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Friends: What is the Best Fortune that can be Gained? Once an illuminating deity asked The Buddha: Which good fortune is the best? Whereto he answered: Not associating with fools, but only with the wise; Honouring only those, who really deserves it; Living in suitable climatic and peaceful regions; Great learning, good discipline, and exact speech; Service to mother and father, support of wife and sons; all these are the supreme good fortune! Giving, and living the just and generous life supporting relatives; Avoidance from all evil behaviour through complete self-control; Abstinence from intoxicating drinks and drugs causing carelessness; Reverence, devoted faith in the Dhamma, humility, and contentment; Grateful hearing and study of the Dhamma, when one is ready for it: This is the supreme good fortune! Forbearance, patience, and humble yet keen attention, when corrected; Seeing ascetics, recluses, sages and Bhikkhus, who explain the Dhamma; Living the Noble life, understanding th

Friends: Attaining 1 of the 4 Noble Fruits is Sublime! Insight culminates in the moment of attaining the recluse's sublime fruit: A state tranquillizing all distress, its beauty from the Deathless draws... It is calm from lack of fuzzy worldliness. Truly a sweet and clarified bliss! It is a fountainhead, whose honey-sweet ambrosia emulates the deathless.. Any being refining understanding, will experience this pure peerless bliss, which is the taste the Noble fruit produces, right here in this very life.. The flavour of the Noble fruit is  Happiness , a blessing of fulfilled insight.. Visuddhimagga  702 There are 4 types of increasingly Noble individuals  ( A riya-Puggala ): 1: The  Stream-winner   (Sotāpanna), 2: The Once-Returner  (Sakadāgāmi), 3: The Non-Returner  (Anāgāmī), 4: The Awakened Holy One  (Arahat). More on mental Fruition  ( Phala ):   Rewarding_Fruitions ,  The 7 Fruits!

- / - Introduction As the title implies, the question raised here is the extent to which one experiences oneself as more dead than alive -- or is so considered by others. As the subtitle implies, the further question is how the current state of society enables one to make that distinction -- given the questionable nature of "one" and the potential meaning to be associated with "now". How do such questions relate to the ideals of  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness , as embodied in the  United States Declaration of Independence ? Does the sense of being alive relate to the experience of happiness or rather to some more profound and inexplicable engagement with life? What meaning will the future associate with "being alive". Consideration of such questions may be usefully framed by the argument of  Barbara Ehrenreich  ( Smile Or Die: how positive thinking fooled America and the World ,  2009). Has "being positive" become asso