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Living a balanced life and making wise choices

Living a balanced life and making wise choices

A talk given at Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery in Singapore.

Making wise decisions

  • Setting the motivation
  • Examining the self-centered attitude and its shortcomings
  • Looking at our own faults instead of the faults of others
  • How to be able to make wise decisions
    • Examine our own body, speech and mind
    • Acknowledge our undesirable actions
    • Apply antidotes to correct the negative actions
  • The importance of keeping precepts and a brief explanation of the five lay precepts

Living a balanced life and making wise choices 01 (download)

Working with the afflictions

  • The importance of examining the mind and our motivation
  • How to work with anger
  • Freeing ourselves from attachment
  • Criteria to use and those not to use in making wise decisions

Living a balanced life and making wise choices 02 (download)

Questions and answers

  • What happens if the other person shuts the door and refuses to communicate even though I’m trying to communicate with them?
  • I have a disability. How does one cope with discrimination?
  • What is purification practice and how does it work?
  • How do I adopt a balanced view towards colleagues who are mean and trying to make life difficult for me because I have been promoted instead of them?
  • Is it being attached or greedy to want the people whom we love to attain enlightenment?
  • What can we do as parents to help our children to realize their highest potential?
  • How do we balance our lives in terms of money?

Living a balanced life and making wise choices 03 (download)

Venerable Thubten Chodron

Venerable Chodron emphasizes the practical application of Buddha’s teachings in our daily lives and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by Westerners. She is well known for her warm, humorous, and lucid teachings. She was ordained as a Buddhist nun in 1977 by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche in Dharamsala, India, and in 1986 she received bhikshuni (full) ordination in Taiwan. Read her full bio.