The Nikāyas concisely organize the types of merit into three “bases of meritorious deeds” (puññakiriyavatthu): giving, moral discipline, and meditation. Text V(...) connects the bases of merit with the types of rebirth to which they lead. In the Indian religious context, the practice of meritorious deeds revolves around faith in certain objects regarded as sacred and spiritually empowering, capable of serving as a support for the acquisition of merit. For followers of the Buddha’s teaching these are the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha. Text (V...) extols these as each supreme in its particular sphere: the Buddha is supreme among persons, the Dhamma among teachings, and the Saṅgha among religious communities. The text proposes an interesting twofold distinction of the Dhamma Jewel: among all conditioned things (dhammā saṅkhatā), the Noble Eightfold Path is supreme; among all things conditioned or unconditioned (dhammā saṅkhatā vā asaṅkhatā vā), Nibbāna is supreme. Merely having confidence in the Three Jewels, that is, reverential trust and devotion toward them, is itself a basis of merit; but as the verses attached to the sutta make clear, the Buddha and the Saṅgha additionally function as the recipients of gifts, and in this role they further enable donors to acquire merit leading to the fulfillment of their virtuous wishes. More will be said about this aspect of merit just below

The fact that such texts as this sutta and the Kālāma Sutta do not dwell on the doctrines of kamma and rebirth does not mean, as is sometimes assumed, that such teachings are mere cultural accretions to the Dhamma that can be deleted or explained away without losing anything essential. It means only that, at the outset, the Dhamma can be approached in ways that do not require reference to past and future lives. The Buddha’s teaching has many sides, and thus, from certain angles, it can be directly evaluated against our concern for our present well-being and happiness. Once we see that the practice of the teaching does indeed bring peace, joy, and inner security in this very life, this will inspire our trust and confidence in the Dhamma as a whole, including those aspects that lie beyond our present capacity for personal verification. If we were to undertake certain practices practices that require highly refined skills and determined effort.we would be able to acquire the faculties needed to validate those other aspects, such as the law of kamma, the reality of rebirth, and the existence of supersensible realms 

“I considered: ‘Not only Āḷāra Kālāma has faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. I too have faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. Suppose I endeavor to realize the Dhamma that Āḷāra Kālāma declares he enters upon and dwells in by realizing it for himself with direct knowledge?’ 

"Inconceivable is the beginning,  disciples, of this faring on. The earliest point is not revealed of the running on, the faring on, of beings, cloaked in ignorance, tied by cravingSAṀYUTTA NIKĀYA

An environmental expert in New Zealand has cautioned Buddhists against practicing life release—the act of saving the life of an animal by returning it to the wild—warning that unmindfully releasing animals into environments to which they are not native can be deadly for the animals being freed and in some cases can wreak havoc on delicate ecosystems.

Recent years have seen a steady increase in scientific research into Buddhist beliefs and practices, in particular, research on mindfulness, which was pioneered more than 30 year ago, continues to attract mainstream attention. The large majority of this research, however, is conducted by Western researchers or Western Buddhists at universities in the West, and one starts to wonder whether the pursuit of finding scientific evidence for Buddhism’s religious claims is in fact a Western pursuit. It certainly ties in with the often-discussed observation of Tibetan masters who have taught in the West, that Western Buddhist are very good with knowledge, with trying to understand the teachings, but are somewhat lacking in the area of practice.

Yeshi Dhonden, a Tibetan monk who earned renown after working for some 20 years as personal physician to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, today continues draws visitors from the Tibetan diaspora and all over the world seeking alternative treatments for a variety of health conditions ranging from back pain to cancer and degenerative diseases. “If the sick come to me, I will take care of them,” says Dhonden from his private clinic in McLeod Ganj, a suburb of Dharamsala in the far northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. (France 24)

I remember once, as a child, accidentally spilling some sugar over the table and wondering to myself, “How come each grain has its place?” I mean, the sugar did not seem to scatter randomly . . . the grains were kind of symmetrically arranged. I stared at my little arms, gazing at the hair that grew out of my skin. Each hair had its place. For the first time, I felt that some kind of greater intelligence had placed the grains of sugar, just as it had placed the stars and planets in space.

The Earth recently reached a grim milestone. On 24 October, the World Meteorological Organization reported in its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin that a strong El Niño weather phenomenon, triggering droughts in tropical regions of the world, had led to a spike in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) above 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in recorded history. Scientists estimate that the last time CO2 reached such concentrations was 3–5 million years ago. While human CO2 emissions remained relatively static in 2014–15, scientists point out that they remain a key factor in the overall increase, which was greater in the preceding 12 months than at any time in the past 56 years.