Becoming a Buddhist Lay Disciple

One becomes a Buddhist lay disciple by means of two steps: Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels and undertaking the Five Precepts. By going for refuge one makes the solemn commitment to accept the Three Jewels — the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha — as the guiding...

The Four Noble Truths

All the Buddha’s teachings center around the Four Noble Truths, the formula into which he compressed the essence of his realization. The First Noble Truth teaches that life involves suffering. It is impossible to live without experiencing some kind of discomfort...

The Noble Eightfold Path

The Noble Eightfold Path covers every aspect of life – intellectual, ethical, social, and psychological – and thus contains everything we need to develop ethically and spiritually, in the process benefiting ourselves and others. The steps of the path are:...

Making a Fresh Start in Life

A talk given at the Chinese New Year assembly at Bodhi Monastery, February 9th, 2008 For Buddhists, the new year should not be an occasion merely to celebrate and enjoy good food and the company of friends. It is an opportunity to take a new birth and start a new...

My First Encounter with a Buddhist Monk

In the first week of August, 1965, after finishing summer school, I set out to travel by car from New York to California. I was twenty years old and in September would be entering my senior year at Brooklyn College . I wanted to visit a friend who was spending the...