Life’s Great Blessings: Supreme Buddha’s Blueprint of Happiness for Householders

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Late Venerable Acharya Buddharakkhita was the founder-president of Maha Bodhi Society, Bengaluru. Since 1956 he had established many Buddhist centres in India and abroad and rendered yeomen spiritual and humanitarian services. He was a member of the Editorial Board of the Sixth Buddhist Synod (Chattha Sangayana) in Yangon, which brought out a complete edition of the Buddhist scriptures.
He established Mahabodhi Monastic Institute in Bangalore, India, Buddhayoga Meditation Centre in USA and conducted many Dhamma and Pali courses, meditation courses and written numerous books and translation of Buddhist texts. Mahabodhi Research Center and Bhagavan Buddha University of Pali and Theravada Buddhism, Bangalore are the result of his effort and research to provide a systematic Buddhist education as widely as possible.

The Supremely Enlightened Buddha arose in this world only because of one reason. And that is boundless compassion. Human happiness and peace was utmost concern of the Buddha. He established the Sangha to help truth seekers and to reach out to people. Indeed countless people got immense benefit and many of them realized the higher levels of enlightenment.
The Compassionate Buddha used different means to teach the Dhamma. That is why there are 84,000 Dhammakkhandhas skillful ways of leading beings towards freedom. Many teachings of the Buddha are directly dealing with the day to day lives of the common people. The Supreme Master discovered ways and means how an ordinary householder can transform her/his daily life into a profound spiritual exercise. It was Buddha's constant advice to make ordinary daily life activities as objects of contemplation, source of joy and basis for developing wisdom.
Maha Mangala Sutta, a powerful protective discourse, is one of the most practical and comprehensive discourses, specially for the family householders. Innumerable people have shaped their lives according to the advices in the sutta and they have achieved high level of success in their material life as well as spiritual development.
The Mangala - blessing in life means, that which brings peace and happiness with further progress towards higher spiritual stages. The Buddha taught 38 mangalas in a very systematic way covering entire gamut of spirituality. These teachings are to be put in day to day life experiences. They are not a set of beliefs or ritual performance. All these are to be practiced with wholesome intention putting effort. It is totally different approach to that of just blindly believing that omen or this omen will bring good luck or bad luck. Good intention, right direction and hard work bring the good results. The opposite is also true with the fruits of suffering, which are the result of unwholesome intention. But the world is so blinded that people out of fear go to refuges to every kind of thing.
Venerable Acharya Buddharakkhita Bhanteji had been referring so often to this sutta in his weekly Sunday discourses. As people showed more and more interest he decided to comprehensively deal with this subject in such a manner that people will understand with stories, examples and narrations. So he started as part of Golden Jubilee of Maha Bodhi Society celebrations, a series of Dhamma talks which ran through many months explaining the different mangalas. The same material he brought out in a series of 15 books.