What can we make of our lives in this rich consumer societ y? Our FBA Dharmabyte today,and#8221;The Preciousness of Human Birth,and#8221; is an excerpt from the talk and#8220;The Preciousness and Rarity of Human Lifeand#8221; by Dhammadinna given at Tiratanaloka Retreat Centre, 2005.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
The Preciousness of Human Birth
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. So we're going to look at these eight freedoms and ten endowments and the three kinds of faith, which traditionally make up the precious human birth. I'll just give you some different ways in which precious is glossed in some of the text on the precious human birth, because I think it gives us a very, very positive impression again of these teachings. The precious human birth, sometimes precious, is glossed as lucky, auspicious, wonderful of immense benefit with great resources and requisites with a potential for Buddhahood. It's a human life, a human being with time, energy, freedom, a certain amount of leisure, motivation, opportunity, ability, capacity, good circumstances, faith, energy, intelligence, confidence, diligence, wisdom. So those are the things we're going to be reflecting upon. Do we have them? Do we not have them? And see whether we think we've got these freedoms and advantages. And I think in the modern West, we do have so much going for us. I know we've got the sort of psychological stuff that undermines that. We do have so much going for us. And I think our challenge in the West is what to do with it, what to do with the resources we have available to us. Can we make something of it? Can we make our life meaningful in the midst of our rich, consumer society? We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bight. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donnie. And thank you. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]