DIVINE:
If one speaks the truth, is not angry and gives
when asked, even when one has only a little,
one may win a divine future state...
Dhammapada Illustration 224 Background Story 224
FINAL BLISS:
The homeless sages, always restrained,
in both body and behaviour, finally pass to
the deathless state, where sorrow is not...
Dhammapada Illustration 225 Background Story 225
ENTHUSIASM:
Those who are always aware and awake;
Training day and night, intent only on Nibbāna,
their mental fermentations gradually evaporate.
Dhammapada Illustration 226 Background Story 226
Comments: When Devas have been asked what good deeds they had
accomplished here on earth to cause them to be reborn in the happy
world in which they live, they have given different answers. Speaking
the truth, restraining anger, leaving hatred, listening to the dhamma,
charitable gifts of goods and wealth, even giving small gifts of fruit
and vegetables to a Bhikkhu or someone else are among the answers.
Even if we are poor, and have only the most modest gift to offer to
the Noble Sangha of Bhikkhus, such gifts are extremely meritorious!
In order for us to never return to the world in which we are now living,
we must become a faith-devotee, a faith-liberated one, a body-witness,
a both-ways-liberated one, a Dhamma-devotee, a vision-attainer, or
a wisdom-liberated one, or finally a fully awakened Arahat!
The Buddha taught us to be “always alert and ever aware" so that we
may attain Arahatship, become liberated from all suffering while here,
and thus obtain the benefits of never having to experience birth,
old age, sickness, and death again! He insisted that we must train both
day and night, during all activities, in order to reach the supreme, blissful,
rapturous, quenched, satiated, stilled and calm state….NIBBĀNA!
With Metta, Jonathan
