Essential or Not? - Ajahn Dhammasiha

In the current Queensland Health Direction, any religious activity is classified as "non-essential". To make matters worse, even among the long, long list of "non-essential" activities, one has to scroll to the very bottom of the whole list to finally find religious activities. Even these start with 'Weddings'.Ajahn Dhammasiha suggests that a society that considers any practice of religion as rock-bottom non-essential should not be surprised to struggle with problems of mental disorders, depression, substance abuse, suicide and so on.We have to get our priorities right, and in terms of Dhamma, 'non-essential' applies to all sankhāras, conditioned phenomena that are impermanent, unreliable and ultimately disappointing. Truly 'essential' (Pali: 'Sāra') is only the 'Unconditioned', Nibbāna, and by extension any activity that leads us to the Unconditioned.In Dhammapada verses #11 & #12, the Buddha points out that we have to be able to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, else we'll end up in big trouble.www.dhammagiri.org.auwww.vimeo.com/dhammatalkswww.tinyletter.com/dhammagiri/archive.