Harlem & Jill

There was a time when I had this question on my mind: If there are countless after lives, meaning we will come back again and again, until an infinite future, why do we have to practice diligently this life?  Why can’t we just play around and have fun this life and then in one of our after lives, we start to practice. It will never be too late because we will have infinite after lives.  But as I learn more and more about mindfulness practice, I realize that Buddhism practice is not for reaching an ultimate goal to become enlightened. Mindfulness practice is to become happy, and to reduce suffering.  So why do we have to wait until future lives to start becoming happy when we can become happy right here and right now? you can be happy right here and right now and when you do that, you are enlightened, you are a Buddha. # Jill Yang

Sometimes I come up with my own 公案, a philosophical dialogue or question to contemplate. This is a recent one: Master: The Buddha is not confined to his skin. He is everywhere. So if you only see the Buddha as someone in a physical body, you are wrong. The Buddha is present in the entire universe. Student: Dear Master, why do you say the Buddha is everywhere in the universe? I can't see how the Buddha can be found in the farthest star or at a time before the Buddha Shakyamuni. Master: What Buddha? This came to me after I listened to a Dharma talk from Thich Nhat Hanh on "there is action but no actor". Whenever we wonder "who" is doing "what", "when" and "where", we are caught in the wrong perceptions and are blinded by wrong questions. It's like asking "where is the parallel universe?" That's a false question because space and location are in the universe, not the universe is in the space. And this also came to me

I just read about a news article showing a poll that says 6 in 10 U.S. adults support protecting the rights of embryos to some degree. It mentioned a court ruling in Alabama state, which says embryos, even fertilized outside the womb, have equal rights as humans do. This ruling almost forced IVF treatment centers in Alabama to halt operation because if embryos are indeed humans, they are basically killing hundreds of lives every year as they dispose unused embryos!  Absurd as the "embryo equals human" argument seems at first glance, it actually leads to a deeper, philosophical question: when does life begin, and when does it end? According to the same poll, 3 in 10 Americans believe the statement: "human life begins at conception," which sounds perfectly logical. But when put into legal context, not so much. The Article 7 of the Civil Code of Taiwan stipulates that " An unborn child is considered as if it were already born with regard to its interests, except