Poh Tiong Ho's Blog – September 2014 Archive (2)

Fixed Kamma is committed with speech, mind and body. The example would be a premeditated crime. Every thought, utterance, and deed is a seed that ripens over time. Every one has the potential at every moment to alter the course of the future Kamma, by doing good deeds. The Buddha personally said “If there is no way out, I will not be teaching you today”.

Collective Kamma is created when a group of people, for example, go and set fires to destroy properties and living beings. The…

Upali 

Upali, which means grasping tightly, assisted with the compilation of the Vinaya, during the first council. He was already in his seventies. He was an untouchable, from the lowest class in the Indian society.  He was physically weak and  his parents made him a barber. Upali was popular, and soon he became the barber for the Sakya  princes.

When the Buddha returned to Kapilavastu to visit his father, Upali was about 20.  When Upali was told to cut the Buddha’s…