and also ensure that
the eligible persons were benefited by the schemes and programmes of
the state government. She has directed the legislators to go to their
respective constituencies and ensure that the ongoing development
schemes and programmes were completed in a time bound manner.
Referring to the difficulties affecting proper implementation of
schemes and programmes, Mayawati has directed party legislators to
bring them to her notice immediately. She had held a meeting with
council of ministers and government officers on May 22 and another
meeting on May 23 with the ministers. During these meetings she
reviewed the progress of departmental programmes. In this series, she
met the legislators on Sunday and conducted area-wise review.
addressed the caste factor in America under the Editorship of George
Joseph.
speakers– Raju kamble, Dr. Sakya Mohan and Mr. Michael Thaver. On the
otherside of the fence is prominent Lawyer of Hindu American
Foundation, Suhag Shukla.
,22may, 2009 or ia.rediff/index. html , or go the local Indian
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