Pure Land Buddhist Group of Honolulu

 
 
 

Why were we born?

Why are we living?

What is the purpose of our life?

What determines a good fate of happiness, or a bad fate of misfortune?

We will have a Skype session to learn how Buddhism answers to these questions.

If you want to join us, please fill this questionary by clicking this link
https://bit.ly/3bf4zC9

send your Skype ID to "davidguya25" or click this link: https://join.skype.com/IKHXhZqV1jLo

We also have our whatsapp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/DnBijHRH4pTFQ7W5ymyPLI

If any questions, please contact [masked]

The session will be shared only via Skype.

 
 
 

Hi, our Dharma friends!

This meeting is an online event. The passcode of the Zoom meeting room is written at the end of this event description.

First of all, we'd like to ask the participants to follow these rules:

1. Please use the same name as your Meetup account when logging in to the Zoom meeting room.
2. Please remember the name of this group Pure Land Buddhist Group of Honolulu especially when you're not from Honolulu because we will ask you the name of the group when we don't find your RSVP.
3. Especially when you RSVP at the last minute, if you can drop a note to [masked] and write the name of this group, then we can easily find your RSVP and as a result you can enter the meeting room quickly.

The following is the review of our recent meeting. Main topic: Ours is a long-term mission.

1. We all have our purpose in life, which energizes us to move on.
2. Our ultimate goal is different from our short-term goals or mid-term goals in life, such as marriage, landing a job, forming a family, or retirement.
3. If we think about our mortality and impermanence of life, minor issues become less important, and we feel an urgency to accomplish our real purpose.
4. It is helpful to have friends and family members who can support us as we travel through this Saha world of suffering toward our destination.
5. Practicing compassion and kindness to such good people is important.
6. We all have shared imperfections, and sometimes we hurt each other because we are human and are fallible. Self-reflection can help us move through such troubled times. Remember, we’re all in this together, we are all struggling, and we are all suffering.
7. Buddha said the purpose of this journey is to find genuine happiness that overcomes life’s sufferings.
8. The eight universal sufferings taught by the Buddha are: birth ( life), aging, sickness, death, separation from the beloved, encountering the despised, and being of the flesh (our body). This last suffering contains all the other sufferings.
9. When we practice Six Paramitas, our good efforts will be rewarded. Good people will be drawn to us and be a source of support. It might take some time but no effort is wasted. Some seeds take time to bear fruit.
10. When we know our purpose – self transcendence – we can overcome our limitations, the obstacles in our way, and the pain we suffer on our journey.
11. Self transcendence is to forget the desire for instant gratification and remember those people who will benefit from our effort, and to be grateful for the people who have been supporting us.
12. If you don’t have such people please make an effort to find at least one such person. And of course, coming to this meet-up you will be a part of the community.

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We're able to continue bringing these Dharma sessions for you thanks to the generosity of those of you who support us. Let me take a moment to express our gratitude now. If you too are able to support our cause, you can offer your donations on PayPal or Venmo to Bita Enayati at [masked].

Thank you for your support and encouragement in helping us continue to bring quality teachings to you, day in, day out. It's not the amount that matters but your desire to be part of a cause greater than ourselves.
Stay well and let's go forward towards the light of unconditional goodness together! Please message me at [masked] with your self-introduction if you'd like to get to know each other more and also to confirm your RSVP.

If you're interested in learning Buddhism but have a schedule conflict, please write to me for a one on one session. And we have about 10-18 people join us so hope you don't get discouraged by seeing the few RSVPs here on this page. See you soon too!!!
Lastly the passcode is[masked].

Bita and Yuichi Asakura

 
 
 

Learn the wisdom of Buddha and lead a life of everlasting peace and joy
You can participate from anywhere in the world since the conference is virtual, all you have to do to gain access is to click the following links:|

Form:
http://bit.ly/Buddhism_Session_Form

WhatsApp group:
http://bit.ly/PurposeofLifeinBuddhism

Zoom link for the lecture:
https://bit.ly/Online_Buddhism_Zoom_Session
Meeting ID:[masked]
Passcode: 108

Why were we born?
Why are we living?
What is the purpose of our life?
What determines a good fate of happiness, or a bad fate of misfortune?
We will have a Skype session to learn how Buddhism answers to these questions.

If you want to join us, please join our whatsapp group:
http://bit.ly/PurposeofLifeinBuddhism

If any questions, please contact:
https://bit.ly/OnlineDharmaSessions

 
 
 

Hi, our Dharma friends!

1. We've updated the Zoom link!
2. And please note that we're going to livestream the lecture part of the meeting on YouTube. There will be an announcement from the Zoom app when it starts.
3. We would appreciate it if you use the same name as your Meetup account so that the host of the meeting will easily recognize the participants.
4. Please make sure you RSVP 30 minutes prior to the start of the meeting.

Our meeting is a friendly get-together of like-minded people. It starts with light-hearted ice-breaking for 20 minutes followed by a Dharma talk (lecture-style) for 20 minutes. During the last 20 minutes, we have a Q&A session. (The length of time varies according to time and circumstances)
The following is the synopsis of our recent meeting.
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The ultimate goal of Buddhism is experiencing true happiness. But if we don't know what it is, we won't know how to go about it.
There's a goal, or the finishing point of experiencing happiness that does not abandon us, Buddha teaches us. That is lasting peace of mind and satisfaction.
Why do we lack energy to move forward? Is it because we feel we're stuck in a circular marathon? When do I reach the finishing line? How long should I continue doing this?
The following are the lines from a popular song of Japan.

Over this hill, happiness lies waiting:
Clinging to that hope,
seven hills have I crossed so far,
this my fiftieth year.

We want to reach a point of completion. Seeking is tiring, you know.
Artists seek perfection in their artwork. But it's difficult to find a point of perfection. One popular singer said this:
"I always focus really hard on an album or a tour, and at the time I'll think, “This is the greatest!" But when it's over, somehow I’m always like “Nope, I still have a long way to go.”
Don't we look for lasting joy through our work/hobbies/relationships? But each time, we feel disillusioned.
Buddha teaches us what lasting happiness is in contrast to our fleeting sense of it.
A great master of Buddhism expressed his own experience of attaining such happiness as follows:
"Swiftly receiving the wisdom of Buddha, gaining perfect and flawless satisfaction."

Just visualize the beautiful image of a full moon in the night sky. The full moon has a perfectly circular shape, which is symbolic of something perfect in Buddhism.
How can we experience perfect happiness? It's when darkness of mind or avidya in Sanskrit will get lifted. It takes no time. When the light comes, our dark mind will be instantly gone. That's the moment we achieve true happiness.

Dark mind is like a spiritual illness of not knowing why we suffer, why we're born, why we live. It's the ignorance about our true self as well.
Why do we feel pain when we say goodbye to our loved ones? Why is separation always painful? A popular Japanese singer once said, "Human beings are immersed in pain from the beginning but while we have our loved ones around us, we can forget about our pain. But when we say goodbye to them, the pain comes to the surface. In a sense, our loved ones work like a painkiller." There are all these forms of “painkillers.”
The original pain comes from our dark minds. Listening to the Dharma illuminates this pain and eliminates it.
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We're able to continue bringing these Dharma sessions for you thanks to the generosity of those of you who support us. Let me take a moment to express our gratitude now. If you too are able to support our cause, you can offer your donations on PayPal or Venmo to Bita Enayati at [masked].

Thank you for your support and encouragement in helping us continue to bring quality teachings to you, day in, day out. It's not the amount that matters but your desire to be part of a cause greater than ourselves.
Stay well and let's go forward towards the light of unconditional goodness together! Please message me at [masked] with your self-introduction if you'd like to get to know each other more and also to confirm your RSVP.

If you're interested in learning Buddhism but have a schedule conflict, please write to me for a one on one session. And we have about 10-20 people join us so hope you don't get discouraged by seeing the few RSVPs here on this page. See you soon too!!!
Thank you very much for reading till the end.

Bita and Yuichi (aka. Luigi)