One-Day Retreat

On May 8th, 2016 (Lunar March 2rd), thousands of Buddhists from HCMC and provinces have returned to Hoằng Pháp Pagoda to attend the monthly One-Day Retreat as usual.

After breakfast, all the Buddhists assembled in the halls to attend a dharma talk from Bhikkhu Thích tâm Đạo, Hoang Phap’s vice abbot. In more than one hour, he shared the mass topic: “ Buddha’s teachings on Human behavior”.  In Agama Canon, Sigalovada No 16, Part 2, Long Agama; in Nikaya Canon,  translated from Most Venerable Thich Minh Chau, similar to  Sigalovada  Sutra  No 31, this content has been extracted from Buddha’s teachings about the right behaviors in life, duties for self, family and society and even how to build up a harmonizing world with peace and happiness.

This is a very precious lesson for us, the Buddhists. In order to get the Enlightenment, we, Buddha’s disciples, must sincerely follow Buddha’s teaching stated in Three Books as Suttas, Vinaya, Abhidhama… , which  are guideline for ourpromoting to religious lives. Buddha has taught us all he needed flexibility. The importance is our proper applications into life so that we can gather sweet fruits and the Enlightenment.

We should avoid  such four evil karmas as killing, theft, lust, lying, Four bad omens such as greediness, hatred,  fear andignorance. These avoidances can protect us from sufferings in life.

We should avoid 6 wasting deeds that can lose our prosperity as: drinking alcohol and other addictive items, gambling, dissoluteness, wallowing in musical, sensual pleasures, making friend with evil people and laziness.

We should avoid four kinds of enemy: tamed enemy, flowery-worded enemy, respectful enemy and cruel one. 4 kinds of nice, protective people that we should close with: preventing us from bad actions, having great compassion,being helpful and co-working.

Besides, Buddha also taught us right behaviors in relationships as parent-kid, teacher-student, friend-mate, neighborhood, employer-employee, senior-junior and Bhikkhu(ni)-Lay Buddhist.

This is a brief, helpful and easy-to-understand teaching from Buddha for our daily social etiquette. We all have our own relationships to others as above mentioned that we need to behave rightly to improve ourselves, fulfill our duties as our used-to-be experience from those self deeds and contribute to Dhamma conduct appropriately. Since then we will self-adjust and complete the duty to family, society, which build perfect life and religion.

Vesak (Buddha’s Birthday) is nearly in due time, Bhikkhu Thích Tâm Đạo encouraged all the Buddhists to do  their best celebrating this great event with flags, pennons, banners or even the Lumbini bonsai at home. Each of us should try our best so that more and more people can be acknowledged about this important day.

After Dhamma talk, the mass joined the course as usual.