“Master, this car is dukkha.” The lesson from the story of Emperor Qianlong and countless others with lucky human births is clear, that no matter how lucky our birth is, we are all still subject to the same suffering: aging, illness, death, separation, not...
Emperor Qianlong on horseback in imperial armor. (Image from the Palace Museum website.) Imagine being born into an extremely lucky circumstance. Would you still have any suffering? Hongli had one of the luckiest births in the history of the world. He was born...
In Topic#2 of Buddhism for All, we got to meet the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. The most important lesson in learning the life of the Buddha boils down to four points: He was a person. You are a person. He did it. You can do it. In the upcoming topics, we...
The story of the Buddha is primarily useful for us as a template to guide us in how to move forward with our own lives. It is helpful to us in the same way that knowing admirable people is helpful to us: we see them live in good ways, watch them make decisions that...
After his enlightenment, the Buddha spent seven weeks in Uruvela.[1] Some of the time was spent consolidating his teachings, specifically, the teachings on dependent origination (which we will explore in detail later in this series) was formulated during the...
