Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 10, 2015 8:39 PM
Title: Re: The root of the question
Content:
What absolute nonsense you spout. Nobody's memory of the past is limited to recalling past actions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 10, 2015 8:06 PM
Title: Re: New Buddhist centre opening in Southend, UK
Content:
No personal acquaintance with it, but there's a thread about the group's supposed lineage on our sister forum:

http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=4183


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 10, 2015 7:55 PM
Title: Re: The root of the question
Content:
But they do. Both those experiencing temporary freedom from defilements and those who have permanently eradicated them are quite capable of remembering their past.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 9, 2015 10:32 AM
Title: Re: Joke!!!
Content:
Reminds me of this Freudian exchange in the hell scene in G.B. Shaw’s Man and Superman:

DON JUAN. You would rather not meet [your father], probably.

ANA. How dare you say that!

DON JUAN. Oh, that is the usual feeling here. You may remember that on earth—though of course we never confessed it—the death of anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them.

ANA. Monster! Never, never!

DON JUAN. [placidly] I see you recognize the feeling.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 9, 2015 9:12 AM
Title: Re: Monasteries in Florida.
Content:
You must be thinking of a different Dhammanando. As a layman in the early 1980's I would spend the occasional weekend at Chithurst Forest Monastery when Ajahn Sumedho was still the abbot there, but as a monk I've only been on one day trip to Amaravati.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 9, 2015 7:01 AM
Title: Re: Monasteries in Florida.
Content:
Sure, but that doesn't mean that Wat Florida has any affiliation with the Thai forest tradition. In the Dhammayuttika Nikaya, as in the Mahanikaya, the huge majority of monks never go anywhere near a forest.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 7:25 PM
Title: Re: Monasteries in Florida.
Content:
Do they? The listed activities aren't suggestive of this. 

The wat's parent monastery in Thailand is Wat Somanat, a monastery in the Dusit district of Bangkok, just down the road from where I used to live. Wat Somanat has nothing to do with the forest tradition. It's a city wat where Dhammayutt monks from the south of Thailand will usually go to stay at if they want to study in Bangkok.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 7:10 PM
Title: Re: Why did Theravadins leave the Sangha?
Content:
There are some accounts of the Second Council which report that it ended harmoniously There are others which report that it ended in a schism. There are none which report that it ended with any particular group leaving the sangha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 7:05 PM
Title: Re: Did Ananda attained Nirvana
Content:
The Cūḷavagga (Vin.ii.287) states that the mind of Ven. Ānanda was freed from the cankers when he was in a halfway posture. He cannot be said to have been standing because his feet had left the ground (bhūmito pādā muttā), but nor can he be said to have been lying down, for his head had not yet reached the pillow (appattaṃ sīsaṃ bibbohanaṃ).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 4:51 PM
Title: Re: Are we hypocrites?
Content:
I think there is a confusion here between the original sense of "hypocrite", which means people who pretend to have virtues or principles that they in fact lack (from the Greek ὑποκριτής an actor or pretender), and and a more recent colloquial sense where it means people who don't practise what they preach (even if they are perfectly sincere about what they preach).

SarathW appears to be using the word in its older sense and Schaublin in the more more recent one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 9:51 AM
Title: Re: The Pali Canon is Not Original, So What Shall We Do?
Content:
Kindly start a new thread if it's your wish to discuss the Theravada's view of Mahayanist buddha-manufacturing.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 9:37 AM
Title: Re: Fyodor Shcherbatskoy on Paticcasamuppada
Content:
is a statement about how dharmas were conceived in the Sarvastivada. Or at least it would be if you replaced 'qualities' with 'manifestations'.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 1:31 AM
Title: Re: Is fruition attainment found in the early suttas?
Content:
The practical description of entering the samāpatti is found only in the Visuddhimagga and commentaries.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 12:39 AM
Title: Re: Is fruition attainment found in the early suttas?
Content:
I don't think there is any teaching in detail. It is just mentioned in passing, usually under the names ariyavihāra and paṭisallīna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 8, 2015 12:19 AM
Title: Re: Martial Law in Thailand
Content:
Our children deserve education, not indoctrination
Every Thai government has failed to educate our children; they have always tried to indoctrinate them. The indoctrination of children and denying them the freedom to think critically is wholly irresponsible, and in my view, tantamount to child abuse and it must be stopped. This is why I think the argument by the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) and members of the Bangkok elite against real democracy and universal suffrage is totally disingenuous. Their stance basically rests on the notion that real democracy can't be applied to rural communities, because a democracy requires an informed citizenry to function properly, and communities outside of Bangkok have simply not been educated yet.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/520035/our-children-deserve-education-not-indoctrination


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 7, 2015 10:53 PM
Title: Re: How India is squandering its top export: The Buddha
Content:
It's true that the Hindus have made the Buddha into the ninth of the ten avatars of Viṣṇu, but he is not in fact held in particularly high regard. In fact he seems to be less revered by them than, say Matsya (Viṣṇu's incarnation as a fish), Kurma (his incarnation as a tortoise), or Varaha (his incarnation as a boar), as evidenced by the fact that whenever the Hindus decide to substitute a local deity like Jagannātha or Viṭhobā for one of the ten avatars, it is always the Buddha who gets dropped from the pantheon.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 7, 2015 12:36 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhammattha Sangaha
Content:
Either the term 'nibbāna' denotes an existing dhamma (as the Theravādins hold) or it is just a linguistic convention for a certain absence, i.e., the absence of attachment, aversion and delusion (as the Sautrāntikas held). Given the Theravāda's commitment to the notion of nibbāna as something that really exists, as opposed to being just a manner of speaking, it is quite proper that it be included among the paramattha dhammas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 7, 2015 7:58 AM
Title: Re: Theravada New Year
Content:
Although the first day of the month of Citta (Sanskrit: Caitra) does happen to be the start of a new year in the Theravada monastic calendar, it isn't celebrated in any way at all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 7, 2015 7:42 AM
Title: Re: What is a dhamma, according to the Sutta & Vinaya Pitakas?
Content:
Ettha ca te, mālukyaputta, diṭṭhasutamutaviññātabbesu dhammesu diṭṭhe diṭṭhamattaṃ bhavissati, sute sutamattaṃ bhavissati, mute mutamattaṃ bhavissati, viññāte viññātamattaṃ bhavissati.

“Here, Mālunkyaputta, regarding dhammas seen, heard, sensed, and cognized by you: in the seen there will be merely the seen; in the heard there will be merely the heard; in the sensed there will be merely the sensed; in the cognized there will be merely the cognized.” (SN.iv.73)


Iti kho, bhikkhave, tathāgato diṭṭhasutamutaviññātabbesu dhammesu tādīyeva tādī. Tamhā ca pana tādimhā añño tādī uttaritaro vā paṇītataro vā natthīti vadāmī’’ti.

“Thus, bhikkhus, being ever stable among dhammas seen, heard, sensed, and cognized, the Tathāgata is a stable one. And, I say, there is no stable one more excellent or sublime than that stable one.” (AN.ii.25)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 7, 2015 5:51 AM
Title: Re: We're (almost) all going to hell? (Question on Pansu Suttas: Dust)
Content:
I think what is related in this sutta is no less true of our own time. If it doesn't seem so, then it's probably because of the translator's rendering of vadha as "murder" (i.e. the unlawful killing of humans), though in fact the term means all intentional killing of living beings, including animals.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 6, 2015 5:02 PM
Title: Re: New work on Paticcasamuppada by Ven. Ñāṇananda
Content:
"I think we have to carefully consider the significance of conceives, and the absence of it in the noble adherent, with reference to the seen, heard, sensed, and cognised. It isn’t the information that is culprit to the pathway to suffering, rather it is the imaginings of conceives and ruminations of moves around/evolves etc. that the average person takes up with these."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 6, 2015 10:48 AM
Title: Re: Arahants and physical pain
Content:
Neither is okay by the rules. That's precisely why Ajahn Maha Boowa caused such a stir with his announcement.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 6, 2015 8:56 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhammattha Sangaha
Content:
Nibbāna in the Abhidhamma is the asaṅkhata-dhamma that is the ārammaṇa cognized by ariyan path-consciousnesses and fruition-consciousnesses. As such it is neither limited to, nor even identifiable with, either sa-upādisesa or anupādisesa Nibbāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 5, 2015 9:33 PM
Title: Re: Want a little explanation
Content:
.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel282.html

.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 5, 2015 11:39 AM
Title: Re: What is a dhamma, according to the Sutta & Vinaya Pitakas?
Content:
From the passage in Rupert Gethin’s “Path to Awakening” alluded to in the previous post (shorn of specifically abhidhammic content):

In Buddhist thought to take dhamma apart is, I think, to be left with dhammas. Dhamma-vicaya means, then, either the ‘discrimination of dhammas’ or the ‘discernment of dhamma’; to discriminate dhammas is precisely to discern dhamma.

The Pāriḷeyya-sutta is of some interest at this point. A bhikkhu raises the question of what kind of knowing and seeing gives rise to the immediate destruction of the āsavas. The Buddha responds:
Dhamma is taught by me, bhikkhus, by way of discrimination; the four establishings of mindfulness are taught by way of discrimination; the four right endeavours are taught by way of discrimination; the four bases of success are taught by way of discrimination; the five faculties are taught by way of discrimination; the five powers are taught by way of discrimination; the seven awakening-factors are taught by way of discrimination; the noble eight-factored path is taught by way of discrimination. Thus dhamma is taught by me by way of discrimination.
The Buddha then goes on to detail the twenty modes of what is elsewhere called the ‘view of individuality’ (sakkāya-diṭṭhi). In each case it is pointed out that the formation (saṃkhāra), the craving (taṇhā), the feeling (vedanā), the contact (phassa) and the ignorance (avijjā) which add up to the view of individuality are impermanent, put together, and arisen by way of conditions (aniccā saṃkhatā paṭicca-samuppannā). It is knowing and seeing this that gives rise to immediate destruction of the (āsavas).

The Sanskrit fragments of the Dharmaskandha preserve a parallel to this sutta presented as a quotation from the Pātaleya-vyākaraṇa. It presents a number of variations:
For the sake of discrimination of the five aggregates, bhikṣus, dharmas are taught by me to you, that is to say, the four establishings of mindfulness, the four right endeavours, the four bases of success, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven awakening-factors, the noble eight-factored path. 
With regard to dharmas taught by me to you, bhikṣus, for the sake of discrimination of the aggregates, some foolish persons dwell without strong purpose, without strong devotion, without strong affection, without strong delight. Slowly indeed do they contact excellence for the sake of destruction of the āśravas.
With regard to dharmas taught by me to you, bhikṣus, for the sake of discrimination of the aggregates, some sons of families dwell with very strong purpose, with very strong devotion, with very strong affection, with very strong delight. Quickly indeed do they contact excellence for the sake of destruction of the āśravas
The Sanskrit version goes on to discuss the various views of individuality in terms that closely parallel those of the Pāli version (though the phrase concerning the immediate destruction of the āśravas is not found). Both the Pāli and Sanskrit versions focus on the dharma taught by the Buddha as concerned with the discernment of the subtle operation of the view of individuality with regard to the five aggregates; both understand that this is achieved by way of the practice of the dharmas that constitute the seven sets. In other words, the Buddha’s teaching is concerned with the interaction of various groupings of dharmas that make up the dharma. Put simply, he teaches the discrimination of dharmas and the discernment of dharma.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 5, 2015 11:33 AM
Title: Re: What is a dhamma, according to the Sutta & Vinaya Pitakas?
Content:
An old post to Buddha-LISTSERV from Lance Cousins on dhamma and dhammas:

Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 14:59:54 EST
From: L S Cousins
Subject: Dhamma/dharma

Well, it has been quite interesting reading the considerable diversity of views on how to translate dharma. It is by the way in the latest Concise Oxford. The entry gives three meanings:

1. social custon; the right behaviour
2. the Buddhist truth
3. the Hindu social or moral law
[Skr., = decree, custom]

I won’t defend this!

I would however like to question the assumption of many that dhamma necessarily has distinct meanings in its major Buddhist (and Hindu?) usages. In two ways:

1. The more trivial is that it is, like many things in Indian literature, often used with quite intentional multiple meanings. This shows up in some of the passages that Richard [Hayes] has recently cited. Should we not suspect it much more often? (This is in addition to the fact that even narrowly defined it often crosses over the boundaries of the English terms we might choose to translate by. So for example the Buddhadharmas which have to be developed certainly include the body of 32 marks as well as mental qualities.)

2. Much more importantly, I want to argue that there are not in fact distinct and wholly separate meanings in such usages as the second refuge, the fourth establishing of mindfulness, dhamma prince, ‘dhammaness’ (dhammatā), dhamma eye and so on. I question whether, when in the Pali tradition we distinguish dhamma that you study (pariyatti) from dhamma that you practise (paṭipatti) and dhamma that is penetrated (in enlightenment) (paṭivedha), this refers to wholly different dhammas. Surely the difference is in the mode of approach not in Dhamma. Yes, the exegetes of North and South do make distinctions, but I suspect that this is for practical reasons. I suspect that they do not intend to wholly separate Dhamma from dhammas.

For Edward Conze (Buddhist Thought in India p.92 f.) in the Mahāyāna: “the very distinction between dharma and dharmas had to be abandoned.” The question for me is whether it was there to be abandoned. (See the discussion of this in Rupert Gethin’s The Buddhist Path to Awakening pp. 147-154).

It is difficult to establish this with certainty, but I would postulate that the plural usage actually originates with the Buddha or in early Buddhism. (It doesn’t seem to come from Jainism and the later occurrences in brahmanical sources are probably the result of Buddhist influence at some stage.) If so, why has the same word been used in such apparently different ways. Surely the simplest way of accounting for this is that in the Buddha’s understanding they are not so different. To keep Richard Hayes happy (or at least to reduce his dukkha), I shall refer to this as the Buddha’s ontology. In other words, in the early Buddhist ontology the Dhamma at large and multiple dhammas are one and the same kind of thing.

I suspect that this is an insight that most of the major schools of Buddhism preserved in one way or another.

What follows for translating? I would argue that if you translate dhamma/dharma separately, you are dividing what Buddhism has often sought to unite. And perhaps thereby falsifying the meaning? Moreover, in actual usage, at least for Ancient India and Southern Buddhism, there is the loss of an important quality which the word necessarily has if one frequently chants it in a devotional context. The best word I can find for that quality would be to speak of its numinosity. This perhaps slightly overstates the case, but in practice the key terms of Buddhism always have a quality which inspires an emotional response and often in practice one which is very moving. The actual value of Buddhist activities for, say the Buddhists of Ceylon or Thailand, often lies in the touch of awe which they associate with things Buddhist.

Lance Cousins


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 5, 2015 7:56 AM
Title: Re: What is a dhamma, according to the Sutta & Vinaya Pitakas?
Content:
The passage is translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi:
"mere poetry composed by poets, beautiful in words and phrases, created by outsiders, spoken by [their] disciples." 
His rendering of the part in bold accords with both the commentary and the Chinese Āgama parallel. The passage should not be understood (as some followers of Thanissaro's translation do) to be a warning against relying on the words of the Buddha's disciples, but rather the words of the disciples of outsiders.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 4, 2015 11:26 AM
Title: Re: Brahma Viharas=Door to liberation?
Content:
The venerable's comments are not about the article but rather Gombrich's "Kamma as a Reaction to Brahminism", one of the chapters in How Buddhism Began. They are perfectly fair and accurate as a statement of Gombrich's main contention about the brahmavihāras in that chapter.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 4, 2015 2:24 AM
Title: Re: Brahma Viharas=Door to liberation?
Content:
I haven't yet read What the Buddha Thought, where I gather Gombrich expounds his thesis in greater detail. The talk linked to in the OP adds little to what Gombrich said in How Buddhism Began and to me seems every bit as unsatisfactory. Perhaps in his more recent book there'll be a more convincing attempt to address the suttas mentioned by Bhikkhu Bodhi in his review of How Buddhism Began:

Gombrich locates the Buddha’s most radical departure from brahminism in his decision to make action or kamma rather than being the key to understanding existential reality. He stresses the revolutionary nature of the Buddha’s teaching on kamma, which he says “turned the brahmin ideology upside down and ethicized the universe,” thus marking “a turning point in the history of civilisation” (p. 51). Nevertheless, Gombrich carries his comparison between the two systems to an untenable conclusion. In an extended discussion of the Tevijja Sutta (DN No. 13) he contrasts the Buddha’s description of the four divine abodes (brahma-vihāra) as the “path to union with Brahmā” with the Upanishadic dictum that the way to attain brahman is through knowledge of the true self. This, he says, once again illustrates the distinction between the ethical standpoint of Buddhism and the ontological orientation of brahminism. 

So far, so good. But Gombrich then goes on to argue that for the Buddha “union with Brahmā” is simply a metaphor for Nibbāna, and thus he concludes “the Buddha taught that kindness ... was a way to salvation” (p. 62). Such an inference, however, cannot stand, for in many texts the Buddha declares the divine abodes to be inadequate for attaining Nibbāna (e.g. DN 17, MN 83, MN 97, etc.); it would also mean that paññā, insight or wisdom, is not needed for final liberation. Gombrich is not unaware of the texts that contradict his position, but he casually dismisses them as the work of “the compilers of other suttas” (p. 61). The contrary evidence, however, is just too weighty to allow such an easy way out.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 3, 2015 11:39 PM
Title: Re: What is the Kamma relate to gender differentiation?
Content:
That isn’t what I said. The propitious circumstances of your birth would no doubt be attributed to the ripening of kusala kamma. My post, however, wasn’t concerned with persons at all, but only with the abhidhammic account of two kinds of kamma-originated rūpa: the male-faculty and female-faculty.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 3, 2015 8:21 PM
Title: Re: What is the Kamma relate to gender differentiation?
Content:
As far as I know it is only in these texts that the OP's question is addressed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 3, 2015 1:31 PM
Title: Re: What is the Kamma relate to gender differentiation?
Content:
Buddhaghosa's account of the gender faculties is on pages 419-21 of volume II of The Expositor, Pe Maung Tin's translation of the Atthasālinī. This text is available here:

http://libgen.org/get.php?md5=0b1aa7d215e2d27560056112c21223b6


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 3, 2015 9:58 AM
Title: Re: What is the Kamma relate to gender differentiation?
Content:
What is being asserted is the superiority of the indriya, not the person.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 3, 2015 1:59 AM
Title: Re: Buddhism as "religion"
Content:
Would I be right in thinking that you have never actually tried this yourself? Have you, for example, ever tried asking Bangkok Thais why it is that on certain days of the year they like to offer pigs' heads to the Emerald Buddha at Wat Phra Kaew? Or why they transfer merit to living humans (King Bhumibol, for example) when the Pali texts say that only hungry ghosts can benefit from this? Or why at a Chiang Mai funeral the village headman will knock three times on the coffin before the monks start to chant? Or why at the same occasion the monks will always chant the Abhidhamma mātikā to help the deceased to a good rebirth, even though according to the Abhidhamma this would be pointless because the deceased was already instantaneously reborn immediately after his death?

If you were to try asking such questions as these, you would very seldom get anything like "a reasoned response". The commonest answers would be along the lines of: "Here in Thailand this is just what we do," or "It's our culture to do it like this," or "I do it like this because it's what my granny used to do."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 3, 2015 1:41 AM
Title: Re: Is it right to get ordained and let your cats behind.
Content:
It's an Occam's razor thing and as such is a matter of probability rather than certain knowledge. The most parsimonious ethological explanation for all the characteristic actions of domestic cats is in terms of habituation, sensitization, classical and operant conditioning, etc. And so when some sentimental anthropomorphising cat-owner insists on attributing such and such behaviour of his pet to "love", he is guilty of multiplying entities beyond necessity


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 2, 2015 5:47 PM
Title: Re: What is the Kamma relate to gender differentiation?
Content:
According to the Abhidhamma the sex-determining faculties of both sexes are produced by wholesome kamma. But where the wholesomeness is strong a male faculty will be produced, and where it is weak, a female one.

Imesu pana dvīsu purisaliṅgaṃ uttamaṃ, itthiliṅgaṃ hīnaṃ. Tasmā purisaliṅgaṃ balavaakusalena antaradhāyati, itthiliṅgaṃ dubbalakusalena patiṭṭhāti. Itthiliṅgaṃ pana antaradhāyantaṃ dubbalaakusalena antaradhāyati, purisaliṅgaṃ balavakusalena patiṭṭhāti. Evaṃ ubhayampi akusalena antaradhāyati, kusalena patiṭṭhātīti veditabbaṃ.

“Of these two [sex-determining faculties] the male is superior, the female is inferior. Therefore the male faculty is made to disappear by strong unwholesomeness, while the female faculty is brought about by weak wholesomeness. However, in disappearing the female faculty does so by weak unwholesomeness. The male faculty is brought about by strong wholesomeness. Thus it should be known that both disappear through unwholesomeness and are brought about by wholesomeness.”
(DhsA. 322; Expositor II. 420)
To summarise:

Strong kusala kamma generates the male controlling faculty (purisindriya).
Weak kusala kamma generates the female controlling faculty (itthindriya).
Strong akusala kamma causes the male controlling faculty to disappear.
Weak akusala kamma causes the female controlling faculty to disappear.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 2, 2015 9:21 AM
Title: Re: There is nothing either good or bad ...
Content:
I think that it’s hyperbole. If Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern had called upon Hamlet to define his terms and then subjected them to critical analysis, I’m sure the Prince would have eventually found it necessary to formulate his contention in a more moderate form, perhaps as:
“There are a fairly significant number of things that are arguably neither good or bad, notwithstanding the fact that thinking may lead to their being perceived as one or the other.”
But this more laboured sentence probably wouldn’t have ended up in any anthology of quotations.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 2, 2015 7:45 AM
Title: Re: Is it right to get ordained and let your cats behind.
Content:
Not at all. At most he might show a loss of appetite for a few days if your ex were to feed him with a different brand of cat food and he might be ill at ease if he discovered that his fetching ways didn't have the same effect upon her as they do upon you. But within a week or two he will have completely adapted to his new territory and his new human slave.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 1, 2015 8:54 PM
Title: Re: The question of gender and preference in mixed-gender retreats
Content:
Since what the Goenka people are offering is dhammadāna (i.e. their courses are entirely free), I wouldn't presume to offer them unsolicited advice on what form their gift should take.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 1, 2015 6:58 PM
Title: Re: The question of gender and preference in mixed-gender retreats
Content:
Ben, or one of the other Goenka practitioners here, would be in a better position to answer this question. The rationale for sexual segregation actually varies from one tradition to another. It's true that avoiding distraction is a fairly common one, but not myself being a practitioner in the U Ba Khin tradition I don't know whether this is their reason, and if it is, whether it's their sole reason.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 1, 2015 3:44 PM
Title: Re: The question of gender and preference in mixed-gender retreats
Content:
Your question assumes that Koulla Roussos is actually making a good point. But it seems to me that her point is based on the mistaken assumption that Buddhist enlightenment (which is what the Goenka people are concerned with) is the same as the European intellectual and social developments in the 17th and 18th centuries, which also go by the name ‘enlightenment’.

The ‘answer’, therefore, is that the Goenka people should help Koulla Roussos to understand that she’s barking up the wrong tree. If, after the matter has been clarified, the woman should insist on pressing her narcissistic identarian demands, then I suggest the Goenka people take a leaf out of the late Andrew Breitbart’s playbook:

Andrew was straight and pro-gay—but more than anything he hated identity politics ... If someone went up to Andrew and declared that he/she was proud to be a transgendered sex worker activist with dyslexia, he would say, “So?”

As Gavin McInnes has pointed out, “So?” was Andrew’s simplest and most cogent retort to the angry tolerance merchant. And one that usually left the ranters in sputtering silence.

(from Greg Gutfeld’s The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in an Age of Phony Outrage)
https://www.amazon.com/The-Joy-Hate-Triumph-Whiners/dp/0307986985


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 1, 2015 10:31 AM
Title: Re: What about sotapanna/Sakadagami in meditation?
Content:
It's possible that the monk wasn't making a general pronouncement about Buddhist doctrine but merely describing the way things are done in Mahasi-style centres. Usually in these centres the intensive practice of samatha bhāvanā with jhāna as its aim is taught only to those who are believed to have already made decisive progress in vipassanā bhāvanā. In some centres this will mean sotāpatti, in others the lower attainment of maggāmaggañāṇadassanavisuddhi.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 31, 2015 6:35 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Mahâ Chatchai - Metta Meditation
Content:
It's Wat Pleng in Thonburi. Inconveniently there happen to be two wats of this name in Thonburi. One has the full name Wat Pleng Vipassana and is quite famous as its late abbot, Ajahn Praderm, was a highly regarded Abhidhamma teacher. The other is a small obscure wat that nobody has ever heard of. The latter, I'm afraid, is the one that you want.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 31, 2015 4:15 PM
Title: Re: Arahants and physical pain
Content:
There are two relevant rules. Firstly, the fourth pārājika, which prohibits false declarations of superhuman states):

http://pratyeka.org/a2i/lib/authors/thanissaro/bmc1/bmc1.ch04.html

And secondly, the 8th pācittiya, which prohibits a monk telling unordained people about any superhuman states he may have attained:

http://pratyeka.org/a2i/lib/authors/thanissaro/bmc1/bmc1.ch08-1.html

In a nutshell: to his fellow monastics (both monks and nuns) a monk is free to disclose what he believes he has attained. To a non-monastic he can say nothing; if he does so (as in Maha Boowa's case) then he commits a pācittiya offence.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 31, 2015 2:26 PM
Title: Re: Arahants and physical pain
Content:
Setting aside Ajahn Maha Boowa and replying generally...

A Buddhist monk's attainment of an exalted state is not something he is permitted to announce to the general public, let alone try to convince them of it by performing some kind of demonstration. The monastic rules permit him to declare his attainment only to fellow monastics.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 31, 2015 9:53 AM
Title: Re: Acess to insight - Advertising?
Content:
I don't get any adverts at all, not even when I use an old browser with no ad-blocker.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 31, 2015 9:47 AM
Title: Re: Buddha seems to bring tranquility to Oakland neighborhood
Content:
I'm sorry to hear that it was full of garbage, but I don't think the Kew Gardens pagoda was ever conceived as a place of worship. It was built in the mid-18th century by Sir William Chambers, a designer who happened to be an admirer of Chinese architecture and garden design, and whose good fortune it was to have a sponsor — the Dowager Princess of Wales — who was willing to indulge his enthusiasms. Other than an object of beauty and a viewing platform, the only practical purpose the pagoda has ever served was as a place for the drop-testing of model bombs in the Second World War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chambers_%28architect%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Augusta_of_Saxe-Gotha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 30, 2015 9:58 AM
Title: Re: Buddha seems to bring tranquility to Oakland neighborhood
Content:
Perhaps there is something in the Oakland air that imbues its inhabitants with a heightened iconophilic sensitivity, causing them to look upon the buddharupa as an hypostasis rather than anabolically constituted. Though a statue probably can't do much at all, there's no telling what people's view of a statue may do.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 30, 2015 9:19 AM
Title: Re: The hell guards?
Content:
The idea that the nirayapālas are phantoms generated by the evil kamma of hell's inmates was entertained by some early Buddhists but rejected by the Theravadins at the Third Council (Kvu. 956-8). 

From Points of Controversy:



Nirayapalakatha.png (486.94 KiB) Viewed 3277 times


B.C. Law has mistranslated paragraph 3. His translation presents it as the Theravadin's argument, though it's actually the heretic's counter-argument. Replace 'Moreover...' with 'But...', and "Hence there are guards..." with 'Hence there are no guards...'


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 30, 2015 8:43 AM
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Yes, I wasn't denying that all consciousness is dependently-originated, but the idea that it's all originated by kamma.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 30, 2015 2:53 AM
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
In the only sutta where the term is found, 'old kamma' means the six bases.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:55 AM
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
I think it might be said that Lazarus is functionally the same as a zombie. As I understand it, a Haitian sorcerer's purpose in creating a zombie is to arouse in people a conviction as to his necromantic powers. In the Gospel of John, that's more or less Jesus's stated reason for wanting to raise Lazarus from the dead:
"When Jesus heard [of Lazarus's sickness], he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." (John 11:4)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:41 AM
Title: Re: How to stop wet dreams?
Content:
The Vinaya prohibition in the first saṅghādisesa rule is against the deliberate emission of semen, with the Buddha explicitly ruling that nocturnal emissions are no offence under this training rule (Vin. iii. 112). The problem with the prohibited action is, firstly, that it's an intensely pleasurable indulgence that conduces to the increase of the hindrance of kāmacchanda, thereby impeding success in both calm and insight development; secondly, it reinforces the latent tendency to kāmarāga; thirdly, in the case of one gone forth, it's dishonourable to be indulging in such a thing when you're living on the offerings of the faithful. As the Buddha said to Seyyasaka, the first wanking monk: "But do you, reverend Seyyasaka, eat the gifts of the faithful with the very same hand as that which you use to emit semen?" (Vin. iii. 110; = Book of the Discipline. I. 193)

So, at least in the Theravada, the first saṅghādisesa rule is not explained as having anything to do with supposed harms resulting from loss of semen, displaced energies, unbalanced humours, wind outflows from the groin, or any other tantric or yogic notions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 29, 2015 6:22 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
I don’t think so. My experience has been that those who follow a teacher out of faith in his supposed supernormal powers tend to be invincibly stupid people who are swayed far more by their own projections than by any evidence one might present them with.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 29, 2015 4:38 AM
Title: Re: How to stop wet dreams?
Content:
There is no need to do anything special, for nocturnal emissions are morally inconsequential and amount to a stain on the brahmacariyā only in cases where a man, before going to sleep, has deliberately taken measures calculated to increase the likelihood of his having one.

As this is the ethics subforum, I suggest you familiarize yourself with what the Buddha himself taught about the ethics of a Buddhist brahmacarī/brahmacarinī and disregard notions derived from outside systems (e.g. most of the stuff in ihrjordan's post). Having abandoned sexual intercourse and masturbation, the further refinement of the Buddhist brahmacariyā consists chiefly in restraint of the sense-doors and in the seven abstentions outlined in the Methuna Sutta (AN. iv. 53-6):
Methuna Sutta


Then the brahmin Jāṇussoṇī approached the Blessed One and exchanged greetings with him … and said to him:

“Does Master Gotama also claim to be one who lives the celibate life?”

“If, brahmin, one could rightly say of anyone: ‘He lives the complete and pure celibate life—unbroken, flawless, unblemished, unblotched,’ it is precisely of me that one might say this. For I live the complete and pure celibate life—unbroken, flawless, unblemished, unblotched.”

“But what, Master Gotama, is a breach, flaw, blemish, and blotch of the celibate life?”

(1) “Here, brahmin, some ascetic or brahmin, claiming to be perfectly celibate, does not actually engage in intercourse with women. But he consents to being rubbed, massaged, bathed, and kneaded by them. He relishes this, desires it, and finds satisfaction in it. This is a breach, flaw, blemish, and blotch of the celibate life. He is called one who lives an impure celibate life, one who is fettered by the bond of sexuality. He is not freed from birth, from old age and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and anguish; he is not freed from suffering, I say.

(2) “Again, some ascetic or brahmin, claiming to be perfectly celibate, does not actually engage in intercourse with women; nor does he consent to being rubbed, massaged, bathed, and kneaded by them. But he jokes with women, plays with them, and amuses himself with them….

(3) “… he does not joke with women, play with them, and amuse himself with them … but he gazes and stares straight into their eyes….

(4) “… he does not gaze and stare straight into women’s eyes … but he listens to their voices behind a wall or through a rampart as they laugh, talk, sing, or weep….

(5) “… he does not listen to the voices of women behind a wall or through a rampart as they laugh, talk, sing, or weep … but he recollects laughing, talking, and playing with them in the past….

(6) “… he does not recollect laughing, talking, and playing with women in the past … but he looks at a householder or a householder’s son enjoying himself furnished and endowed with the five objects of sensual pleasure….

(7) “… he does not look at a householder or a householder’s son enjoying himself furnished and endowed with the five objects of sensual pleasure, but he lives the spiritual life aspiring for [rebirth in] a certain order of devas, [thinking]: ‘By this virtuous behavior, observance, austerity, or spiritual life I will be a deva or one [in the retinue] of the devas.’ He relishes this, desires it, and finds satisfaction in it. This, too, is a breach, flaw, blemish, and blotch of the celibate life. He is called one who lives an impure celibate life, one who is fettered by the bond of sexuality. He is not freed from birth, from old age and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and anguish; he is not freed from suffering, I say.

“So long, brahmin, as I saw that I had not abandoned one or another of these seven bonds of sexuality, I did not claim to have awakened to the unsurpassed perfect enlightenment in the world with its devas, Māra, and Brahmā, in this population with its ascetics and brahmins, its devas and humans. But when I did not see even one of these seven bonds of sexuality that I had not abandoned, then I claimed to have awakened to the unsurpassed perfect enlightenment in this world with … its devas and humans.

“The knowledge and vision arose in me: ‘Unshakable is my liberation of mind; this is my last birth; now there is no more renewed existence.’”

When this was said, the brahmin Jāṇussoṇī said to the Blessed One: “Excellent, Master Gotama! … Let Master Gotama consider me a lay follower who from today has gone for refuge for life.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 29, 2015 3:34 AM
Title: Re: Wat Dhammakaya
Content:
Thanks, bhante.

I see that the fellow with the Union Jack is carrying it upside down, with the white of St. Andrew below the red of St. Patrick in the upper hoist canton. Perhaps a distress signal to the UFO mothership?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 28, 2015 2:47 PM
Title: Re: Early Buddhism resources
Content:
Given the portentous title, one would have thought that the author must surely be Robert Ludlum. But no, apparently it's a certain Susan Carol Stone:
About the Author

"Susan Stone, Ph.D., is author of "At the Eleventh Hour; Caring for My Dying Mother" (Present Perfect Books, 2001), a memoir on mindfulness and caregiving, which was nominated for "ForeWord Magazine’s" Book of the Year award in 2001. Authors Stephen and Ondrea Levine called the book “an exquisite exploration of the heart.” She is also co-author of "The American Mosaic" (McGraw Hill, 1995), a research study on workforce diversity, and is author of articles on mindfulness. "The Kosambi Intrigue" is her first novel. Susan has meditated for almost 30 years, has lived in monasteries for 3 years and has received mindfulness training from nationally recognized teachers. She teaches Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction at the University of Virginia, and she co-leads the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville, a weekly mindfulness meditation group. She has taught mindfulness to middle-school students; founded and taught weekly mindfulness groups in men’s and women’s maximum-security prisons; and is a co-founder of the Blue Ridge Prison Project. She was on the staff of the Being with Dying program at Upaya in Santa Fe NM for two years. Susan leads mindfulness workshops, classes and retreats around the country. She was a hospice volunteer and is a Reiki master who has worked with AIDS patients."


"When a trivial incident sparks conflict in a Buddhist monastery, a young monk named Sati is embroiled in a plot that reaches all the way to the palace and inflames the city of Kosambi."


The story was published in 2012, but with no sequels or further efforts in the same genre. Isn't it odd that Dr. Stone has stopped at just one? One would have thought there'd be a great market for Sutta-inspired novels with Ludlumesque titles...

Nanda Sutta: The Dove-footed Nymph Ultimatum
Kūṭadanta Sutta: The Snaggle-tooth Inheritance
Lakkhaṇa Sutta: The Thirty-two Mark Identity
Kevaḍḍha Sutta: The Miracle Contenders
Tevijja Sutta: The Brahma Affair
Aggañña Sutta: The Abhassara Regression
Sigalovāda Sutta: The Six-Directioned Directive
Kālāma Sutta: The Misquoted Protocol
Sedaka Sutta: The Pole-Climbers' Compact
Aṅgulimāla Sutta: The Finger-Collecting Imperative


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 28, 2015 9:33 AM
Title: Re: Wat Dhammakaya
Content:
Bhante,

Would you happen to know what's the commoner outcome in these situations: the destruction of the marriage or the wife coming to her senses and leaving the Dhammakaya outfit? (I'm optimistically assuming that a third scenario —the husband's conversion— never happens).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 28, 2015 8:52 AM
Title: Re: anti/Natalism
Content:
It might be better to precipitate your thoughts, taking what's solid in anti-natalism and letting the watery remainder trickle away.

In my view you err in valuing these guys for their conclusions, which are ucchedavādin and in the light of mundane right view simply untenable. I like the writings of David Benatar, and love the anti-natalist poetry of James Crawford, but in both cases it seems to me that what’s valuable are not the conclusions, but the graphic, haunting and saṃvega-arousing delineation of the premises.

Terra Infirmity

A craft, a calling, a work of art;
achieving, at best, a qualified immortality.
For, as we all know,
the world will one day fly apart.

What, then? Might there be more?
Launching electronically reproduced masterpieces
off toward the universe's dark horizon,
ere the temporal waves engulf this receding shore?

But, what of heat death?
That imagined, far-flung day
when the cold corpse of the cosmos
sighs its last breath?

Nowhere to drop anchor after nullity's deluge — or, is there?
From out of the heart of the silent aftermath,
there shines forth a beacon; an eye of spectral fire
beckoning us to hope's final refuge:

to a testament wrought in the hardest stone,
in the infinite halls of the maximal museum —
God's memory, where all is reclaimed,
and not alone.
— James Crawford


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 28, 2015 1:00 AM
Title: Re: Early Buddhism resources
Content:
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/get.php?doi=10.1016%2F0048-721x%2892%2990022-v and comprehensively trashed by Steven Collins.

Wiltshire’s attempted http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/get.php?doi=10.1006%2Freli.1993.1022 to Collins.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 27, 2015 12:12 PM
Title: Re: the great vegetarian debate
Content:
Since 'prick' is slang for a stupid or contemptible man, "being a self-righteous prick" has an obvious gender limitation that wouldn't apply to "being judgmental", which is possible for women too. Moreover, "being self-righteous" means enjoying certainty (especially an unfounded certainty) as to one's moral correctness or moral superiority, while "being judgemental" means being overly, and perhaps captiously, critical of others' perceived moral failings. Clearly it's possible to be one without being the other, for though the former nearly always generates the latter, the latter doesn't have the former as its only possible cause. 

That being so, a meat-eater who encounters judgmental vegetarians and perceives them to be self-righteous pricks (or c***s, as the case may be), may be right to do so, but not infallibly so.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 27, 2015 9:36 AM
Title: Re: Siddartha and Old Path White Clouds
Content:
You might enjoy The Recorded Sayings of Layman P’ang: compiled by Imperial Commissioner Yu Ti translated by Stephen Green.
One day Shih-t’ou said, “I’ve come to visit you. What have you been doing?”
The Layman said, “If you’re asking what I do every day, there’s nothing to say about it.”
Shih-t’ou said, “What did you think you were doing before I asked you about it?”
The Layman made up a verse:

What I do every day
Is nothing special:
I simply stumble around.
What I do is not thought out,
Where I go is unplanned.
No matter who tries to leave their mark,
The hills and dales are not impressed.
Collecting firewood and carrying water
Are prayers that reach the gods.

Shih-t'ou approved, saying, “So, are you going to wear black or white?
The Layman said, ''I will do whatever is best.”

It came to pass that he never shaved his head to join the sangha.
https://www.amazon.com/The-Sayings-Layman-Pang-Classic/dp/1590306309

An account of P’ang from Thomas Hoover’s The Zen Experience:


 ./download/file.php?id=2526
(118.82 KiB) Downloaded 38 times


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layman_Pang


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 27, 2015 2:00 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
I don’t think so. There wouldn’t be much point since guilt in connection with the fourth defeating offence can only be established by confession. No matter how audacious and extravagant a monk’s claims may be, if he’s confronted over them and shown that they can’t possibly be true, he can always claim that he mistakenly over-estimated himself and then he’s immediately off the hook.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 10:36 PM
Title: Re: anti/Natalism
Content:
Which anyone possessed of right view will assume to be the case.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:07 PM
Title: Re: Beginning yoga?
Content:
Same here. I learned Iyengar's standing postures over twenty years ago and they, together with long walks and the 11-minute-a-day http://www.workoutoftheweek.net/2011/02/royal-canadian-air-force-exercise-plan.html, taught to me by a Canadian bhikkhu, have been my sole form of exercise ever since. 

Thanks to the Iyengar routine I've been entirely free of back troubles throughout this time, while the RCAF workout leaves me fit and agile enough to pilot a CF-18 Hornet fighter jet or almost anything else in the Canadian aerial armoury (not that I'd actually want to do this, but if I did the Canadians would judge me fit enough for it).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 12:00 PM
Title: Re: anti/Natalism
Content:
Since it is one's own craving for existence that is the cause for one's coming into existence, coming into existence is a harm only in the sense that kicking oneself is a harm. Those who beget you, merely by having begotten you, cannot be said to have harmed you. On the contrary, they've done you a service by providing you with that form of existence —a human one— that is optimal for putting an end to existence.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 11:38 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Hi Kalama,

It isn’t that there’s any Vinaya issue, but that I have occasionally in the past voiced scorn for certain forest monks who like to rabbit on about their teachers’ supernormal powers. It’s my cynical belief that they do this largely for self-aggrandisement, i.e. to drop hints to their audience that they too might have such powers. So, having scorned the practice I felt hesitant to do the same myself.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 11:37 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
T., a rascally teenage American samanera in a kuti near to mine, was whittling a piece of wood the wrong way, drawing the knife towards his body rather than away from it. I showed him how to do it properly, but he was a know-all and didn’t like taking orders, so as soon I was out of sight he went back to his former way of doing it. At one point the knife stuck fast in the wood and the samanera continued to press the blade forward instead of pulling it back. I then heard a loud scream coming from his hut. When I went to investigate I saw that his inept craftsmanship had resulted in a deep, 5-inch long wound in the forearm, with probably one or two tubes severed to judge from the fountain of blood that was spurting out. I staunched the bleeding with a tourniquet and then requested permission to take the samanera to hospital to get him stitched up. Permission was denied. The abbot said that no stitches were necessary and he would deal with it himself. He then took hold of T’s arm and spent the next quarter of an hour chanting the Bojjhaṅgaparitta, the Rājato, and an abridged version of the northern Thai Seub Jātā paritta cycle, occasionally pausing to blow on the samanera’s arm. When he’d finished and the tourniquet was removed the bleeding had stopped. When the blood was washed away there was no longer a wound on the arm at all. Where the wound had been there was now just collagenous scar tissue that bore a faded look as if the injury had happened years before.

This is probably the most persuasive example I can think of, inasmuch as it involves something that cannot very plausibly be explained away as a placebo effect, especially considering that the impetuous young American was anxious to get to the hospital and throughout the chanting kept glancing at the clock, rolling his eyes and clenching his fists in exasperation. And so it was palpably clear that he had no confidence whatever in the paritta’s or the abbot’s power to heal him.

Incidentally, some might think that this occurrence calls into question the Milindapañha’s statement that the efficacy of parittas is impeded by obstructive past kamma, by mental defilement and by disbelief, for in this case the paritta seems to have worked even though it was quite obvious that the samanera was both unbelieving and afflicted with defilement. However Nāgasena’s discussion of parittas seems to be concerned only with their use in averting imminent death, so perhaps there is no contradiction.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 10:58 AM
Title: Re: anti/Natalism
Content:
On the basis of what criteria? I mean is it upon Buddhist ethical presuppositions that you make this judgment or upon something else?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 10:35 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist abbots expelled from monkhood after drinking binge
Content:
I shan’t myself be doing anything in that regard. My approach to the corrupt and nonsensical aspects of Buddhism in Thailand is a strictly quietistic one. That is, I just stay well away from it all and tend my own garden.

But even if I wished to do something, I think the most that could be accomplished would be to found a monastery where no monk has any office or title other than those which the Vinaya permits. But as for changing the whole system, this is out of the question for western monks in Thailand. We live here more or less on sufferance and are not taken in the least seriously. Recall, for example, the meeting between Ajahn Brahmavamso and the elders of the Ajahn Chah monasteries on the bhikkhuni ordination controversy; when Brahm attempted to make the meeting about Vinaya he was curtly told to stop trying to teach his granny to suck eggs.

But though western monks in Thailand could hardly propose the abolition of the office of abbot and expect to even receive a sympathetic hearing, let alone have the proposal accepted and acted upon, might a Thai monk do so? I don’t know the answer to that, but I observe that even the most radical of the native sangha reformers don’t in fact go that far. They don’t even go so far as to propose the less radical step of abolishing the royally granted ecclesiastical titles and hierarchical administrative offices, presumably because to do so would be to venture into lese majesté territory. Even Phra Paisal Visalo, for example, has only called for the replacement of the Sangha Council with some more efficient mechanism. The idea of doing away with all centralised bureaucratic mechanisms and returning to a wholly localised grassroots Buddhism seems too much even for him.

Yet such a return to village-level governance probably would be the most effective solution to problems like those in the OP. Not so long ago I was talking to a Chiang Mai peasant woman in her late nineties who told me of how they used to deal with bad monks when she was a girl. Apparently it was very much a skimmington ride approach, in which the villagers would first tear the robes off the errant monk’s back and then drive him out of the village, while blowing hornpipes and beating him with sticks.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:58 AM
Title: Re: anti/Natalism
Content:
My first thought is that there seem to be at least two other possible views beside those you mention:

3. That bringing new life into existence is in some cases morally defensible and in other cases not.
4. That bringing new life into existence is something of a moral mixed bag; in Buddhist terms, "dark and bright kamma with a dark and bright ripening."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:41 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist abbots expelled from monkhood after drinking binge
Content:
The "corrupted machine" would presumably be everyone who connived at helping the monks obtain their booze and then turned a blind eye to their drinking and its effects upon them. Out in the sticks this might well mean virtually everybody in the surrounding tambon. Shocking as it may be to some, a long-term alcoholic monk who's "a bit of a character" will in rural Thailand often find himself regarded in a rather affectionate way, somewhat reminiscent of the Catholic monks' attitude toward Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited:

“Poor Sebastian!” I said. “It’s too pitiful. How will it end?”

“I think I can tell you exactly, Charles. I’ve seen others like him, and I believe they are very near and dear to God. He’ll live on, half in, half out of, the community, a familiar figure pottering round with his broom and his bunch of keys. He’ll be a great favourite with the old fathers, something of a joke to the novices. Everyone will know about his drinking; he’ll disappear for two or three days every month or so, and they’ll all nod and smile and say in their various accents, "Old Sebastian’s on the spree again," and then he’ll come back dishevelled and shamefaced and be more devout for a day or two in the chapel. He’ll probably have little hiding places about the garden where he keeps a bottle and takes a swig now and then on the sly. They’ll bring him forward to act as guide, whenever they have an English speaking visitor, and he will be completely charming so that before they go, they’ll ask about him and perhaps be given a hint that he has high connections at home. If he lives long enough, generations of missionaries in all kinds of remote places will think of him as a queer old character who was somehow part of the Home of their student days, and remember him in their masses. He’ll develop little eccentricities of devotion, intense personal cults of his own; he’ll be found in the chapel at odd times and missed when he’s expected. Then one morning, after one of his drinking bouts, he’ll be picked up at the gate dying, and show by a mere flicker of the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments. It’s not such a bad way of getting through one’s life.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 25, 2015 1:59 PM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
That conformity with fact is what makes a right view right seems to be indicated in the Apaṇṇaka Sutta:
"Since there actually is another world, one who holds the view ‘there is another world’ has right view."
https://suttacentral.net/en/mn60


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:26 AM
Title: Re: Siddartha and Old Path White Clouds
Content:
Old Path White Clouds is Thich Nhat Hanh's biography of the Buddha. I think you may be confusing it with The Way of the White Clouds, Lama Govinda's Tibetan travelogue.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 25, 2015 1:56 AM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
I suggest you re-read my post, only this time give a little thought to the implications of the phrase "per se" and the following sentence in bold that you omitted to quote:
I can't conceive how right view per se could ever be detrimental. I can imagine it being detrimental only in conjunction with certain other factors.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 25, 2015 1:38 AM
Title: Re: Vanilla extract
Content:
You will find here a lengthy thread on the subject of cooking with alcohol:

http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=20428


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 25, 2015 1:30 AM
Title: Re: Lance Cousins, RIP
Content:
Lance with his teacher Nai Boonman (formerly Phra Puññadhīro)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 25, 2015 1:27 AM
Title: Re: Lance Cousins, RIP
Content:
A tribute page on the website of the Samatha Trust:
http://www.samatha.org/lance-cousins


A collection of Lance Cousins' articles:
https://oxford.academia.edu/LSCousins


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 25, 2015 1:22 AM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
I see. If a person supposes that merely by her possession of mundane right view she would be led all the way to Nibbāna, then we can say that she greatly over-estimates the view's potential. She would presumably be unaware that this level of right view is sāsavā puññabhāgiyā upadhivepakkā ("affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions [of becoming]") and therefore by definition not a view that leads out of the round of becoming.

Whether such a misunderstanding would be correctly termed "misapprehension of virtue and vowed observances" (my preferred translation of sīlabbata-parāmāsa) is another question. I wasn't aware that the scope of this term included views. The commonest Sutta definition describes it as thinking: “By this virtue or vowed observance or austerity or holy life I ... [shall achieve such and such].” (Imināhaṃ sīlena vā vatena vā tapena vā brahmacariyena...). So although the scope of misapprehended activities is rather broader than just "rites and rituals" it doesn't appear to include views.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:50 PM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
I can't conceive how right view per se could ever be detrimental. I can imagine it being detrimental only in conjunction with certain other factors. For example, the claims of spiritual charlatans are likely to be given short shrift by hardheaded materialists but may meet with a readier reception from those who accept kamma, the afterlife, etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 24, 2015 10:45 AM
Title: Re: A curious comment on good and bad rebirths in AN III 371
Content:
The Pali says that when Sunetta taught his Dhamma, the minds of some were pleased/faithful (cittāni pasādesuṃ) and the minds of others were not. The implication of this is that the former accepted his teachings and the latter did not. And so in effect the Sutta does say that "those with virtue went to heaven" because arriving at right view —even when it's only the limited right view of a non-ariyan teaching— is a virtuous act.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 24, 2015 8:59 AM
Title: Re: A curious comment on good and bad rebirths in AN III 371
Content:
It is in part affected by culture, inasmuch as right and wrong view are unequally present in the lore of different nations.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:35 AM
Title: Re: Dhammakaya Cartoons: My Guilty Pleasure
Content:
“I wish for someone within me to love
To think of every day.
I love the person within me
I desperately need this person.”

The farcical aquatic teddy boy is serenading his inner homunculus, and you think it turns out all right?!?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:03 AM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
Sorry, it’s time for almsround now.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 24, 2015 5:50 AM
Title: Re: Emptiness VS Mindfulness ?
Content:
It isn't.

In Sister Upalavaṇṇā's translation only the word paṭicca is missing. Manasikaroti ekattaṃ is translated as "attends to the single".

In Ajahn Thanissaro's translation nothing is missing. Paṭicca is translated as "based on". Manasikaroti ekattaṃ is translated as "attends to the singleness ".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:05 AM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
The view that there is a next world would be one item in the tenfold right view that I quoted above.

However, though it's correct to say that right view is a third part of good mental conduct, it would be a solecism to say that belief in a next world is a tenth part of right view. The former statement is acceptable inasmuch as the three components of good mental conduct —non-covetousness, non ill-will and right view— comprise three distinct mental factors: alobha, adosa and paññā.

By contrast, all ten right views amount to the occurrence of just one mental factor: paññā. And so an occurrence of the right view that there is a mother is not a different kind of mental event from an occurrence of the right view regarding the efficacy of giving. Both events consist in the arising of paññā-cetasika in the mode of right view.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 23, 2015 11:58 PM
Title: Re: hi all! are there some ladies in the house?
Content:
Hi Cara,

Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.

 

In answer to your query, yes there are some ladies in the house, though at present it seems only four of them post with any regularity.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 23, 2015 11:50 PM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
Throughout the Suttas “good mental conduct” is defined as, “anabhijjhā, abyāpāda, sammādiṭṭhi,” — “non-covetousness, non-ill will and right view.” Therefore even the most virtuous of annihilationists — an annihilationist who is able to persuade herself to live skilfully with respect to good bodily conduct and good verbal conduct — will still, by definition, be shunning a third part of good mental conduct and adopting and practising a third part of bad mental conduct.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 23, 2015 9:08 AM
Title: Re: Help finding a Sutta
Content:
Sorry, I was writing very late last night and this instruction isn't correct, but conflates the two citation systems. Just do as Zom suggests.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:33 AM
Title: Re: Oldest translations of suttas into English?
Content:
Some have been wholly autodidacts. Some have been predominantly autodidactic but regularly consulting an Asian Pali teacher when faced with difficulties. Some have gone through some traditional Asian monastic curriculum.

I don't know what the precise figures would be for these three approaches, but I believe the frequency would be in the order that I've listed above, with autodidacts being the most common and traditionally educated monks rather rare.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:38 AM
Title: Re: Help finding a Sutta
Content:
The simplest method, and the one that I always use, is by listing the volume and page number of the PTS romanised edition. This is usually recognisable by the volume number being in lower case roman numerals, for example: AN. iii. 45.

Other methods:

DN. and MN. references may be given by Sutta number: DN. 1 = Brahmajāla Sutta; MN. 10 = Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta.

SN references may be given by saṃyutta number (usually in upper-case roman numerals) and then sutta number: SN. III. 34.

AN. references may be given by nipāta number and then sutta number: AN. V. 3 = third sutta in the pañca-nipāta / book of the fives.

References for verse texts (Suttanipāta, Dhammapada, Theragāthā and Therīgāthā) are given by verse number.
_________________________________

I don't have a hard copy of Numerical Sayings with me but to find the reference AN. v. 63 you would flick through to the Book of the Fives and then look for the number 63 in square brackets in the body of the text: [63].


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 23, 2015 12:52 AM
Title: Re: Help finding a Sutta
Content:
“Bhikkhus, of the speculative views held by outsiders, this is the foremost, namely: ‘I might not be and it might not be mine; I shall not be, [and] it will not be mine.’[1] For it can be expected that one who holds such a view will not be unrepelled by existence and will not be repelled by the cessation of existence.[2] There are beings who hold such a view. But even for beings who hold such a view there is alteration; there is change. Seeing this thus, the instructed noble disciple becomes disenchanted with it; being disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate toward the foremost, not to speak of what is inferior.
(tr. Bhikkhu Bodhi)


Translator’s Notes:

[1] No c’assa no ca me siyā, na bhavissati na me bhavissati. This cryptic formula occurs in the Nikāyas in two versions. One is ascribed to the annihilationists; the other is the Buddha’s adaptation of it. The annihilationist version reads: no c’ assaṃ no ca me siyā, na bhavissāmi na me bhavissati, “I may not be, and it might not be mine. I will not be, and it will not be mine.” Since the two differ only with respect to two verbs—no c’assam vs. no c’assa, and na bhavissāmi vs. na bhavissati—the various recensions sometimes confuse them. From the commentarial glosses, it appears that the confusion had already set in before the age of the commentaries. Readings also differ among different editions of the same text. Generally I prefer the readings in Ce.

This formula is explicitly identified as an annihilationist view (ucchedadiṭṭhi) at SN 22:81, III 99,4–6. In AN, at 10:29 §8, V 63,28–64,2, it is said to be the foremost of outside speculative views (etadaggaṃ bāhirakānaṃ diṭṭhigatānaṃ). The Buddha transformed this formula into a theme for contemplation conformable to his own teaching by replacing the first-person verbs with their third-person counterparts. This change shifts the stress from the view of self implicit in the annihilationist version (“I will be annihilated”) to an impersonal perspective that harmonizes with the anattā doctrine. In some texts, for example at SN 22:55, III 55–58, practicing on the basis of the formula is said to culminate in the destruction of the five lower fetters, that is, in the stage of a non-returner. Sometimes, as in the present sutta, the formula includes a trailer (see below), contemplation of which is said to lead to equanimity. Practice guided by the full formula leads to one of the five levels of non-returner or to arahantship.

In the Nikāyas the precise meaning of the formula is never made explicit, which suggests that it may have served as an open guide to contemplation to be filled in by the meditator through personal intuition. The commentaries, including Mp, take the truncated particle c’ to represent ce, “if,” and interpret the two parts of the formula as conditionals. I translate here from Mp (in conformity with its own interpretation): “If it had not been: If, in the past, there had been no kamma producing individual existence; it would not be mine: now I would have no individual existence. There will not be: Now there will be no kamma producing a future individual existence for me; there will not be mine: in the future there will be no individual existence for me.”

I dissent from the commentaries on the meaning of c’, which I take to represent ca = “and.” The syntax of the phrase as a whole requires this. Skt parallels actually contain ca (for instance, Udānavarga 15:4, parallel to Ud 78,1–3, has: no ca syān no ca me syā[n]; and MĀ 6 contains the character image (= “and”) in the appropriate places of the formula. As I interpret the meaning, the first “it” refers to the personal five aggregates, the second to the world apprehended through the aggregates. For the worldling this dyad is misconstrued as a duality of self and world; for the noble disciple it is simply the duality of internal and external phenomena. On this basis I would interpret the formula thus: “The five aggregates can be terminated, and the world presented by them can be terminated. I will so strive that the five aggregates will be terminated, (and thus) the world presented by them will be terminated.”

The trailer reads in Pāli: yadatthi yaṃ bhūtaṃ taṃ pajahāmī ti upekkhaṃ paṭilabhati. Following Mp, I understand “what exists, what has come to be” (yadatthi yaṃ bhūtaṃ) as the presently existing five aggregates. These have come to be through the craving of previous lives and are being abandoned by the abandonment of the cause for their re-arising in a future life, namely, craving or desire-and-lust.

[2] Yā cāyaṃ bhave appaṭikulyatā, sā c’assa na bhavissati, yā cāyaṃ bhavanirodhe pāṭikulyatā, sā c’assa na bhavissati. The point, it seems, is that because annihilationism arises from aversion toward continued personal existence, the annihilationist welcomes the cessation of existence, though from the Buddha’s perspective annihilationism goes too far by misinterpreting such cessation as the annihilation of a real self or existent person. See It §49, 43–44.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 22, 2015 10:05 PM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
Nowhere. In fact eternalism is closer to the truth because it's a view that's compatible with the doctrine of ownership of kamma (kammasakatā), while annihilationism is not.

Perhaps Craig is thinking of the teaching that annihilationism is closer to dispassion. The source for this is the Dīghanakha Sutta, as it's interpreted in the Majjhima-commentary.

“Aggivessana, there are some recluses and brahmins whose doctrine and view is this: ‘Everything is acceptable to me.’ There are some recluses and brahmins whose doctrine and view is this: ‘Nothing is acceptable to me.’ And there are some recluses and brahmins whose doctrine and view is this: ‘Something is acceptable to me, something is not acceptable to me.’ Among these, the view of those recluses and brahmins who hold the doctrine and view ‘Everything is acceptable to me’ is close to lust, close to bondage, close to delighting, close to holding, close to clinging. The view of those recluses and brahmins who hold the doctrine and view ‘Nothing is acceptable to me’ is close to non-lust, close to non-bondage, close to non-delighting, close to non-holding, close to non-clinging.”


Bhikkhu Bodhi's endnote: MA identifies the three views here as eternalism, annihilationism, and partial eternalism. The eternalist view is close to lust (sārāgāya santike), etc., because it affirms and delights in existence in however sublimated a form; annihilationism is close to non-lust, etc., because, though involving a wrong conception of self, it leads to disenchantment with existence. If the second view is understood as radical scepticism, it could also be seen as close to non-lust in that it expresses disillusionment with the attempt to buttress the attachment to existence with a theoretical foundation and thus represents a tentative, though mistaken, step in the direction of dispassion.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 22, 2015 8:39 PM
Title: Re: Martial Law in Thailand
Content:
Bangkok's Big Brother is Watching You

General Prayuth Chan-ocha is determined to make Thailand a happy place. He’s doing this by throttling civil liberties. Abigail Haworth charts the surreal rise of his despotic regime
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/22/bangkok-big-brother-politics-ruling-party-democracy


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 22, 2015 6:58 PM
Title: Re: Dictionary of Pali Proper Names
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 22, 2015 2:44 PM
Title: Re: Oldest translations of suttas into English?
Content:
There was a lot of variety, but in general Continental European monks tended to be diligent about learning Pali and doing their own pioneering research, while British and Americans tended to be lazy and to rely upon the work of others. Anglophone Paliist monks like Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi are rather in a minority.

Ajahn Paññavaḍḍho was familiar only with the early PTS translations. You’ll often hear him quoting from Kindred Sayings and Gradual Sayings, etc. in recordings of the talks he gave at the London Buddhist Society back in the 1950’s. In his days as a Wat Paknam monk he did teach himself the rudiments of Pali but never put this knowledge to any use. (Though it turned out to be useful to me, as Paññavaḍḍho presented me with his old copy of Warder’s Introduction to Pali  ). Also during his Paknam period he would study thick tomes by Thai scholar monks and ended up translating one of them. I remember the MS was still in the Baan Taad library when I was there. However, once Paññavaḍḍho had decided that Ajahn Maha Boowa was the business, for the remaining fifty years of his life he took no further interest in western Buddhist scholarship.

Phra Khantipālo knew the early PTS works and also kept up to date with the later ones. He learned the rudiments of Pali, but like Paññavaḍḍho was never more than a hack and apart from an horrendous translation of the Dhammapada never seems to have used it for much. When delivering talks he was content to use translations.

The two German monks both knew English well and were highly proficient in Pali. They may have started off with PTS translations and pioneering German ones like Neumann’s, but the greater part of their opus is the fruit of original research.

I don’t know what Ajahn Sumedho’s studies consisted in, but I doubt he’s studied Pali much (if at all), for his use of technical terms consistently replicates the errors of the Thai forest ajahns.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 21, 2015 2:33 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Not necessarily. It's enough to be open to the possibility that maladies may sometimes be cured by other means than those presently understood by medical science.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 21, 2015 2:08 PM
Title: Re: Seven year anniversary
Content:
The term is usually translated 'recollection'. The anussati make up ten of the forty meditation subjects given in the Visuddhimagga:

Buddhānussati — recollection of the Buddha.*
Dhammānussati — recollection of the Dhamma.*
Saṅghānussati — recollection of the Saṅgha.*
Sīlānussati — recollection of virtue.
Cāgānussati — recollection of generosity.
Devatānussati — recollection of devas.
Upasamānussati — recollection of peace [Nibbāna].
Maraṇānussati — recollection of death.
Kāyagatāsati — recollection of parts of the body.*
Ānāpānassati — mindfulness of breathing.

The four marked with an asterisk are the ones which many like to practise with the aid of a māla, which is used in much the same way that Catholics use a rosary. For example, a popular practice among the Burmese is to recite (orally or mentally) the Pali formula for the nine special qualities of the Buddha 108, 216 or 324 times a day, using a 108-bead māla as a counting device. Some will then do the same with the special qualities of the Dhamma and Saṅgha. In Thailand those who meditate by repeating a preparatory-word like buddho or sammā arahaṃ may also count their repetitions using a māla, often resolving to do a certain number of rounds each day.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 21, 2015 11:36 AM
Title: Re: 12 characterics of material phenomena
Content:
I believe a strictly momentarist account of motion —say the lifting of my arm— would actually treat it as an appearance produced by the arising of fresh rūpa-dhammas in a location adjacent to rūpa-dhammas that have just passed away.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 21, 2015 11:32 AM
Title: Re: 12 characterics of material phenomena
Content:
I should like to ask posters to kindly respect the guidelines for this sub-forum:

The Abhidhamma and Classical Theravada sub-forums are specialized venues for the discussion of the Abhidhamma and the classical Mahavihara understanding of the Dhamma. Within these forums the Pali Tipitaka and its commentaries are for discussion purposes treated as authoritative. These forums are for the benefit of those members who wish to develop a deeper understanding of these texts and are not for the challenging of the Abhidhamma and/or Theravada commentarial literature.

Posts should also include support from a reference or a citation (Tipitaka, commentarial, or from a later work from an author representative of the Classical point-of-view). 

Posts that contain personal opinions and conjecture, points of view arrived at from meditative experiences, conversations with devas, blind faith in the supreme veracity of one's own teacher's point of view etc. are all regarded as off-topic, and as such, will be subject to moderator review and/or removal.

http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=373


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 21, 2015 11:21 AM
Title: Re: Marx on Religion
Content:
Not quite. Popper divides Marx's work into those parts which can be falsified (and are therefore scientific) and those parts which can't. The scientific parts have already been falsified by history. The unfalsifiable parts are dismissed as metaphysics and pseudoscience.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:49 AM
Title: Re: Seven year anniversary
Content:
Thanks a lot for the inspiring progress report. 

Malas, by the way, are very common in the Asian Theravada cultural milieu, whether as an aid to the anussati meditations or simply as something that Buddhists like to wear, usually with a Buddha amulet.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 21, 2015 12:31 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
The Saṃyutta commentary attributes the efficacy of the recital to the memories that it evoked in the arahant theras:
"As the elder listened closely to this teaching on the development of the enlightenment factors, it is said, the thought occurred to him: “When I penetrated the truths on the seventh day of my going forth, these enlightenment factors became manifest”. Thinking, “The Master’s teaching is indeed emancipating!” his blood became clear, his bodily humours were purified, and the disease departed from his body like a drop of water fallen on a lotus leaf."
(tr. Bodhi, Connected Discourses)

Though the much-attested efficacy of the Suttas when used —as they are nowadays— as paritta chants to cure sicknesses even in non-arahants would obviously need to be accounted for in some other way.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:51 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Sati comes first in the list and upekkhā last, so the abbreviating convention is for only these two to be expounded in full. It is not the aim to single out any particular bojjhaṅga for emphasis.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 4:24 PM
Title: Lance Cousins, RIP
Content:
From another forum:

Dear Colleagues, 

It is with sadness that I write to the list to inform members of the death of Lance Cousins at the age of 72. I understand that Lance died suddenly last Friday in Oxford. Lance will be known to many members of this list both from his publications and his contributions to the list; many will also have benefited from the generous way in which he shared his learning by way of comment and advice. Lance studied history and then oriental studies at Cambridge before being appointed Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester where he taught Buddhism, Hinduism, comparative mysticism, Pali and Sanskrit. He took early retirement in the 1990s, moving to Oxford where he taught Buddhism in the Faculty of Theology and Pali and Middle Indian in the Faculty of Oriental Studies. Lance served as President of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies and of the Pali Text Society. His published articles concern the history of Buddhist schools, Abhidhamma literature and thought, as well as Pali, Middle Indian and Buddhist Sanskrit textual studies. Lance was also a founding member of the Samatha Trust and a much respected teacher of samatha meditation. He will be remembered by many as a true paṇḍita.

Funeral arrangements have yet to be announced.

With best wishes,
Rupert Gethin
Professor of Buddhist Studies
University of Bristol
Department of Religion and Theology



Cousins.jpg (340.16 KiB) Viewed 10410 times


Prof. Cousins with Ven. Wei Wu and Prof. Y. Karunadasa, on the occasion of their being awarded honorary doctorates by Mahamakut Buddhist University, Bangkok in 2013


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:20 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
It doesn't bother me, though it is apparent that I'm not getting through to you. If you were to review what I have written so far in this thread and read the texts that I linked to, I trust that the matter will become clearer to you.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 11:56 AM
Title: Re: Marx on Religion
Content:
Falsifiability was for Popper a 'methodological rule' or a 'tenet' for evaluating and demarcating theories, rather than a theory itself. On the other hand, there is one context in which it might be rightly called a 'theory', namely, in a discussion between philosophers about competing epistemologies of science. In such a discussion it could rightly be said that "the inductive theory holds this to be good science, the instrumentalist theory holds that, the Popperian falsifiability theory holds something else."


From Popper's Replies to My Critics:

The difficulties connected with my criterion of demarcation (D) are important, but must not be exaggerated. It is vague, since it is a methodological rule, and since the demarcation between science and nonscience is vague. But it is more than sharp enough to make a distinction between many physical theories on the one hand, and metaphysical theories, such as psychoanalysis, or Marxism (in its present form), on the other. This is, of course, one of my main theses; and nobody who has not understood it can be said to have understood my theory.

The situation with Marxism is, incidentally, very different from that with psychoanalysis. Marxism was once a scientific theory: it predicted that capitalism would lead to increasing misery and, through a more or less mild revolution, to socialism; it predicted that this would happen first in the technically highest developed countries; and it predicted that the technical evolution of the 'means of production' would lead to social, political, and ideological developments, rather than the other way round.

But the (so-called) socialist revolution came first in one of the technically backward countries. And instead of the means of production producing a new ideology, it was Lenin's and Stalin's ideology that Russia must push forward with its industrialization ('Socialism is dictatorship of the proletariat plus electrification') which promoted the new development of the means of production. Thus one might say that Marxism was once a science, but one which was refuted by some of the facts which happened to clash with its predictions (I have here mentioned just a few of these facts).

However, Marxism is no longer a science; for it broke the methodological rule that we must accept falsification, and it immunized itself against the most blatant refutations of its predictions. Ever since then, it can be described only as nonscience—as a metaphysical dream, if you like, married to a cruel reality.

Psychoanalysis is a very different case. It is an interesting psychological metaphysics (and no doubt there is some truth in it, as there is so often in metaphysical ideas), but it never was a science. There may be lots of people who are Freudian or Adlerian cases: Freud himself was clearly a Freudian case, and Adler an Adlerian case. But what prevents their theories from being scientific in the sense here described is, very simply, that they do not exclude any physically possible human behaviour. Whatever anybody may do is, in principle, explicable in Freudian or Adlerian terms. (Adler's break with Freud was more Adlerian than Freudian, but Freud never looked on it as a refutation of his theory.)

The point is very clear. Neither Freud nor Adler excludes any particular person's acting in any particular way, whatever the outward circumstances. Whether a man sacrificed his life to rescue a drowning, child (a case of sublimation) or whether he murdered the child by drowning him (a case of repression) could not possibly be predicted or excluded by Freud's theory; the theory was compatible with everything that could happen—even without any special immunization treatment.

Thus while Marxism became non-scientific by its adoption of an immunizing strategy, psychoanalysis was immune to start with, and remained so. In contrast, most physical theories are pretty free of immunizing tactics and highly falsifiable to start with. As a rule, they exclude an infinity of conceivable possibilities.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 10:57 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
It is now evident to me that there is nothing to be gained by our continuing this exchange. 

Wishing you a pleasant weekend.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:46 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
It is not intrinsically invalid. It is a question whose invalidity is owing to the presuppositions of the questioner, Moḷiyaphagguna. One could, however, conceive of other situations in which the question would not be invalid.

From the translator's endnotes:
Phagguna’s question, “Who consumes...?” is “pregnant” with an implicit view of self. He sees someone —a self— standing behind consciousness in the role of a substantial subject. The Buddha must therefore reject as invalid the question itself, which is based on an illegitimate assumption. Spk: “I do not say, ‘One consumes’” = “I do not say someone —a being or a person (koci satto vā puggalo vā)— consumes.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 8:01 AM
Title: Re: Fake facts in biography Buddha?
Content:
Seconded, though there's no need to buy it:

http://store.pariyatti.org/Life-of-the-Buddha-The--PDF-eBook_p_1412.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 7:51 AM
Title: Re: Marx on Religion
Content:
./download/file.php?id=2523
(90.48 KiB) Downloaded 58 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 7:44 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
It seems to me that your confusion arises from two mistakes.

Firstly you are allowing yourself to be bewitched by the mere conventions of English grammar. Secondly, you are uncritically assuming that the thoughts that would prompt you to say, "I feel terrible pain" are the same as those which would prompt an arahant to do so.

To get over the first mistake I suggest you begin by reading up on the subject of personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, etc.). You need to understand that the way we happen to use them in English is merely the way we happen to use them in English. It's just a linguistic convention and not necessarily reflective of reality. If we were speaking a pro-drop language like Japanese or a null-subject language like Hebrew, then we would follow different conventions — ones in which we could omit the pronouns in any context where they were in some sense pragmatically inferable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_pronoun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null-subject_language

And as for your second mistake, here I suggest that you read the Buddha's discourse to Poṭṭhapāda:
“Citta, these are the world’s designations, the world’s expressions, the world’s ways of speaking, the world’s descriptions, with which the Tathagata expresses himself but without grasping to them.”

https://suttacentral.net/en/dn9


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 6:44 AM
Title: Re: Marx on Religion
Content:
Popper's detailed discussion of Marx's economics is in chapter 20 of Open Society, but his concern is not exactly with refuting it. He has other fish to fry. From section II of the chapter:

Marx’s theory of value, usually considered by Marxists as well as by anti-Marxists as a corner-stone of the Marxist creed, is in my opinion one of its rather unimportant parts; indeed, the sole reason why I am going to treat it, instead of proceeding at once to the next section, is that it is generally held to be important, and that I cannot defend my reasons for differing from this opinion without discussing the theory. But I wish to make it clear at once that in holding that the theory of value is a redundant part of Marxism, I am defending Marx rather than attacking him. For there is little doubt that the many critics who have shown that the theory of value is very weak in itself are in the main perfectly right. But even if they were wrong, it would only strengthen the position of Marxism if it could be established that its decisive historico-political doctrines can be developed entirely independently of such a controversial theory.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:41 AM
Title: Re: devamanussaṃ - royalty and common people?
Content:
Maṅgala in its non-Buddhist use primarily meant a "good omen" and was translated accordingly by Ñāṇamoli. I don't know of any English word that is 100% adequate to cover both this meaning and the application that the Buddha makes of it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:01 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
As I have already shown you, persons who are free of self-view —arahants and Buddhas— express themselves using the same terms and phrases as those who are not. Therefore the presence or absence of self-view in people is not reliably inferable from the fact that they use pronouns like "I" and "me".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 9:38 PM
Title: Re: Fake facts in biography Buddha?
Content:
In the Suttas it is a past Buddha Vipassī, who sees the devadūtas, and there is no description of Gotama doing so. In the commentaries we meet with the idea that there are thirty regularities (dhammatā) that occur in the final life of every person who is destined to be a Sammāsambuddha. The sixth of these is seeing the four signs and being moved by these to go forth into the homeless life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 6:19 PM
Title: Re: inscription sugestions
Content:
From the DN’s Saṅgīti and Dasuttara Suttas:

Ajjava &amp; Lajjava.
Avihiṃsā &amp; Soceyya.
Hirī &amp; Ottappa
Khanti &amp; Soracca.
Paggaha &amp; Avikkhepa.
Sākhalya &amp; Paṭisanthāra.
Sati &amp; Sampajañña
Vijjā &amp; Vimutti.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 5:53 PM
Title: Re: The Quotable Thanissaro
Content:
Had to re-read Eliot's poem to find what part he was referring to. I guess it's probably this, from the second part of the last quartet: Dry Salvages.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:28 PM
Title: Re: Marx on Religion
Content:
Not really. Popper’s critique is multi-pronged, but the main thrust of it is that Marxianism is a species of historicism and that historicism in all its guises is an untenable approach to social explanation.

Contrary to a widespread popular misunderstanding, Popper does not dismiss all of Marx’s output as pseudoscience (as he does with Hegel); in fact he readily acknowledges that a substantial part of the Marxian system is of a thoroughly scientific character. Just to take the most obvious example, Marx’s predictions about the future course of European history are unimpeachably scientific, and can be accepted as such no matter which of the competing verification theories we happen to prefer. His predictions do of course suffer the unfortunate drawback that they have all been been falsified by 20th century history, that is, nothing happened in the way that Marx said it would [*], but that doesn’t detract in the least from their being scientific in their inception.

But I think it might be a good idea for you to read Poverty of Historicism for yourself, or at least skim through it, so that you’ll understand why Popper deemed historicism untenable, and then at least skim through Open Society to see an application of the argument to Marxianism.


___________________

[*] One exception to this, where Marx's crystal ball did not always fail him, was when he was giving his capitalist sugar-daddy Engels tips on which stocks and shares to buy.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 9:43 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Are you familiar with dhamma theory and the two truths? If not, then this short work by Karunadasa may help you to surmount your confusion.

http://www.abhidhamma.org/dhamma_theory_philosophical_corn.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 9:29 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
It is necessary to read the whole sentence. Ven. Mahākassapa says:
“Venerable sir, I am not bearing up, I am not getting better. Strong painful feelings are increasing in me, not subsiding, and their increase, not their subsiding, is to be discerned.”
This is simply how things are expressed in Pali. There is no verb "to have" in this language, so if I want to say "I have a dog" in Pali, it would be "sunakho me atthi" — "a dog is for me." Similarly, if I want to say that I have painful feelings, I would have to use a phrase that translates as "painful feelings are/arise in me."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:57 AM
Title: Re: Myanmar: the state mocks its own religion
Content:
I have little doubt that the commentary is right to take the rule as having a more general application, else the Buddha would have likely decreed something like: "I allow you to delay entrance into the rains retreat when the local king desires it." But circumstances when bhikkhus may enter the rains retreat later than normal are already covered extensively in another section of the Khandhakas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:43 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Ven. Mahākassapa in pain:
https://suttacentral.net/en/sn46.14

Ven. Mahāmoggallāna in pain:
https://suttacentral.net/en/sn46.15

The Blessed One in pain:
https://suttacentral.net/en/sn46.16


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:39 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
By pointing out that it's an improper question.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:35 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
You are just quibbling. If it was reported by Ananda then the Buddha must have told him what he was experiencing. But if you wish to insist that only a first-person report of pain by an arahant could have evidentiary value, then see the three Gilāna Suttas in the SN's Bojjhaṅga Saṃyutta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:17 AM
Title: Re: Myanmar: the state mocks its own religion
Content:
Not that I know of. One's apartness as a person gone forth lies in one's remoteness from a householderish indulgence in sense-pleasures.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:13 AM
Title: Re: Myanmar: the state mocks its own religion
Content:
Alex Salmond is the former leader of the Scottish National Party. Together with salmont, salmonde, and sawmont it is also an archaic Scottish spellings of “salmon”.

 “Now safe the stately sawmont sail, 
And trouts bedropp’d wi’ crimson hail, 
And eels, weel-kend for souple tail, 
And geds for greed, 
Since, dark in Death’s fish-creel, we wail, 
‘Tam Samson’s dead!’ ”

Translation:

“Now safe the stately salmon sail,
And trout bedropped with crimson hail,
And eels, well known for supple tail,
And pikes for greed,
Since, dark in Death’s fish-creel, we wail,
‘Tam Samson is dead!’ ”

http://www.cobbler.plus.com/wbc/poems/translations/448.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 6:49 AM
Title: Re: Myanmar: the state mocks its own religion
Content:
Click here https://suttacentral.net/en/pi-tv-kd3 and scroll down to "Allowance for seven days business".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 6:45 AM
Title: Re: Myanmar: the state mocks its own religion
Content:
Mahāvagga:
Tena kho pana samayena rājā māgadho seniyo bimbisāro vassaṃ ukkaḍḍhitukāmo bhikkhūnaṃ santike dūtaṃ pāhesi: yadi panāyyā āgame juṇhe vassaṃ upagaccheyyunti. Bhagavato etamatthaṃ ārocesuṃ. Anujānāmi, bhikkhave, rājūnaṃ anuvattitunti.

Now at that time King Seniya Bimbisāra of Magadha, desiring to postpone the rains, sent a messenger to the monks saying: “What if the masters could enter upon the rains at the next full-moon day?” They told this matter to the Lord. He said: “I allow you, monks, to obey kings.”
(I.B. Horner, Book of the Discipline)
Vinaya-atthakathā:
Anujānāmi bhikkhave rājūnaṃ anuvattitun ti ettha vassukkaḍḍhane bhikkhūnaṃ kāci parihāni nāma natthīti anuvattituṃ anuññātaṃ, tasmā aññasmimpi dhammike kamme anuvattitabbaṃ, adhammike pana na kassaci anuvattitabbaṃ.

I allow you, monks, to obey kings – here, since it is permitted for a bhikkhu to obey [the king] because delayed entry into the rains retreat causes no decline for bhikkhus, therefore in regard to any other kind of dhammika kamma a bhikkhu should obey, but never in regard to an adhammika one.
(Dhammānando)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 19, 2015 1:00 AM
Title: Re: Myanmar: the state mocks its own religion
Content:
In the Vinaya’s Mahāvagga (Vin. i. 138) and its Atthakathā (Vin-a. v. 1068).

I’ll post a translation tomorrow if no one else does so before.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 7:21 PM
Title: Re: Problems in Gaṇakamoggallāna Sutta (MN107)
Content:
Absolutely. As I remarked in my last post: it's a question of introducing each new training at the point where it will be of optimal benefit. Now you can practise sīla and indriyesu guttadvāra even though you're stuffing yourself silly, but you can't practise jāgariyaṃ anuyoga — devotion to wakefulness — without first establishing yourself in moderate eating because over-eating will make you sleepy and lethargic — states that are directly opposed to staying awake.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 6:18 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Indeed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 9:56 AM
Title: Re: Samadhi origin
Content:
The term "suspension of disbelief" was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
That means that before the publication of his Biographia Literaria in 1817 nobody ever believed in anything.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 9:44 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
It is certainly very different from the kind of conservatism that I believe in, which is the old-fashioned High Tory strain. There are, however, several permitted ideological variants in modern British conservatism and that of UKIP isn’t much different from Thatcherism. 

Margaret Thatcher is a personal hero of the UKIP leader https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV-TbeGoQcs and UKIP’s platform is basically a purer form of her brand of conservatism. Essentially it comprises the sort of policies that Thatcher’s government would have implemented if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Joseph (the architect of Thatcherism) had been given a completely free rein, rather than having his hands tied by the need to compromise with the so-called “Tory wets” (Thatcher’s derogatory term for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Tory, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-nation_conservatism, and suchlike).

All of which is simply to say that UKIPism, for all its faults, is very far removed from the kind of extreme right parties that are now sprouting up all over continental Europe.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 9:10 AM
Title: Re: Samadhi origin
Content:
This is the opinion of the American monk Ven. Vimalaramsi. The source he cites in support of it is Th. Rhys Davids' introduction to his translation of the DN's Subha Sutta. However the source (see the attached file) merely states that up to the time Rhys Davids was writing (1899) the word samādhi hadn't been found in any pre-Buddhist texts. I don't know whether this is still true a century later, but even supposing it is, it still doesn't offer any positive support to the venerable's opinion. To say that a Buddhist term is not instantiated in any pre-Buddhist text is not the same as saying that the Buddha coined it. The term samādhi, for all we know, might have been used in yogic traditions like those of Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta but without ever making it into a written text. In short, though it's not impossible Vimalaramsi is right, he hasn't given us any compelling reason to think so.


 ./download/file.php?id=2521
(75.51 KiB) Downloaded 31 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 8:21 AM
Title: Re: Myanmar: the state mocks its own religion
Content:
Do you know where he advises this?

I'm aware that in the Vinaya the Buddha established a rule requiring bhikkhus to conform to the wishes of secular rulers, though Buddhaghosa's Vinaya Atthakathā adds the qualifier "...provided their wishes are dhammika" (righteous? lawful? constitutional? — the term in this context is never defined). And on our sister site I've seen Namdrol claim that this is an obligation for all Buddhists, though I haven't seen him cite a text in support of this and I don't myself know of one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 8:11 AM
Title: Re: Problems in Gaṇakamoggallāna Sutta (MN107)
Content:
I don't think it's a question of hard or easy, but rather of introducing each new training at the point where it will be of optimal benefit.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 7:50 AM
Title: Re: Myanmar: the state mocks its own religion
Content:
Firstly if Philip Blackwood and his colleagues had done something like this to something that is iconic to Muslims, then they would be more likely dead than in prison.

Secondly, by killing Philip Blackwood and his colleagues the Muslims would have done exactly as their religion requires, which cannot be said of the actions of the Burmese authorities.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 7:30 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
It would not seem misplaced if we took the twelvefold summary of dukkha as intended to cover not just kilesa-dukkha but also vaṭṭa-dukkha, the "suffering of the round". And it is reasonable to take it so, for vaṭṭa-dukkha is the more comprehensive of the two lists: all kilesa-dukkha is vaṭṭa-dukkha, but not all vaṭṭa-dukkha is kilesa-dukkha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 18, 2015 7:08 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
Sure.

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 11:47 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
No, not just to that. In almost every sutta where the phrase "just this is the end of suffering" occurs, the commentators gloss it as referring to the ending of kilesa-dukkha and vaṭṭa-dukkha. The former means the suffering that's produced by one's defilements and chiefly denotes domanassa-vedanā. The latter means the "suffering of the round" and refers to the suffering that one would have undergone in future lives if one had remained fettered to the round of saṃsāra.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:49 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
One of the commentarial glosses on "unperturbed" is in fact adukkhiyamāna, "free from dukkha". And yet the Buddha has said that he is experiencing dukkha-vedanā. So how are the two statements to be harmonized? The obvious way is with reference to the two darts teaching. He undergoes dukkha in the sense of dukkha-vedanā (bodily painful feeling), but this does not give rise to dukkha in the sense of domanassa-vedanā (mental painful feeling).

But to say that bodily painful feeling is not experienced by the Buddha as dukkha in any sense at all would be going too far and contradicting his own words.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 8:06 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Yes, they just reflect different translators' preferences.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 8:03 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
But when the Blessed One had entered upon the rainy season, there arose in him a severe illness, and sharp and deadly pains came upon him. And the Blessed One endured them mindfully, clearly comprehending and unperturbed.
DN. 16

________________________________

Then the Blessed One, having spent most of the night instructing, urging, rousing, and encouraging the Kapilavatthu Sakyans with a Dhamma talk, said to Ven. Ananda: “Ananda, speak to the Kapilavatthu Sakyans about the person who follows the practice for one in training. My back is aching. I will rest it.”
MN. 53


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 6:03 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
I wouldn’t apply the term “first dart” to anything that the Buddha didn’t apply it to. What he applied it to is that mode of dukkha that can’t be evaded so long as one is alive: bodily painful feelings. If a person is getting infatuated and upset (as in the passage above) then it's already the second dart.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:52 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
Hurrah for strange women lying in ponds distributing swords!

 




And near him stood the Lady of the Lake,
Who knows a subtler magic than his own—
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful.
She gave the King his huge cross-hilted sword,
Whereby to drive the heathen out: a mist
Of incense curled about her, and her face
Well-nigh was hidden in the minster gloom;
But there was heard among the holy hymns
A voice as of the waters, for she dwells
Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms
May shake the world, and when the surface rolls,
Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord.

There likewise I beheld Excalibur
Before him at his crowning borne, the sword
That rose from out the bosom of the lake,
And Arthur rowed across and took it—rich
With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,
Bewildering heart and eye—the blade so bright
That men are blinded by it—on one side,
Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world,
“Take me,” but turn the blade and ye shall see,
And written in the speech ye speak yourself,
“Cast me away!” And sad was Arthur’s face
Taking it, but old Merlin counselled him,
“Take thou and strike! the time to cast away
Is yet far-off.” So this great brand the king
Took, and by this will beat his foemen down.
(Tennyson, Idylls of the King)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:22 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Mental pain (domanassa), sorrow (soka), lamentation (parideva), etc. are the second dart.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 11:53 AM
Title: Re: The best society
Content:
Rural Thailand would score pretty high, except with regard to political literacy etc. Urban Thailand would score only one: hospitality.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 11:18 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
The sa-upādisesa/anupādisesa distinction occurs twice in the Vinaya Piṭaka, 7 times in the Dīgha Nikāya, 8 times in the Majjhima Nikāya, 35 times in the Aṅguttara Nikāya, 11 times in what modern scholars hold to be the older texts of the Khuddaka Nikāya, and 45 times in the rest of the Khuddaka Nikāya.

A doctrine that insists on popping her head up so often is hardly a shrinking violet.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 10:21 AM
Title: Re: The Pali Canon is Not Original, So What Shall We Do?
Content:
But the question was about Agamas. Your link is not to the Brahmajala Sutra of the Dirgha Agama but to the Mahayana sutra of this name. The former is very similar to the Pali, while the latter is entirely different and unrelated.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 10:09 AM
Title: Re: The best society
Content:
"Well he would, wouldn't he?" to quote Mandy Rice-Davies.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:45 AM
Title: Re: The best society
Content:
Now to answer your question, these are the features I have in mind, in no particular order...

• A healthy and fruitful obsession with regionalism (“States’ rights” and all that) and strong resistance to the imposition of bureaucratic centralism; and the fact that this attitude appears to have permeated every level of society.
• The parish church serving as the cardinal social locus of each community (as opposed to say, the tavern, sports club, political association, shopping mall or whatever).
• Widespread political literacy among the southern intelligentsia, together with an enthusiasm for classical learning and especially for the philosophy of the Stoics.
• Southern hospitality, gentility and etiquette
• Social conservatism (though admittedly this is somewhat of a mixed blessing in a culture where Calvinist notions of virtue prevail).
• Agrarian economy.

There are probably other things that I’ve omitted, but the above are just what come immediately to mind.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 3:21 AM
Title: Re: Sutras that don't contradict Theravada teachings/Pali suttas?
Content:
If you cut out the Mahayana hyperbole and tinsel and change "four Māras" to "five Māras" it would probably pass as a Theravada sutta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 2:44 AM
Title: Re: The best society
Content:
As any Dīgha Nikāya fan knows, the ideal society is one ruled by a Wheel-turning Monarch possessed of the thirty-two marks of a great man.

In the absence of a Wheel-turning Monarch there is no ideal society and so the question might be better phrased: “What sort of human society would be the least abominable?”

In answer to that, my own suggestion would be a society that combined the best features of Periclean Athens, Lycurgan Sparta, Edwardian England and the antebellum South of the USA.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 2:28 AM
Title: Re: newbie to Dhamma Wheel
Content:
Hello Bodhana,

Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 17, 2015 1:48 AM
Title: Re: devamanussaṃ - royalty and common people?
Content:
Hi Frank,

I thought that the description of the Buddha's daily duties was from the Dīgha Nikāya, but it turns out to be the Dīgha Atthakathā to the Brahmajāla Sutta (DA.i. 45ff.), though repeated also in the Saṃyutta and Aṅguttara Atthakathās.

Bhikkhu Bodhi's prose translation:


 ./download/file.php?id=2520
(179.85 KiB) Downloaded 43 times



F.L. Woodward's verse translation:
Ah! When the Lord of the World went forth to beg,
The gentle winds made smooth the ways before Him,
The clouds poured down their waters on the dust
And from the sun’s hot rays protected Him.

The breezes wafted flowers to His path,
Raised were the ruts and hollows of the road,
Smoothed the rough places, and where’er the Lord
Trod, even was the ground and soft; thereon
Sprang lotus-flowers to receive His feet.

No sooner had He reached the city-gates
Than all the six-rayed brilliance of His form
Raced here and there o’er palaces and shrines
And decked them as with yellow sheen of gold
Or with a painter’s colours. Then the beasts,
Birds, elephants and horses, one and all,
Gave forth melodious sounds, and all the folk
Crashed loud the drums; lutes twanged and instruments
Of divers sounds; tinkled the women’s jewels
And by these tokens did the people know
‘The Blessed One has entered now for alms.’

So donning their best robes and finery
And taking perfumes, flowers and offerings
They issued from their houses to the street,
And worshipping the Blessed One therewith
Some said ‘Lord! Give us ten monks for to feed.’
And some, ‘Give twenty,’ some, ‘Lord Give a hundred!’
And then they took His bowl, prepared a seat,
And eagerly their reverence displayed
By placing choicest food within the bowl.

Now when the meal was done, the Blessed Lord
With nice discrimination of their minds
And dispositions, taught each one the Doctrine.
Thus, some were ’stablished in the Refuges,
Some in the Precepts Five, some reached the Stream,
While others would attain the Second Path,
And some the Path of No-Return, and some
Became established in the Highest Fruit,
Were Arahants and left the world. Thus showing
Such kindness to the folk the Lord would rise
And, to His dwelling-place would wend His way.

And there when He arrived He sat Him down
On a fair Buddha-mat they spread for Him,
And waited till the monks their meal had eaten.
This done, the body-servant told the Lord,
And to the scented chamber He retired.
Such were the duties of the morning meal.

These duties done, in the scented chamber sitting,
On a seat made ready, He would wash His feet.
Then, standing on the jewelled stairs that led
Unto the scented chamber, He would teach
The gathering of monks and thus would say
‘O monks. Apply yourselves with diligence!’
For rarely comes a Buddha in the world,
And rarely beings come to birth as men
Rare the propitious moment and the chance
To leave the world and hear the Doctrine true!’

Thereat some one would ask the Blessed One
For meditation-lessons, which He gave
Fit for each man’s peculiar bent of mind.
Then all would do obeisance and depart
To places where they spent the night or day
Some to the forest, some to the foot of trees,
Some to the hills, some to the heavens where rule
The Four Great Kings, or Vasivattī’s heaven.

Then going to His room, the Blessed One
Would lay Him down and rest there for a while,
Mindful and conscious, on His right side lying,
Like a lion; till, His body now refreshed,
He rose and gazed forth over all the world.
Then came the folk of village or of town
Near which He might be staying, they who gave
The morning meal, garbed in their best, and brought
Their offerings of flowers and scents. The Lord,
His audience thus assembled, would approach
In such miraculous fashion as was fit;
And, sitting in the lecture-hall prepared
On the fair Buddha-mat they spread for Him,
He taught the Doctrine fit for time and season,
And seasonably bade the people go.
Then all would do obeisance and depart
Such were the duties of the afternoon.

These things all done, He left the Buddha-seat,
Entering the bath-house, if He wished to bathe
And cool His limbs with water there prepared
By His body-servant, who fetched the Buddha-seat
And spread it in the scented room. The Lord,
Donning His double tunic orange-hued
And binding on His girdle, threw His robe
Over the right shoulder and thither went and sat
And stayed retired, in meditation plunged.

Then came the monks from this side and from that
And waited on the Blessed One. Some asked
The solving of their doubts, and some would beg,
For meditation-lessons, others a sermon.
Thus answering, teaching, preaching, would the Lord
Spend the first night-watch, granting their desires.
Such were the duties of the first night-watch.

When the duties of the first night-watch were done,
The monks would do obeisance and depart.
Then came the Gods of the ten thousand worlds,
Seizing the chance of questioning the Lord,
Were it but single words of letters four.
He, answering those questions, passed the night.
Such were the duties of the middle watch.

Into three parts the last watch He divided
And forasmuch as, since the morning sitting,
His body would be tired, He spent one part
In pacing up and down to ease His limbs.

Then going to the scented room the Lord
Would lay Him down and rest there for a while,
Mindful and conscious, on His right side lying,
Like a lion. But in the third He rose and sat,
Gazing with Buddha-eye o’er all the world,
To see if any man, by giving alms,
Keeping the Precepts, or by deeds of worth,
Under some former Buddha took the vow
Himself to be a Saviour of the world.
Such were His habits of the last night-watch.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 11:53 PM
Title: Re: Classification of Ariya disciples
Content:
The Pali terms are tihetuka (triple-rooted — alobha, adosa, amoha), dvihetuka (double-rooted — alobha and adosa only) and ahetuka (rootless — no wholesome roots at all). Of these three terms, dvihetuka would be the best one to search for as the other two have other meanings.

There are scattered references to this teaching in many commentaries, but the best translated source that I can think of would be the PTS translation of Sumaṅgalasāmi's Abhidhammatthavibhāvinī: Summary of the Topics of Abhidhamma by R.P. Wijeratne, and Rupert Gethin (2002).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:58 PM
Title: Re: Classification of Ariya disciples
Content:
No, the description of beings in terms of the number of wholesome roots in their relinking consciousness is found only in the commentaries.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:43 PM
Title: Re: Marx on Religion
Content:
I think that after the terminal arse-kicking given to historicism in general in Karl Popper’s http://libgen.in/get.php?md5=074d6a311eec4fabf1ead2ef23363c53 and that given to Marxian historicism in particular in volume II of https://archive.org/details/opensocietyandit033064mbp, that people continue to quote Marx with approval and to take his turgid pronouncements seriously should be accepted as proof of the existence of miracles, and thus a disproof of Marx’s view of religion.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 2:49 PM
Title: Re: What's the point of living?
Content:
Empathy for those who would be made miserable by your absence.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:15 PM
Title: Re: Classification of Ariya disciples
Content:
I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but in the commentaries it's taught that in order to be capable of any ariyan attainment one needs to have been born into this life with a triple-rooted relinking consciousness, i.e., one whose mental factors include alobha, adosa and amoha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 11:34 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
I'm personally little concerned over who gets to call the tune once we're out of Europe. All that matters is getting out, so that whoever calls the tune will be a person I can vote for (or against), and not a faceless unelected Brussels bureaucrat.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:57 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
I think your best chance of getting elected would be if you headed to the opposite hemisphere. In Iceland one of my lay supporters was a Sri Lankan lad who in his student days started a joke party called Funklist Íslands ("Icelandic Funk Party"). Due to a combination of the country's PR system and his personal popularity with fellow students he ended up winning a quarter of the seats in the Ísafjördur Rural Council elections, much to the fury of the more mainstream Farmers' Party and Independence Party.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:17 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
Britain on the Brink

Introduced by Sir Patrick Moore


if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:54 AM
Title: Re: The Škoda Fabia Attention Test
Content:
The author is a nursing specialist writing a paper within her field. Within that field it's no concern to the researcher whether occurrences of mindfulness in her subjects are the sammā-sati of the path or the ordinary sati that is present in every kusala citta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 16, 2015 1:25 AM
Title: Re: devamanussaṃ - royalty and common people?
Content:
Yes. Firstly, because the Buddha did in fact spend an enormous amount of time instructing devas: one of the three watches of every night was devoted to just this. He only very occasionally taught royalty. Secondly because these are qualities that the yogāvacara brings to mind when he is practising buddhānussati; in such a context taking devas as 'royalty' would be rather lacking in numinosity.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 8:35 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
You haven't really shown this. I mean a page like the one above that documents the verbal gaffes and embarrassing antics of the party's nuttier members could be produced for ANY political party. Now if you really want to take the mickey out of UKIP, Stewart Lee shows the way to do it:

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 8:29 PM
Title: Re: devamanussaṃ - royalty and common people?
Content:
In satthā devamanussānaṁ the devas are deities and the manussas are humans.

In the phrase imaṃ lokaṃ sadevakaṃ samārakaṃ sabrahmakaṃ sassamaṇabrāhmaṇiṃ pajaṃ sadevamanussaṃ the devas in sadevakaṃ are the deities residing in the first five of the six sense-sphere heavens, while samārakaṃ refers to the devas in the sixth heaven who have Māra as their overlord. 

As for the compound word sadevamanussaṃ, this is synonymous with ‘manyfolk’ (bahujana). The devas in this term are royalty and the manussas are commoners.

Some translators like to take the meaning of ‘deva’ in sadevamanussaṃ as applicable also in satthā devamanussānaṁ. One can understand why someone of secular Buddhist bent (who disbelieves in devas) would prefer this rendering, but oddly enough I've occasionally encountered it even from orthodox Buddhists.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 8:20 PM
Title: Re: Oral Tradition [Re: The Pali Canon is Not Original, So What Shall We Do?]
Content:
I believe it was actually at the Fifth Council of King Mindon that the MN’s Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta was first recited with the four ariyasacca given in detail rather than in brief. It seems that by the time of the Sixth Council the Burmese had got into the habit of always reciting the sutta this way, and so it came as something of a surprise to them when the conciliar delegates from Thailand, Ceylon, etc. showed up bearing their short versions of the sutta. A dispute then arose as to whether it was the Burmese who had expanded the sutta or the other nations who had abridged it.

Anyhow, the conciliar decision to recite the sutta’s account of the four ariyasacca in detail rather than in brief may perhaps be criticized as presumptuous, but terming it “drastic” seems to be overstating the matter a bit.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 11:12 AM
Title: Re: Can harsh speech be better than abstaining from harsh speech?
Content:
Yes, I see their only English translation is Sister Upalavaṇṇā's, which seems to be of unparalleled awfulness:
"The accusing bhikkhu should reflect thus: Am I with pure bodily behaviour, endowed with matchlessly unfishered bodily behaviour. Are these things evident in me or not? If the bhikkhu be without pure bodily behaviour, without matchlessly unfishered bodily behaviour, there may be someone who tells- Come on bhikkhu! You first train in bodily good conduct."
 

I'm reminded of a biting comment made by Oscar Wilde in his review of Sir Edwin Arnold's English translation of the Bhagavad Gita. It went something like: "Sir Edwin is to be applauded for his sterling effort in translating this great Indian classic from Sanskrit into his mother tongue. Let us pray that some enterprising soul will now undertake the more arduous task of translating it from Sir Edwin's mother tongue into English."

I think that was probably harsh speech.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 11:01 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
Yes, we have one of those too, of minarchist orientation, but it's even less significant than the U.S. Libertarian Party. In fact it's much less significant, for at least the American version has a rich literary output and a strong tradition of debate, while the British one seems a totally moribund outfit.

http://libertarianpartyuk.com/


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:19 AM
Title: Re: The Škoda Fabia Attention Test
Content:
Do you mean in Dr. Muecke's paper? It would be a mental factor that would sometimes be present when the women she studied were not lost in kaan khit maak, “thinking‐a‐lot,” or kaan khit maak kern pai, “thinking‐too‐much.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 8:46 AM
Title: Re: Can harsh speech be better than abstaining from harsh speech?
Content:
Yes, I think so, though with the qualifier that the speech of a Buddha (or any other arahant) is not kamma-generating.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 8:42 AM
Title: Re: Can harsh speech be better than abstaining from harsh speech?
Content:
Kusinārā

On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Kusinārā, in the forest thicket of oblations. There the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus: “Bhikkhus!”

“Venerable sir!” those bhikkhus replied. The Blessed One said this:

“Bhikkhus, a bhikkhu who wishes to reprove another person should examine himself with respect to five things and establish five things in himself before he reproves the other person. With respect to what five things should he examine himself?

(1) “Bhikkhus, a bhikkhu who wishes to reprove another should examine himself thus: ‘Is my bodily behavior pure? Do I possess bodily behavior that is pure, flawless, and irreproachable? Does this quality exist in me or not?’ If the bhikkhu’s bodily behavior is not pure, and he does not possess bodily behavior that is pure, flawless, and irreproachable, there will be those who say to him: ‘Please first train yourself bodily.’ There will be those who say this to him.

(2) “Again, a bhikkhu who wishes to reprove another should examine himself thus: ‘Is my verbal behavior pure? Do I possess verbal behavior that is pure, flawless, and irreproachable? Does this quality exist in me or not?’ If the bhikkhu’s verbal behavior is not pure, and he does not possess verbal behavior that is pure, flawless, and irreproachable, there will be those who say to him: ‘Please first train yourself verbally.’ There will be those who say this to him.

(3) “Again, a bhikkhu who wishes to reprove another should examine himself thus: ‘Have I established a mind of loving-kindness without resentment toward my fellow monks? Does this quality exist in me or not?’ If the bhikkhu has not established a mind of loving-kindness without resentment toward his fellow monks, there will be those who say to him: ‘Please first establish a mind of loving-kindness toward your fellow monks.’ There will be those who say this to him.

(4) “Again, a bhikkhu who wishes to reprove another should examine himself thus: ‘Am I learned, and do I retain and preserve what I have learned? Have I learned much of those teachings that are good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end, with the right meaning and phrasing, which proclaim the perfectly complete and pure spiritual life? Have I retained them in mind, recited them verbally, mentally investigated them, and penetrated them well by view? Does this quality exist in me or not?’ If the bhikkhu is not learned … and has not penetrated them well by view, there will be those who say to him: ‘Please first learn the heritage.’ There will be those who say this to him.

(5) “Again, a bhikkhu who wishes to reprove another should examine himself thus: ‘Have both Pātimokkhas been well transmitted to me in detail, well analyzed, well mastered, well determined in terms of the rules and their detailed explication? Does there exist in me this quality or not?’ If both Pātimokkhas have not been well transmitted to him in detail … in terms of the rules and their detailed explication, and if, when asked: ‘Where did the Blessed One state this?’ he is unable to reply, there will be those who say to him: ‘Please first learn the discipline.’ There will be those who say this to him.

“It is with respect to these five things that he should examine himself.

“And what are the five things that he should establish in himself? [He should consider:] ‘(6) I will speak at a proper time, not at an improper time; (7) I will speak truthfully, not falsely; (8) I will speak gently, not harshly; (9) I will speak in a beneficial way, not in a harmful way; (10) I will speak with a mind of loving-kindness, not while harboring hatred.’ These are the five things that he should establish in himself.

“Bhikkhus, a bhikkhu who wishes to reprove another person should examine himself with respect to these five things and establish these five things in himself before he reproves the other person.”
(tr. Bhikkhu Bodhi, Numerical Discourses)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 8:15 AM
Title: Re: The Škoda Fabia Attention Test
Content:
I’ve no idea whether there is any link between one’s sex and one’s capacity for being mindful.

As for concentration, among meditation teachers in the Thai forest tradition it seems to be widely held —indeed virtually a commonplace— that women are generally able to enter deep states of concentration with far greater ease than men. Credit for this is invariably given to the fact that women don’t think very much.  

Lest any women here take offence at this notion, I hasten to add that in Thai the expression "doesn't think much" is actually a compliment, or at least a description of what is deemed a desirable state of affairs. By contrast, "thinks a lot" carries implications of the person being afflicted with worry, neurosis or even insanity.

Marjorie A. Muecke has an interesting paper on this, though her findings indicate a more complicated state of affairs than the glib generalization of the forest ajahns:
How the health and well‐being of families in northern Thailand might be gendered and class linked was assessed. First, ethnographic data were gathered to contextualize and elaborate the local meanings of the indigenous concepts kaan khit maak, “thinking‐a‐lot,” and kaan khit maak kern pai, “thinking‐too‐much.” What informants were thinking a lot about was assessed. The health implications of the concept of “thinking‐too‐much” were then evaluated in 318 middle‐aged women and their 24‐year‐old children (147 daughters and 154 sons) using the Symptoms of Stress Inventory (SOSI). Findings from the SOSI complemented those from fieldwork, demonstrating that both worrying and symptoms of stress were sex linked as well as associated with poverty and with life cycle stage.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/get.php?doi=10.1080%2F07399339409516143


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 6:07 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
The chart is already prepared but not yet the questionnaire.



http://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2015


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 12:59 AM
Title: Re: Can harsh speech be better than abstaining from harsh speech?
Content:
There are useful instructions in the Suttas about the questions one should ask oneself in order to decide whether or not one is competent to admonish someone. But it's nearly midnight here, so I'm off to bed. I'll post the sutta tomorrow if someone doesn't beat me to it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 15, 2015 12:49 AM
Title: Re: Can harsh speech be better than abstaining from harsh speech?
Content:
I don't think so. When a speech is generated by a wholesome volition it does of course increase the likelihood that it will benefit the listener. Nevertheless outcomes are never pivotal to making speech sammā or micchā. If they were, then the Buddha would have committed wrong speech when he called Devadatta a kheḷāsaka, for the outcome then was the latter’s lasting resentment. The criteria of sammā and micchā, however, are intentionalist (and very radically so — perhaps as radically so as in Abelardian ethics), not consequentialist.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 9:30 PM
Title: Re: hello <3
Content:
Would you care to clarify this? Do you mean that you prefer others to use the plural number when referring to you in the third person?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:55 PM
Title: Re: Can harsh speech be better than abstaining from harsh speech?
Content:
There is a kind of speech called niggayha or '[justified] rebuke of wrong-doing', which is reckoned to be right speech. Harsh speech (pharusā vācā) is the near-enemy of niggayha, i.e. an unskilful thing that may be easily confused with it. 

However, from an audience's point of view, niggayha and pharusā vācā may seem exactly alike. The difference between them lies entirely in the volition that prompts them: to reform or to wound. That being so, neither the speaker's choice of words nor the manner in which he delivers them will allow us to infallibly infer whether his speech counts as niggayha or as pharusā vācā.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:35 PM
Title: Re: hello <3
Content:
Hello Silas,

Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 6:35 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
Indeed you haven't. But unfortunately I shall probably do so if I go ahead and answer your question.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 5:59 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
Because Disciple asked my opinion. It wouldn't otherwise have even occurred to me to write about them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 5:42 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
There is not much I can say as it's such a long time since I last looked at BNP's policies. Just a few random thoughts...

I wouldn't myself vote for a party that was committed to restoring the death penalty.

I recall that on the economy the BNP is advocating virtually the same measures as Old Labour back in the 1960's and 1970's — socialist nationalization policies that failed miserably even when they were being implemented by a government of relatively intelligent people. There's no reason to think they would work any better if it were the boorish yahoos of BNP who were implementing them.

I think the party is right about the need to deal with the menace of Islam, but their program for dealing with it is not a sufficiently realistic one.

They are also right about the need to take Britain out of Europe. But then as Craig has informed us, even the Bolshevik baboons of the Communist Party have raised their hairy paws in support of that. So as far Euroscepticism goes the voters are spoilt for choice.

Whenever BNP candidates have been elected to local councils or to the European Parliament, they've consistently shown themselves to be lazy, stupid and incompetent.

And that's about all I can think of to say.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 1:12 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
I'm a floating voter, most often voting Tory but sometimes not if I think there's some pressing issue that the Tories aren't adequately addressing. The issue that I'm most exercised about at the moment is the need for Britain to recover her purloined national sovereignty, the independence of her lawmaking powers, and control of her borders from the EU. For this reason — and in spite of my mixed feelings about libertarianism — I'll be voting for UKIP.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 12:54 PM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
Good luck.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:27 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
Really? I think the fellow might have been pulling your leg. If he had told you that you would make a good candidate for President of the USA because you have two opposable thumbs, it would scarcely have been any more of a non sequitur.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 13, 2015 6:19 PM
Title: The Škoda Fabia Attention Test
Content:
How is your sati?


if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:12 AM
Title: Re: Wat Dhammakaya
Content:
11063206_1429142907383203_752934098_n.jpg (57.54 KiB) Viewed 3984 times


"Wat Dhammakaya, Please help the children of the Baan Nokkamin Foundation. We deposited our money with the Khlongchan Credit Union Cooperative but now we can't withdraw it."

_________________________________________

Baan Nokkamin foundation is a Christian organization that offers assistance to orphan, street children, underprivileged children, the elderly and addicts by developing and changing their lives, and strengthening them emotionally so that they are ready to face the world in the future.

http://baannokkamineng.weebly.com/about-me.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:39 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
It would likely be either that he's living alone and is unable to arrange a quorum of monks or (if he's a Thai) because he hasn't been issued with a preceptor's license. However, neither of these would be an impediment to his ordaining you as a sāmaṇera. If the monk in question is senior enough to give you nissaya, then he is senior enough to ordain you as a sāmaṇera. He wouldn't need to arrange a gathering of the sangha for this, for (unlike among the Tibetans) a Theravada sāmaṇera ordination doesn't need any witnesses. And if he's Thai he doesn't need a preceptor's license to ordain a sāmaṇera.

In your present state of doubt and confusion this might be an option worth considering if the monk will agree to it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 12, 2015 4:14 PM
Title: Re: Buddhism as a Religion
Content:
Your link is to a different Mahalī Sutta: that of the Saṃyutta Nikāya.

Here is the one from the Dīgha Nikāya:

http://www.buddhasutra.com/files/mahali_sutta.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 11, 2015 10:42 PM
Title: Re: Where pigs were molested ... ???
Content:
It seems to have cognates in all the germanic languages. In fact I remember way back when I was a philology student I learned the Icelandic form gylt (an ablauted form of the Old Norse gǫltr) before I had ever encountered the English one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:01 PM
Title: Re: Where pigs were molested ... ???
Content:
No. If the female boar is young and naïve, then she's a gilt, not a sow. Hey, I thought you were a farmer!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 11, 2015 7:32 PM
Title: Re: Where pigs were molested ... ???
Content:
Sister Upalavaṇṇā's translations seem to have been done in great haste and are extremely poor.

From the Dictionary of Pali Proper Names:
Sūkarakhatalena

A cave on the side of Gijjhakūta, where the Buddha stayed. There he preached the Dīghanakha (or Vedanāpariggaha) Sutta to Dīghanakha. Sāriputta was also present, and the sutta led to his attainment of arahantship (M.i.497, 501; DhA.i.79; UdA.189).

A conversation which the Buddha had there with Sāriputta is recorded in the Samyutta Nikāya (S.v.233f). The Commentary says (SA.iii.197) that, in the time of Kassapa Buddha, this cave was found as a hollow in the ground when the earth was yet growing, during the interval between the two Buddhas. One day a boar dug up the soil in the neighbourhood of the ground which concealed the cave. The sky god sent rain which washed away the soil, and the cave was disclosed.

A forest dweller saw it and looked after it, thinking it to be the dwelling of holy men. He removed the earth round it, fenced it in, cleaned it out, and, making it as beautiful as a golden bowl, furnished it with couch and stool and presented it to the Buddha. The cave was deep and could only be reached by climbing.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 11, 2015 7:06 PM
Title: Re: Problems in Gaṇakamoggallāna Sutta (MN107)
Content:
At Wat Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai, only the fittest visitors are able to make it straight up to the top of the dragon staircase without pausing for breath. For all the others, learning to do this would be a gradual training. As to what the training might entail, I think David Snyder —a stair-climbing enthusiast— would be the best person to field this question.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:56 PM
Title: Re: Hello, hope to help each other with Buddhism questions
Content:
Welcome to Dhamma Wheel!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:37 PM
Title: Re: Buddhism as a Religion
Content:
A rather bold claim. 

Its corollary, presumably, would be that any Buddhist scholar venturing any other opinion on the dating of the Dīgha is not a serious scholar. Is that in fact your view, or were you perhaps expressing yourself a little hastily?

Would you, for example, consider Buddhaghosa, Dhammapāla and Ledi and Mahasi Sayadaws to be not "serious Buddhist scholars"?

Or, confining ourselves to academic scholarship, are modern scholars like Cousins and Gethin who regard the Dīgha as comprising multiple strata being silly and frivolous? Are those scholars who voice scepticism about the whole higher critical project merely into scholarship for fun and laughter?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:27 PM
Title: Re: Buddhism as a Religion
Content:
I don't see how Ven. Aggacitta's contentions can be usefully discussed until this has been clarified. The venerable alludes to the "Wikipedia definition" and you yourself demanded to know whether Mr Man had bothered to read it, yet there is no one single definition on that page. Rather, there are two typical dictionary definitions followed by definitions from ten persons:

Peter Mandaville and Paul James
Edward Burnett Tylor
Clifford Geertz
Antoine Vergote
Emile Durkheim
William James
Frederick Ferré
Paul Tillich
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

As these thinkers have some very different notions as to what constitutes a 'religion', it would be helpful to know whose definition Ven. Aggacitta is basing his argument upon.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 10:21 PM
Title: Re: Buddhism as a Religion
Content:
From the Dīgha Nikāya — eighteen Suttas that cock a snook at protestant Buddhist philistinism and at the notion that the Buddha didn't found a religion.

 Ambaṭṭha Sutta
Kūṭadanta Sutta
Mahāli Sutta
Mahāsīhanāda Sutta
Kevaḍḍha Sutta
Tevijja Sutta
Mahāpadāna Sutta
Mahāparinibbāna Sutta
Mahāsudassana Sutta
Janavasabha Sutta
Mahāgovinda Sutta
Mahāsamaya Sutta
Sakkapañha Sutta
Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta
Aggañña Sutta
Sampasādanīya Sutta
Lakkhaṇa Sutta
Āṭānāṭiya Sutta


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 8:13 PM
Title: Re: Buddhism as a Religion
Content:
I count twelve definitions on the Wikipedia "Religion" page, with the entry-writers admitting that even these are not comprehensive. To which one is Ven. Aggacitta referring?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion#Definitions


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:41 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
Not really. For example, regarding Vinaya in most village wats you wouldn’t learn enough to be able to behave in a manner that was acceptable even in a city wat, let alone a forest wat. All you’d learn would be the minimal standard of good behaviour that needed to be observed to avoid scandalizing the local villagers.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 10:40 AM
Title: Re: Quit your job if you work with Buddhists
Content:
It is possible if they are members of Soka Gakkai.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 10:24 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
The only reason I can see for choosing a monastery or sub-tradition or nikāya of the kind that would lead to your future opportunities being greatly circumscribed, is if you happen to have great faith in a particular teacher who belongs to that monastery or sub-tradition or nikāya. Otherwise it's best to choose something that will leave you with a broad range of options.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 4:20 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
I think your link is out of date: the ATI site seems to have removed the html version of Buddhist Monastic Code, leaving only a pdf file of it. 

The link below is to an html version of the Nissaya chapter:

http://elibrary.ibc.ac.th/files/accesstoinsight/html/lib/authors/thanissaro/bmc1/bmc1.ch02.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 4:16 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
I'm not personally familiar with it, but it bears every appearance of being bona fide. No turbocharged supersonic ordinations though. It seems the policy of the incumbent, Ven. Sathi, is to first ordain and train men as sāmaṇeras and later send them to Sri Lanka for higher ordination and further training.

http://www.triplegem.org/BecomeAMonk.php


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 2:31 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
It is, or at least used to be, the case that at Wat Dhammakaya you needed a master's degree to become one of the permanent monks there, though not to be merely a participant in one of their mass temporary ordinations. 

Other than that, acceptance for residence in a wat is simply based on the abbot's fiat. Over the years I've translated for many westerners who wanted to ordain at this or that wat in Thailand and were applying to the abbot for residence. I've never known an abbot to question a candidate about his meditation experience, his knowledge of the texts, or even to ask him what his beliefs were. Mostly they were just concerned about practical matters such as whether the candidate was in good health, would be able to get up early in the morning, do without food after midday, and digest sticky rice with nam prik (or whatever the staple food happened to be in that region).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 10, 2015 12:39 AM
Title: Re: Fake Buddha Quote?
Content:
They are certainly there. MN 37 (Cūḷataṇhāsaṅkhaya Sutta):
Then Sakka, ruler of gods, went to the Blessed One, and after paying homage to him, he stood at one side and asked: “Venerable sir, how in brief is a bhikkhu liberated in the destruction of craving, one who has reached the ultimate end, the ultimate security from bondage, the ultimate holy life, the ultimate goal, one who is foremost among gods and humans?”

“Here, ruler of gods, a bhikkhu has heard that nothing is worth adhering to. When a bhikkhu has heard that nothing is worth adhering to, he directly knows everything; having directly known everything, he fully understands everything; having fully understood everything, whatever feeling he feels, whether pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant, he abides contemplating impermanence in those feelings, contemplating fading away, contemplating cessation, contemplating relinquishment. Contemplating thus, he does not cling to anything in the world. When he does not cling, he is not agitated. When he is not agitated, he personally attains Nibbāna. He understands: ‘Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.’ Briefly, it is in this way, ruler of gods, that a bhikkhu is liberated in the destruction of craving, one who has reached the ultimate end, the ultimate security from bondage, the ultimate holy life, the ultimate goal, one who is foremost among gods and humans.”

Then Sakka, ruler of gods, delighting and rejoicing in the Blessed One’s words, paid homage to the Blessed One, and keeping him on his right, he vanished at once.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 8, 2015 8:55 PM
Title: Re: Parents kamma
Content:
To suggest that this is the case for everyone would be to over-generalize. If people feel drawn to the homeless brahmacariyā in their youth, are possessed of the requisite restraint to live such a life properly, and accomplished enough as yogis to be content living such a life, then opting for family life would be an inferior choice: they would be settling for a lower good when they're capable of a higher one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 8, 2015 7:21 PM
Title: Re: Kasina meditations taught by the Buddha or no?
Content:
The kasiṇas are listed in the Suttas, though the list is slightly different from that expounded in the Visuddhimagga:

Pathavī-kasiṇa – earth totality.
Āpo-kasiṇa – water totality.
Tejo-kasiṇa – fire totality.
Vāyo-kasiṇa – air totality.
Nīla-kasiṇa – blue totality.
Pīta-kasiṇa – yellow totality.
Lohita-kasiṇa – red totality.
Odāta-kasiṇa – white totality.
Ākāsa-kasiṇa – space totality.
Viññāṇa-kasiṇa – consciousness totality.

In the Visuddhimagga viññāṇa-kasiṇa is replaced with āloka-kasiṇa, the light totality.

As to scepticism about whether the kasiṇas were intended by the Buddha as devices for developing the jhānas, it’s true that this is not explicitly stated in the Suttas but is from the Visuddhimagga. But then the Suttas say very little at all about the kasiṇas beyond listing them. So, if people are sceptical about whether the Visuddhimagga gets things right, then it seems to me they have three choices:

1. Make their own wild guess as to what kasiṇas are all about.
2. Treat the kasiṇas as a mystery that they don’t understand.
3. Embrace one of the non-Theravādin expositions of this doctrine.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 8, 2015 12:08 PM
Title: Re: Having trouble accepting Buddhism as truth... and rejecting it as truth.
Content:
It's an old argument. Essentially the video's narrator states at length what was stated in brief by George Bernard Shaw in the preface to one of his plays. The Shavian argument was that in order to be affected by the fires of hell one must have a body; the body must be either combustible or incombustible; if it's combustible then it will be burnt to a frazzle within seconds; if it's incombustible, then getting burnt might (for all we know) be as delectable as eating strawberries and cream.

In both arguments the obvious weakness is the assumption that the bodies with which we are acquainted in the human and animal realms are the only possible forms that bodies can take, and that the manner in which they can be hurt is the only manner in which a body can be hurt.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 8, 2015 10:15 AM
Title: Re: jhanas and nirodha?...
Content:
Whoops! Thanks for the correction.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 8, 2015 7:57 AM
Title: Re: jhanas and nirodha?...
Content:
Bad translation. If it meant the mental faculty (manindriya) then it would be singular. As indriyāni paribhinnāni is plural, it is the five sense-faculties that are clear.

Bhikkhu Bodhi's endnote:
MA says that the faculties during the ordinary course of life, being impinged upon by sense objects, are afflicted and soiled like a mirror set up at a crossroads; but the faculties of one in cessation become exceptionally clear like a mirror placed in a case and deposited in a box.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 8, 2015 1:44 AM
Title: Re: Are the number of beings in existence decreasing over time?
Content:
If the world of living beings (sattaloka) comprised an infinite number of beings, then the world they inhabit (okāsaloka) would need to be of unlimited extent to contain them all. But whether the world is bounded or boundless or both or neither are among the things undeclared by the Buddha. And so the supposed finitude and supposed infinitude of the number of living beings are both just-so stories: either might be true, but there's no particular reason to think one more likely than the other.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 7, 2015 9:38 PM
Title: Re: Are the number of beings in existence decreasing over time?
Content:
In the sutta Uttiya wants to know what proportion of beings will be released from suffering. The OP wants to know if fewer beings will exist whenever a released being passes away. Though it's conceivable the Buddha might have given the same answer to both questions, they are nonetheless different questions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 7, 2015 6:00 PM
Title: Re: Are the number of beings in existence decreasing over time?
Content:
Not to the sort of animals with which we ourselves are acquainted, but certainly to the animal-like creatures that we don't get to see, like kinnaras, kinnarīs, and Sakka's celestial elephant Erāvaṇa.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 7, 2015 5:27 PM
Title: Re: Wat Dhammakaya
Content:
Ugghh. These are the most nazified pictures I've ever seen from this ghastly outfit. When one takes the nighttime photos and changes them to greyscale, only the presence of monks makes Wat Dhammakaya's rally at all distinguishable from Albert Speer’s “Cathedral of Light” at Nürnberg.





cathedral.jpg (399.93 KiB) Viewed 4228 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 7, 2015 11:35 AM
Title: Re: Are the number of beings in existence decreasing over time?
Content:
The spontaneity of a spontaneously-generated (opapātika) being does not consist in its arising without any external cause, but in its arising without the agency of pre-existing living matter. All beings that are not egg-born, womb-born or moisture-born are opapātika. Since every opapātika being is produced by some other being’s decease, the fact that some beings are opapātika has no bearing on the question of the number of beings.
“Sāriputta, there are these four kinds of generation. What are the four? Egg-born generation, womb-born generation, moisture-born generation, and spontaneous generation.

“... What is spontaneous generation? There are gods and denizens of hell and certain human beings and some beings in the lower worlds; this is called spontaneous generation..”
(MN. Mahāsīhanāda Sutta)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 7, 2015 9:14 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
There are broadly four kinds of monastery in Thailand: forest wats for ascetic contemplatives, Burmese-style meditation centres for scholarly contemplatives, city wats for scholars, and rural village wats for ritualists.

The great majority of western monks in Thailand live in forest wats or meditation centres; a minority live in city wats; few if any live in village wats.

To ordain in a forest wat you will typically be expected to go through the wat’s standard ordination program. The details of this will vary from one place to another, but you can normally count on it being at least six months before you’re accepted.

To ordain in a meditation centre you’ll be expected to be committed to whatever method they practise there. This usually means you’ll need to complete at least one or two retreats at the centre before they’ll consider you for ordination.

Ordination in a city wat used to be very easy for westerners but nowadays it’s unpredictable and usually depends on how good your connections are. If you have a Thai friend who will introduce you to the abbot and vouch for your good character, then you might be ordained within a week or two. If you don’t have such a person then it will depend on what the abbot thinks of westerners in general or what sort of impression you in particular make upon him. The likeliest response you’ll get will be a polite suggestion that you go and apply at Wat Pa Nanachat: “there are lots of westerners there, so you’re sure to be happy.”

As for village wats, these places hand out ordinations like candy, but the drawbacks in ordaining in one are too great to make it a worthwhile option for a westerner.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 7, 2015 12:56 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
Yes. There's no monastery in Thailand that's going to make anyone wait for years. Even at places like Wat Pa Nanachat, which insist on a much more thorough preparatory period before granting bhikkhu ordination, you'd at least be a sāmaṇera by the end of your first year there. Nonetheless it would be better to let go of the idea of getting it done quickly, if only because your eagerness is liable to be construed as impatience, which is certain to make an unfavourable impression on the Thais.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 6, 2015 10:57 PM
Title: Re: mangala sutta question
Content:
I don't know of any conventions that can be applied where the sense alone will not suffice to make one reading necessary.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 6, 2015 8:51 PM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
Thanks for these details. One more question: would I be right in thinking that the occasion when you visited a temple and were rebuffed is to date the only encounter that you've had with Buddhist monasticism?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 6, 2015 8:35 PM
Title: Re: mangala sutta question
Content:
Literally it would be "whose mind", but the more modern idiom is "He whose mind..."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 6, 2015 8:21 PM
Title: Re: mangala sutta question
Content:
Could you say more about the distinction between a nexus and a junction? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 6, 2015 9:14 AM
Title: Re: mangala sutta question
Content:
Alternatively:
“... a certain devatā of stunning beauty, illuminating the entire Jeta’s Grove, approached the Blessed One.”
(Bodhi, Connected Discourses &amp; Numerical Discourses)

“... a certain deity of beautiful appearance who illuminated the whole of the Blind Men’s Grove approached the venerable Kumāra Kassapa.”
(Ñāṇamoli, Middle Length Discourses, Vammika Sutta)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 6, 2015 6:36 AM
Title: Re: Student Of The Path
Content:
Anumodanā!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 6, 2015 12:06 AM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
Yes.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 11:00 PM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
Sure, but they're pretty easy to explain, don't you think?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 7:12 PM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
Yes, they use that too. For example in the Thai translation of the King James Bible we see “divine power” rendered as เดชอันศักดิ์สิทธิ์ [det an saksit] and (in the same verse) “godliness” is rendered ทางที่เป็นอย่างพระเจ้า [thaang thii pen yaang phra jao].

“According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.”

ด้วยเห็นแล้วว่าฤทธิ์เดชอันศักดิ์สิทธิ์ของพระองค์ ได้ให้สิ่งสารพัดแก่เราที่จะให้มีชีวิตและทางที่เป็นอย่างพระเจ้า โดยรู้จักพระองค์ผู้ได้ทรงเรียกเราให้ถึงสง่าราศีและคุณธรรม
(II Peter 1:3)

But more often Thai Christians reserve “saksit” for translating ideas connected with sanctification, consecration and holiness.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 6:49 PM
Title: Re: Who gets Mindfulness 'Right'? An Engaged Buddhist Perspective
Content:
No, in the Suttas micchā-sati is merely included in the list of eight (or ten) wrongnesses, but is never defined.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 6:47 PM
Title: Re: Who gets Mindfulness 'Right'? An Engaged Buddhist Perspective
Content:
Yes, but according to the Theravada what is called 'mindfulness' in the expression 'wrong mindfulness' is not actually mindfulness at all but rather a term for unprofitable recollecting of the kind described in the Anuttariya Sutta (AN.iii.328). This kind of recollecting is not carried out by sati cetasika:
"Here, someone recollects the gain of a son, a wife, or wealth; or else they recollect various kinds of gain; or else they recollect an ascetic or brahmin of wrong views, of wrong practice. There is this kind of recollection; this I do not deny. But this kind of recollection is low, common, worldly, ignoble, and unbeneficial; it does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and nibbāna."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 6:09 PM
Title: Re: Is Buddhism closer to Christianity than atheism?
Content:
Resorting to dynamic-equivalence or nearest-natural-equivalence translation, Christians have little difficulty translating the concept of divinity into languages belonging to non-theistic or polytheistic cultures. What they typically do is to draw upon the target language's existing numinous terms (if there be any) or else expand the semantic range of terms pertaining to the secular hierarchy. The former approach is taken in Sinhala, where use is made of a word rooted in the country's polytheistic Buddhist cosmology; the latter approach is taken in Thai, which draws upon secular conceptions of lordship and in Lao which builds upon the notion of the heavenly origin of royalty.

Thus:

• Sinhala: දිව්යමය — "deva-ordained".

• Thai: ของพระเจ้า / เกี่ยวกับพระเจ้า — "of the Lord" / "connected with the Lord".

• Lao: ຈາກສະຫວັນ — "from heaven".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 5:30 PM
Title: Re: Who gets Mindfulness 'Right'? An Engaged Buddhist Perspective
Content:
In the context of the five faculties and five powers, all five mental factors are always beautiful (sobhaṇa). Outside of that context, in their more everyday occurrences, mindfulness, faith and wisdom remain always beautiful. It is concentration and energy that are classed as ethically variable.

Applying this to the case of Brevik, it may well be that some kind of meditation enabled him to be very concentrated when he was killing (since one-pointedness of mind is ethically variable), but had mindfulness arisen in him for any significant duration he would have put down his gun.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 12:07 PM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
Some people arrive in Asia and are accepted for ordination within days. Others are required to spend a few months as a novice first. Some monasteries have fixed ordination programs for all would-be monks, while others treat each applicant individually. 

But rather than worrying about the speed of the thing, it would help if you would care to relate a little more about yourself: how old are you? What has your involvement with Buddhism consisted in up to now? What do you envisage doing as a monk? etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 10:59 AM
Title: Re: Brahma, Sakka, deva-gods, prayer, and Buddhism
Content:
I think the more usual way that Sinhalese preachers put it (e.g. when delivering exhortations to observe the Uposatha-sīla) is that a householder who undertakes and keeps the eight precepts for a day is spending that day living like an arahant. This notion finds support in various suttas in the Aṅguttara Nikāya. 

As for the deva part, this is derived from the Cūḷaniddesa and Vibhaṅga's description of the three kinds of devas: devas by arising (= catumahārājika devas, tāvatiṃsā devas, tusitā devas... etc.), devas by convention (= kings, queens, princes and princesses), and devas by purification (= Buddhas, paccekabuddhas, and arahant disciples). And so by keeping the eight precepts one spends the day being a deva of the third type: a visuddhi-deva.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 10:35 AM
Title: Re: What defines a good teacher?
Content:
It means that from the Buddha's point of view it was a mistake for him to start a sāsanā. For the qualifications that would render a Buddhist competent to teach one must consult other sources.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 5, 2015 7:22 AM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
No, that isn't possible. Ordination is given by the sangha, not by any single bhikkhu. And after ordination the new monk will be required to live with his preceptor or some other monk for some years; he can't live alone.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 4, 2015 9:07 PM
Title: Re: Ordination first steps
Content:
There isn't any central authority for all Theravada bhikkhus. There are administrative structures for the national sanghas of different countries and then for the individual nikāyas within those countries. But this stuff needn't concern a would-be monk, for decisions about ordaining people are made at the grassroots level by the abbots of particular monasteries, so one doesn't need to approach anybody higher up.

It is possible to ordain in Asia or America.

As for the first step, I would suggest that you find out what monasteries there are in your locality and go along and introduce yourself.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 4, 2015 9:52 AM
Title: Re: Hi there!
Content:
Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 4, 2015 8:25 AM
Title: Re: Applying for a volunteer job - advice needed
Content:
I haven't myself observed anything in your posts that ought to be avoided. If you conduct yourself in the real world as you do here, I don't doubt that things will go swimmingly.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 4, 2015 3:19 AM
Title: Re: Jivaka
Content:
There isn't any Vinaya rule requiring monks to make regular visits to a physician. 

Here in Thailand when Thaksin Shinawatra was still the Prime Minister, a programme was instituted that would provide every monk in the country with a free annual health check. However, I only got to have one such check myself, whereupon Thaksin was overthrown in a coup. Then, when Abhisit Vejjajiva became PM one of the first things he did was to rescind both the 30-baht universal healthcare programme and the annual check-up programme for Buddhist monks.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 3, 2015 10:09 PM
Title: Re: Hello, my name is Guy
Content:
Chào mừng bạn đến Pháp Luân.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 3, 2015 9:47 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
Beyond the two clarifications I've already provided (to Spiny and Mkoll) I would prefer not to take the thread's digression into heresiology any farther.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 3, 2015 2:30 AM
Title: Re: Translation of Kusala Sutta - English to Devanagari Script
Content:
No cedaṃ, bhikkhave, sakkā abhavissa kusalaṃ bhāvetuṃ, nāhaṃ evaṃ vadeyyaṃ: ‘kusalaṃ, bhikkhave, bhāvethā’ ti.


No / cedaṃ / bhikkhave / sakkā / abhavissa / kusalaṃ / bhāvetuṃ,
Not / if this / O monks / possible / would be / wholesome / to develop

nāhaṃ / evaṃ / vadeyyaṃ / kusalaṃ / bhikkhave / bhāvethā / ti.
not I / thus / would say / wholesome / O monks / develop! / [speech-indicating particle]


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 3, 2015 12:46 AM
Title: Re: Are these quotes reconcilable?
Content:
I don't understand what this means. Do you have a reference for it?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 3, 2015 12:06 AM
Title: Re: Asking for guidance
Content:
They're Buddhadāsa-isms, though also cited a lot by Ajahn Chah's western disciples.

http://www.buddhanet.net/budasa6.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 2, 2015 10:17 AM
Title: Re: Can you be mindful of your last breath?
Content:
Why not? Respiratory failure doesn’t instantaneously result in brain death. Nor does cardiac failure. So even on materialist assumptions (where cessation of consciousness is identified with brain death) it would still be possible for a dying person to know the beginning, middle and end of her last breath.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 2, 2015 9:44 AM
Title: Re: Second
Content:
From reading Dave's link it seems the map doesn't tell one much at all about the numbers of each religion, for it's based only upon the numbers attending religious services. So the fact that the Bahá'í Faith, for example, comes second in South Carolina may (for all we know) indicate little more than that Bahá'í meetings are more fun in that part of the country.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 1, 2015 10:37 PM
Title: Re: Second
Content:
Interesting. Though I'm bemused as to what particular appeal the Bahá'í Faith might have for South Carolinians and why such a quantity of Hindus decided to settle in Delaware.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 1, 2015 6:52 AM
Title: Re: Why most published neuroscience findings are false
Content:
Interesting.

Do you happen to know if there are any "statistically high-powered" reports on the effects of meditation, or are they all in the 20% region?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Mar 1, 2015 6:41 AM
Title: Re: What exactly is meant by rapture
Content:
See also the http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.007.nypo.html.

That gladness and rapture ensue upon the abandoning of the hindrances (or of "evil unwholesome states") is not specifically a Dīgha thing at all; it's a teaching to be found in all five Nikāyas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 28, 2015 10:52 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
But what is it that persuades you of this?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 28, 2015 9:46 AM
Title: Re: What does Mara want?
Content:
Actually Māra doesn't especially want to do evil nor for his subjects to do evil. In this respect he's not like the Christian devil who can only tempt one to evil. Māra is perfectly content for people to do kusala kammas, provide that it is sub-jhānic and sub-ariyan kusala — kusala that will ripen as Kāmāvacara-bound pleasure. Not only is he content with this, he will even try to tempt people towards it, for example by telling a young would-be monk that it will be better for him to devote his younger years to indulgence in sense-pleasures and the accumulation of merit and postpone going forth until old age (when he will be much less likely to make progress in the brahmacariyā).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 28, 2015 9:24 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
Commentarial tradition holds that a yogi is incombustible in nirodha-samāpatti. Perhaps he is immune to other kinds of harm too. But if not, then killing him would obviously be an anantariyaka kamma, for it's more than just heat that distinguishes him from a corpse:

“When a bhikkhu is dead, friend, has completed his term, his bodily formations have ceased and are quite still, his verbal formations have ceased and are quite still, his mental formations have ceased and are quite still, his life is exhausted, his heat has subsided, and his faculties are broken up. When a bhikkhu has entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling, his bodily formations have ceased and are quite still, his verbal formations have ceased and are quite still, his mental formations have ceased and are quite still, his life is unexhausted, his heat has not subsided, his faculties are quite whole.” (M.i.296).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:32 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
A Buddhist who holds abortion to be pāṇātipāta may be be in favour of making the practice illegal, but won't necessarily be so. In civic matters he may be a secularist who holds that religious people have no business imposing upon the general population moral values based upon undemonstrable faith claims. This happens to be my own view; though I'd rather women chose not to have abortions, I don't think the law should forbid their doing so. And so whenever Roman Catholics (who do think their Church's moral teachings should be enforced by the state) come to me with their petitions demanding a ban on abortion, I always refuse to sign.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:18 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
Though it is often asserted (e.g. by Ajahns Brahmavaṃso and Sujāto) that the stage of a pregnancy is relevant either to the fact of whether any given abortion amounts to pāṇātipāta or, in cases where it is pāṇātipāta, to the weightiness of the killing, I don’t think there is any support for this claim in the texts. That is, there is no suggestion that killing an unborn child is less bad if one does it at the kalala stage rather than at the abbuda stage, or at the abbuda stage rather than at the the pesī stage... etc. With the killing of animals weightiness is said (in the commentaries) to hinge on the creature’s size, but with humans it hinges on the victim’s ariyan attainment (if any), remoteness from indulgence in sensual pleasures, and standard of sīla. To abort, say, an unborn sotāpanna, would be equally weighty no matter whether one did it at the kalala, abbuda, pesī, ghana or pasākha stage of the pregnancy.

“The doctrine of rebirth, moreover, sees the new conceptus as not just a ‘potential person’ evolving for the first time from nothing, but as a continuing entity bearing the complete karmic encoding of a recently deceased individual. If we rewind the karmic tape a short way, perhaps just a few hours, to the point when death occurred in the previous life, we would typically find an adult man or woman fulfilling all the requirements of ‘personhood’. The bodily form at rebirth has changed, but the bodily form of human beings changes constantly, and according to Buddhist teachings we have before us at conception the same individual only now at an immature state of physical development. Given the continuity of the human subject through thousands of lifetimes, it seems arbitrary to apply labels such as ‘actual’ or ‘potential’ to any given stage and to claim that the individual repeatedly gains and then loses the moral protection of the first precept.

“It is sometimes suggested that Buddhism regards late abortions as morally worse than earlier ones. This view is based on a remark of Buddhaghosa in his commentary on the Vinaya (MA.i.198) to the effect that the size of the victim is one of two important criteria (the other being sanctity) in assessing the gravity of breaches of the first precept. Since a fetus is considerably larger at the end of its term, it has been argued that late abortions are worse than earlier ones. This line of argument, however, fails to appreciate that Buddhaghosa’s comments with respect to size were made purely with reference to animals. Thus, as we saw in Chapter 3, it is worse to kill a large animal, such as an elephant, than a mouse, because it involves a greater degree of effort and determination, and the will to cause harm on the part of the assailant is greater. Clearly, the criterion of size is not meant to be applied in the case of human beings, otherwise it would lead to the ludicrous conclusion that killing large people was worse than killing small people. The argument that early abortions are morally less serious because the fetus is smaller, therefore, is based upon a misunderstanding of Buddhaghosa’s criterion.”
(Damien Keown, Buddhist Ethics, pp. 90-1)



Indaka Sutta

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Rājagaha on Mount Inda’s Peak, the haunt of the yakkha Indaka Then the yakkha Indaka approached the Blessed One and addressed him in verse:

“As the Buddhas say that form is not the soul, 
How then does one obtain this body? 
From where do one’s bones and liver come? 
How is one begotten in the womb?”

[The Blessed One:]
“First there is the kalala; 
From the kalala comes the abbuda; 
From the abbuda the pesī is produced; 
From the pesī the ghana arises; 
From the ghana emerge the limbs, 
The head-hair, body-hair, and nails.

And whatever food the mother eats—
The meals and drink that she consumes—
By this the being there is maintained, 
The person inside the mother’s womb.”
(tr. Bhikkhu Bodhi)

Translator’s notes:
The Pāli terms refer to the different stages in the formation of the embryo. Spk: The kalala is the size of a drop of oil placed on the tip of a thread made from three strands of wool. After a week from the kalala comes the abbuda, which is the colour of meat-washing water. After another week, from the abbuda the pesī is produced, which is similar to molten tin [Spk-pṭ: in shape, but in colour it is pink]. After still another week, from the pesī the ghana arises, which has the shape of a chicken egg. In the fifth week, from the ghana emerge the limbs: five pimples appear, the rudiments of the arms, legs, and head. But the head-hairs, body-hairs, and nails are not produced until the forty-second week.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 28, 2015 12:17 AM
Title: Re: 'Thai' incense
Content:
Nowadays about 98% of it comprises cored sticks with a mild sandalwood scent. I would guess this has been the case for some time, though I haven't actually studied the history of incense-making here.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 27, 2015 6:46 PM
Title: Re: What exactly is meant by rapture
Content:
But what if being free from things that disturb the mind was in fact the thing that you wanted? In that case, wouldn't being free of those things be accurately describable as both a freedom from things that disturb and a delight in attaining the desired object?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 27, 2015 6:02 PM
Title: Re: What exactly is meant by rapture
Content:
How are “delight in the attaining of the desired object” and “enjoyment of the taste of what is acquired” incompatible with “being born of detachment” and “being born of samādhi”?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 27, 2015 9:49 AM
Title: Re: What Dhamma Book are you reading right now?
Content:
There's an American antinatalist poet, Jim Crawford (aka "metamorphhh") much influenced by Benatar.



https://antinatalism.blogspot.com/search/label/Poetry/

https://www.youtube.com/user/metamorphhh/videos


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 27, 2015 1:22 AM
Title: Ruth Denison, RIP
Content:
"Ruth Denison was one of the first female dharma teachers in the West, renowned for pioneering an unconventional, body-centered approach to Buddhist practice and for launching hundreds of students on the Buddhist path. Earlier this month, she suffered a massive stroke and, according to her wishes, received no life-prolonging intervention. Denison spent her last days, surrounded by students and friends, at home at Dhamma Dena, the rambling, desert retreat center she founded in the late 1970s near Joshua Tree, California. She died on the morning of February 26, at the age of 92."
http://www.tricycle.com/blog/ruth-denison-western-dharma-pioneer-and-vipassana-innovator-dies-92

http://www.lionsroar.com/pioneering-buddhist-teacher-ruth-denison-dies-age-92/


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:25 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
You don't appear to understand what I'm saying. To put it as simply as I can:

(1) Most of the posts in this thread are about what sort of action abortion is.
(2) Hardly any of the posts are about what women should or shouldn't do.
(3) Therefore your statement that this thread is "just [...] opinions about what women should or shouldn't do," is false.
(4) As I was sure that you had no intention of deliberately lying, I charitably attributed your false statement to inattentive reading.

I hope this clarifies.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:00 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 26, 2015 8:54 PM
Title: Re: Is Nibbana and Tathagatha the same?
Content:
I haven't time to listen to the talk, but if you mean that Goldstein replaces 'tathāgata' with 'self' in the context of the four questions, this would be in accordance with the commentarial treatment of the passage, wherein 'tathāgata' here is not treated as being limited to Buddhas, but rather is taken to be a conventional term for living beings of any sort. And so to ask if a tathāgata or a person (puggala) or a being (bhūta) or a creature (satta) or a self (attā) or a soul (jīva) exist after death is one and the same question.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 26, 2015 8:21 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
If that’s how it seems to you, then I submit that you are allowing your Women's Lib imagination to prevail over your reading comprehension skills. Although what you describe is very often the case when “Buddhism and Abortion” comes up for discussion, in the present thread it’s the very opposite of what has happened. As “Buddhism and Abortion” threads go, the present one has been far more calm and measured than is usually the case. In large part this is because all but one of the contributors have confined themselves to the relatively unemotive question of whether, according to the Dhamma, the aborting of an unborn child amounts to the killing of a human being, and if so, at what stage in the pregnancy it becomes an act of this type. With the exception of the abortion advocate Blue Lotus, contributors have avoided making it a discussion about what a woman should or shouldn’t do. 

In short, it’s a thread that’s been largely concerned with positive description rather than normative prescription. And as for the contributors being largely or entirely male, as far as I know, people’s capacity for studying the relevant texts, reflecting on them and arriving at a sound conclusion, is neither diminished by ownership of a penis nor augmented by ownership of a vagina. It’s a genitalia-neutral issue.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 26, 2015 11:38 AM
Title: Re: Arguments/Discussions affecting my peace/meditation
Content:
http://www.wisdompubs.org/book/middle-length-discourses-buddha/selections/middle-length-discourses-2-sabbasava-sutta

If treating the man as an āsava to be abandoned by enduring is proving ineffective (as seems to be the case), then I suggest you treat him as an āsava to be abandoned by avoiding.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 26, 2015 11:18 AM
Title: Re: Thanissaro/radical acceptance
Content:
Here's an interview with Tara Brach on this subject. I haven't yet listened to it myself as it's only at around 3:00 am that my internet connection is fast enough to view youtube.

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 25, 2015 9:59 PM
Title: Re: Burmese monastery in Thailand concentrated on Vinaya
Content:
If it's Wat Tha Ma O, then it's in Lampang and not particularly near any border. The Vinaya study there —if it's the same as it used to be— entails memorization of the Pāṭimokkha and study of the commentary to it (Kaṅkhāvitaraṇī).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 24, 2015 9:40 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
Among the Thai ajahns I don’t know of any who don’t teach this.

As for the non-Thai (i.e. mostly western) ajahns, with these you can predict it with a fairly high degree of accuracy from the monk’s biography. The non-eternalists for the most part comprise those who had some background in relatively orthodox strains of Theravada Buddhism before they got mixed up with the forest tradition. Examples would include Ajahns Khemadhammo, Tiradhammo and Sujāto, who all began as Mahasi practitioners; Ajahn Viradhammo, who began as a Ñāṇavīra enthusiast after Sāmaṇera Bodhesako introduced him to the man’s teachings; and Ajahn Brahmavamso, who began with the Samatha Trust, a British group that combines samatha meditation with Abhidhamma study. All of these appear to have avoided the semi-eternalist error that’s endemic to the Thai forest tradition. But those monks who had no previous background in Buddhism before they stumbled across the Thai forest tradition have for the most part not avoided it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 24, 2015 12:50 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
Though Sāti is clearly told this, one has to keep in mind that extremely few Thai monks in the Ajahn Mun or Ajahn Chah forest traditions will have read the Mahātaṇhāsaṅkhaya Sutta, or indeed any sutta beyond the handful that all monks are expected to memorize.

As for the western monks in these traditions, I expect most of them have read the sutta, or at least will get around to doing so sooner or later. But this reading seldom does them any good for sutta-reading is typically something they do merely for inspiration rather than seeking right-view guidance. In matters of view they are for the most part satisfied with the semi-eternalism and primitive animism that they’ve imbibed from their Thai ajahns. And so whatever these monks read in the suttas will be interpreted by them in a way that will square it with their ajahns’ teachings. Upon encountering the Buddha’s reproof of Sāti, a typical response is to insist that the the Buddha is talking about viññāṇa and this isn’t the same as the supposed primordial citta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 24, 2015 12:39 PM
Title: Re: The Very Idea of Buddhist History (DWM thread)
Content:
Is this what you meant to say, or did you leave out a "don't" ?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 23, 2015 7:31 PM
Title: Re: Questions about becoming a monk
Content:
What the person wrote has nothing to do with Theravada monasticism. He is describing how matters stand for westerners ordaining in the Tibetan tradition, where the practice of almsgiving to monastics is effectively defunct.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Feb 22, 2015 3:57 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
I didn't ignore anything. I logged on only an hour ago, read through the posts, answered one of yours and then wrote replies to private messages that were of greater urgency than your questions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Feb 22, 2015 3:16 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
Here is a http://store.pariyatti.org/Comprehensive-Manual-of-Abhidhamma-A--PDF-eBook_p_4362.html to Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation of the Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha. I recommend you read chapter 1 for an understanding of how consciousnesses are classified in the Abhidhamma, chapters 3 and 4 for an introduction to the basics of abhidhammic momentarism in the cognitive process, chapter 8 for an account of conditional relations, and then, hopefully, you'll be ready for chapter 5: an application of the foregoing to the rebirth process.

Now you may not approve or agree with what you read in this text, but armed with your new-found knowledge you will at least know better than to pose questions premised upon Marxian claptrap or ill-conceived attempts to harmonize Buddhist khaṇikavāda with modern embryology and epiphenomenalist assumptions about consciousness.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 20, 2015 11:05 AM
Title: Re: Not meditating facing the south, and some other stuff
Content:
I expect Lord Yama has weightier matters on his mind than the question of where people's feet are pointing when they sleep.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 20, 2015 9:29 AM
Title: Re: Right Action and Right Livelihood
Content:
There's really no call for such wild guesswork. The texts are perfectly clear about what right livelihood means for samaṇas. You will find it outlined in the http://zugangzureinsicht.org/html/lib/authors/thanissaro/bmc2/bmc2.ch10_en.html and the sīla section of the http://tipitaka.wikia.com/wiki/Brahmajala_Sutta. It's principally about depending on alms and not resorting to fraud, hinting or other roguish tactics to induce people to give you alms.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 20, 2015 7:48 AM
Title: Re: Seeking ordination 2: the revival of the aspiration
Content:
No problem. I never suspected that you were being disrespectful.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 20, 2015 2:14 AM
Title: Re: Hello!
Content:
Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 20, 2015 2:12 AM
Title: Re: Questions about becoming a monk
Content:
http://www.wattamaoh.org/home/eng

e-mail of abbot (Sayadaw Gandhasārābhivaṃsa): tamaoh24 (at) gmail (dot) com


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 20, 2015 1:55 AM
Title: Re: Seeking ordination 2: the revival of the aspiration
Content:
They conform to my prejudices about how monks should be occupying their time in the formative years of their training. That is to say, I think that anyone ordaining into the Theravada tradition should be aiming to master the tradition in its totality. This is not done by confining one's studies to just the four Nikāyas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 19, 2015 9:49 PM
Title: Re: Seeking ordination 2: the revival of the aspiration
Content:
Well, not really, for the monasteries that I myself hold in high regard would be antithetical to your current set of enthusiasms. What I would suggest is that since it's probably going to take you some time to save up for your trip, you should seek out and initiate correspondence with monks who share your interest in a Suttas-only approach to the Dhamma. Most of these will be found in Sri Lanka, but wherever they're found, since most of them keep in touch with each other they'll be in a better position than I to fill you in on what opportunities are available for a would-be monk of like mind.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 19, 2015 9:04 PM
Title: Re: Questions about becoming a monk
Content:
They would rule out your staying in certain monasteries, but by no means all of them, nor even most of them. Given your back pains, you will need to avoid places like Wat Dhammakaya, Ajahn Chah's monasteries, or anywhere else where there's a strong emphasis on group conformity, such that attendance at group sitting meditation sessions is mandatory and with an insistence that all meditators look the same. What you need is somewhere where there is either no group meditation or where attendance is not required or where you'll be permitted to use a chair or whatever aids you might need.

Did you have any particular country in mind?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 19, 2015 7:01 PM
Title: Re: Atthakatha& Tika AN 5.229-230
Content:
The Aṅguttara-atthakathā just gives very obvious and predictable definitions of the snake features.

The Aṅguttara-ṭīkā passage you cite is for the fifth sutta in the Dīghacārika Vagga. The ṭīkā-author has nothing to say about the two Kaṇhasappa Suttas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 18, 2015 6:37 PM
Title: Re: Seeking ordination 2: the revival of the aspiration
Content:
No, there is no monastery on earth that meets your stipulations. 

In saying that, I don't mean merely that there happens not to be one, but that as a point of principle there cannot be one because at least one of your demands is impossible (you're averse to hierarchy, but in any monastery with more than one bhikkhu a hierarchy is what you'll get), while others are mutually contradictory.

I suggest you draw up a shorter and less pernickety shopping list. Or better still, leave your shopping list in Bogotá and come out to tour the monasteries of Asia with an open mind.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 18, 2015 6:19 PM
Title: Re: Seeking ordination 2: the revival of the aspiration
Content:
That story is actually from the Cūḷavaṃsa, composed many years later.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 18, 2015 3:50 AM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
You will find his blog is here: https://sujato.wordpress.com but I don't recall the title of the relevant posts.

Edit: I see that Mike has already found a couple of them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 18, 2015 1:37 AM
Title: Re: section for discussion of sexual issues
Content:
Though I'm not myself in favour of the proposed new sub-forum, the reason it would be only for male sexual issues is that women seeking a solution to problems concerning the female genito-urinary tract appear to have more sense than to go looking for it on Buddhist forums.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 18, 2015 1:26 AM
Title: Re: Sappadasa's awakening - no jhanas required?
Content:
Ven. Sappadāsa's statement, "The three knowledges have been attained," suffices to show that he had both attained and mastered the four jhānas. Even dry-insight traditions acknowledge that the first two vijjās are unattainable without such mastery.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:23 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
Ideally by either having a spontaneous recall of one's former lives or attaining such recall by jhānic development. For those Buddhists who don't possess the former and can't do the latter, faith in rebirth comes about in quite a variety of ways...

Some just find themselves with it; for example it may arise spontaneously as part and parcel of a conversion experience.
Some embrace it via a fideistic leap of faith.
Some, having verified part of the Buddha's teaching, find themselves willing to trust all of it.
Some were raised with it and never exposed to any contrary view.
Some are persuaded by arguments advanced by Buddhist pandits and others by the alleged empirical evidence for it.
Some see no reason to think it true or false but choose to treat it as true and live accordingly, as per the Apaṇṇaka Sutta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 17, 2015 2:26 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
Thanks for the clarification.

It's uncontroversial that consciousness is involved with rebirth, just not in the way that Sāti thought it was. Bhante Sujato, as far as I know, doesn't subscribe to Sāti's view that one and same consciousness persists through time and undergoes rebirth. Quite the contrary in fact — in his blog he's at pains to repudiate the atman-like consciousness view that's so prevalent among monks in his tradition.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 17, 2015 1:37 PM
Title: Re: Why one meal a day?
Content:
The Vinaya rules prohibit monastics eating from midday until dawn. Between dawn and midday a bhikkhu may eat as many meals as he likes, though the commonest practice in Asia is to take breakfast at around 8 am and then a more substantial meal at 11 am. The next most common is to take three meals: a bowl of rice soup before one sets off on almsround, a heavier breakfast when one gets back, and then lunch at 11 am.

As for eating just one meal a day, this is one of the 13 ascetic practices and originally was a voluntary observance for those bhikkhus who needed to overcome a tendency to gluttony. Nowadays, however, there are certain monasteries —mainly those in forest-dwelling traditions— where the one-meal-a-day practice is incumbent upon all residents.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 17, 2015 11:55 AM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
My internet connection is too slow for me to use youtube. If it's not too much trouble, would you care to quote Ven. Sujato's words? Your paraphrase of them isn't very clear to me.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 17, 2015 9:28 AM
Title: Re: Parajika / Upasampada Question
Content:
Right.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 17, 2015 7:45 AM
Title: Re: What Was Buddhism's First Written Language?
Content:
This is discussed in the thread that I linked to.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:28 AM
Title: Re: Monks can't listen to music?
Content:
A bhikkhu doesn't formally undertake the ten precepts like a novice does, but all of the actions prohibited in those precepts are prohibited also in the Vinaya for bhikkhus.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:07 AM
Title: Re: Should I re-take refuge or not?
Content:
Not in the Theravada. In Buddhaghosa's gloss, "I go to the Buddha/Dhamma/Sangha for refuge" means "I take these three things as my highest values." For this you don't need a realised teacher or the blessing of a lineage, and there's nothing mystical about it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 16, 2015 7:21 PM
Title: Re: What Was Buddhism's First Written Language?
Content:
Not hotly, but you will find this and ancillary issues coolly discussed in https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4630.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 16, 2015 7:02 PM
Title: Re: Origin of the phrase "Life is Suffering"
Content:
The statement is so common in the autobiographies, memoirs and travelogues of 19th century missionaries and colonial servants in Ceylon, Burma, French Indo-China, etc., that I suspect they were doing no more than repeating explanations given to them by the Buddhists themselves. In that case there would be no particular interest in ascertaining who repeated it first.

But as for the scholars who voiced such an understanding, one fairly early instance (though certainly not the earliest) would be the sanskritist Monier-Williams:

What, then, was the light that broke upon the Buddha? What was this enlightenment which has been so much written about and extolled? All that he claimed to have discovered was the origin of suffering and the remedy of suffering. All the light of knowledge to which he attained came to this:—that suffering arises from indulging desires, especially the desire for continuity of life; that suffering is inseparable from life; that all life is suffering; and that suffering is to be got rid of by the suppression of desires, and by the extinction of personal existence.

Here, then, is the first great contrast. When the Buddha said to his converts, 'Come (ehi), be my disciple,' he bade them expect to get rid of suffering, he told them to stamp out suffering by stamping out desires (see pp. 43, 44). When the Christ said to His disciples, 'Come, follow Me,' He bade them expect suffering. He told them to glory in their sufferings—nay, to expect the perfection of their characters through suffering.

It is certainly noteworthy that both Christianity and Buddhism agree in asserting that all creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, in suffering, in tribulation. But mark the vast, the vital distinction in the teaching of each. The one taught men to be patient under affliction, and to aim at the glorification of the suffering body, the other taught men to be intolerant of affliction, and to aim at the utter annihilation of the suffering body.

Sir Monier Monier-Williams, Buddhism, In its Connexion with Brahmanism and Hinduism, and in Its Contrast with Christianity

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47214/47214-8.txt


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 16, 2015 5:56 PM
Title: Re: Parajika / Upasampada Question
Content:
In the stricter nikāyas he has to re-ordain and loses the seniority he formerly had. In the less strict ones there are work-arounds that don't involve any loss of seniority, but I'm not familiar with the details.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 16, 2015 5:47 PM
Title: Re: Parajika / Upasampada Question
Content:
The label “in communion by theft” applies only to men of deceitful intent and not to those who are living as bhikkhus in good faith whilst unaware that their ordinations are invalid. The practical difference between the two is that if the defectiveness of a sincere monk's ordination came to light he could always re-ordain, whereas being theyyasaṃvāsa has the same consequence as being pārājika: a lifetime ban on ordaining.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2015 10:33 PM
Title: Re: Parajika / Upasampada Question
Content:
It’s true that we can’t say for sure whether any man wearing the robes is really a monk, whether any given ordination is really valid, or even whether the ordination lineage has really been preserved intact anywhere on earth. But though we cannot know these things, we can at least take care to ensure that our own sangha transactions are carried out in good faith and to the best of our ability. For example, it is rare in practice for an ordination to be carried out with just the minimum quorum. Here in Thailand I have never attended one that had fewer than 12 monks in the assembly and most had from 20 to 40.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:07 PM
Title: Re: We're going through changes...
Content:
Hi Mawkish, 

Good to hear from you and my congratulations on your becoming a father. I offer them a little belatedly as I was away on a mountain when it happened.

Would you care to post a more recent photo of your daughter?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2015 11:01 AM
Title: Re: Hello, thanks for the acceptance.
Content:
Welcome.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2015 10:25 AM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
Why do you think that? If there were an atman that reincarnated, how would that negate your earlier statement that we have a moral duty not to neglect the effect of our actions on those who survive us?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2015 10:11 AM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
The mental factor of saññā performs the dual function of marking ārammaṇas (in the manner of a carpenter marking pieces of wood for later identification) and of recognizing marks made by earlier saññā. It is saññā’s marking that makes remembrance possible. 

The question of how an earlier saññā’s marking persists through time, such that it may be recognised by a later saññā, despite the earlier saññā having ceased to be, is not addressed in the texts, as far as I know, and is not a dhammic concern (except insofar as it’s necessary to reject wrong ideas about it — those which entail eternalist or annihilationist views). If, however, one were to make it one’s own concern and attempt an explanation, then I suppose the lion’s share of the credit ought to go to pakatūpanissaya-paccaya — “natural-decisive-support condition”.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2015 9:52 AM
Title: Re: A Question
Content:
There are various approaches to this, ancient and modern. My own preference is for that of the Peṭakopadesa, wherein one explains a sutta correctly when one plausibly demonstrates its relevance to the four noble truths. Sometimes this requires a literal reading, sometimes a figurative one, and sometimes either might be plausible.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:47 AM
Title: Re: A Question
Content:
Here are Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations of the Kamboja Sutta and the two Kaṇhasappa Suttas. He has rendered yebhuyyena as “for the most part”.


Kamboja Sutta

On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Kosambī in Ghosita’s Park. Then the Venerable Ānanda approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, sat down to one side, and said:

“Bhante, why is it that women do not sit in council, or engage in business, or go to Kamboja?”*

“Ānanda, women are prone to anger; women are envious; women are miserly; women are unwise. This is why women do not sit in council, engage in business, or go to Kamboja.”

* Mp: “They do not sit in council (n’eva sabhāyaṃ nisīdati) in the judgment hall for the purpose of passing judgment. They do not engage in business (na kammantaṃ payojeti), in major work such as agriculture, trade, and so forth. They do not go to Kamboja (na kambojaṃ gacchati): they do not go to the Kamboja country for the purpose of carrying goods. This is the mere heading. The sense is that they do not go to any remote country.”
(AN.ii.82-3)

Paṭhamakaṇhasappa Sutta (First Snake Sutta)

“Bhikkhus, there are these five dangers in a black snake. What five? It is impure, foul-smelling, frightening, dangerous, and it betrays friends. These are the five dangers in a black snake. So too, there are these five dangers in women. What five? They are impure, foul-smelling, frightening, dangerous, and they betray friends. These are the five dangers in women.”

Dutiyakaṇhasappa Sutta (Second Snake Sutta)

“Bhikkhus, there are these five dangers in a black snake. What five? It is wrathful, hostile, of virulent venom, double-tongued, and it betrays friends. These are the five dangers in a black snake. So too, there are these five dangers in women. What five? They are wrathful, hostile, of virulent venom, double-tongued, and they betray friends.

“Bhikkhus, this is how women are of virulent venom: for the most part they have strong lust. This is how women are double-tongued: for the most part they utter divisive speech. This is how women betray friends: for the most part they are adulterous. These are the five dangers in women.”
(AN.iii.260-1)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:29 AM
Title: Re: A Question
Content:
I recall that in at least two of the women-critical suttas, the negative pronouncements are qualified by the adverb yebhuyyena, meaning "generally". That is to say, what is being asserted is that women in general have the specified negative qualities. Now in the commentaries to any sutta where the Buddha makes a negative generalisation about persons in class X accompanied by yebhuyyena, the gloss will be either "All members of X except ariyans" or "All members of X who are worldlings" (which means the same thing).

So, assuming such a gloss to be applicable in the present case, what is being asserted is that the specified negative qualities and behaviours are of a kind into which any non-ariyan woman is capable of falling. Such a statement wouldn't actually be false, though as a truth it would of course be only a partial one, for non-ariyan women are capable of all manner of good things too. But when the Buddha is instructing discontented male brahmacarīs, this partial truth is a useful one for him to direct their attention to, with the aim of opposing their current idealised fantasies about women.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 10:00 PM
Title: Re: A Question
Content:
Not very much. It would seem the nuns on the whole weren't in need of such strong medicine. Indeed the only passages that come to mind aren't concerned with men in general but with the specific man that a nun had been having problems with, e.g. the verse of Muttā in the Therigāthā.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 9:39 PM
Title: Re: A Question
Content:
The Buddha and his disciples are depicted as occasionally giving teachings aimed at curing monks (and less often nuns) who are "living the holy life discontentedly", which is a euphemism for suffering from sexual frustration. Various approaches are taken. They include leading Nanda on a trip to heaven to ogle at celestial nymphs so that he would lose interest in earthly women; instruction in the repulsiveness (asubha) meditations; and —least often— tirades about the other sex's supposed character flaws. When reading such suttas I would suggest that it is their purpose that one should focus on: they are not set-in-stone truths, but rather teachings of a highly provisional and audience-specific character — strong medicines aimed at getting the listeners over a crisis.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 9:27 PM
Title: Re: A Question
Content:
I take it you haven't yet read the link? If you had, you would have seen the context for your quotation:
Amongst these men, who were ordained not so much for their own pleasure as out of respect to the Teacher, spiritual discontent sprang up. And their former wives to stir up their discontent sent such and such messages to them, and they grew yet more dissatisfied. The Blessed One on reflection discovered how discontented they were and thought, "These bhikkhus, though living with a Buddha like me, are discontented. I wonder what kind of preaching would be profitable to them"; and he bethought him of the religious discourse of Kuṇāla. Then this notion struck him, "I will conduct these bhikkhus to the Himalayas and after illustrating the disadvantages connected with womankind by the Kuṇāla story and removing their discontent, I will guide them to stream-entry."
(corrections mine)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 8:17 PM
Title: Re: A Question
Content:
The Kunala Jātaka is here:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/j5/j5029.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 5:44 PM
Title: Re: Past killing of animals
Content:
I think David's point is that in the Vinaya offences are graded according to the kind of penalty that they entail for those who break them. The offence of deliberately killing a human warrants lifetime expulsion from the sangha, while that of killing an animal is a pācittiya-āpatti, "offence entailing expiation", which requires only that a bhikkhu confess it to another bhikkhu. The other actions mentioned by David are also offences in the pācittiya class, except "idle chatter", which I assume was included by mistake as this isn't actually a Vinaya offence at all.

So, the point is that killing an animal entails no more serious a penalty than transgression of any of the other 92 pācittiya rules. That's not of course the same as saying that the kammic gravity of breaking pācittiya rules will be the same no matter which one a bhikkhu breaks. This would not be true, for many of the 92 pācittiyas can be broken without any evil intent and therefore transgression would not necessarily be productive of any akusala kamma at all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 5:09 PM
Title: Re: "Cravings as our companions"
Content:
Taṇhādutiyo puriso, dīghamaddhāna saṃsaraṃ,
Itthabhāvaññathābhāvaṃ, saṃsāraṃ nātivattati.

“A man accompanied by craving, wandering on for a long time in existence in this form or existence in that form, does not pass beyond wandering on.”
(Suttanipāta, Dvayatānupassanā Sutta)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 11:40 AM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
What do you mean by memories? If you mean occurrences of saññā cetasika performing its role of marking objects and recognizing objects that have been marked by past saññās, then no saññā survives even into the next moment, let alone the next life.

But if you are using 'memories' in the conventional sense, where what is denoted is something that was cognized, thought, spoken, done etc., in the past and which is conceived as being stored away in the brain or in some special mental faculty, such that it can be retrieved, more or less accurately, by acts of will or simply by one's mind wandering into the past, then I think the question is a solecism. Since this isn't how remembering —whether of the everyday sort or that of pubbenivāsānussati— is conceived in the Dhamma, it doesn't make any sense to ask whether the reified data conventionally termed 'memories' will survive into the next life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 3:13 AM
Title: Re: Free from sexual arousal forever (natural)
Content:
I think the poster is probably using 'conscious' in the eighth of the twelve senses described in the Oxford English Dictionary.

8. Aware of what one is doing or intending to do; having a purpose and intention in one's actions. Said of agents and their actions, etc. 

Examples:

1860 Westcott Introd. Study Gosp. vi. (ed. 5) 323 A‥sequence‥which few will attribute to an apt coincidence or to a conscious design.
1880 L. Stephen Pope ii. 25 Pope was from the first a conscious and deliberate artist.
1882 Farrar Early Chr. I. 130 That St. Peter has here been the conscious or unconscious borrower may be regarded as certain.
When used in this sense, yes, celibacy may be either conscious or unconscious.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 11, 2015 12:34 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
Well, you are mistaken. I did not use the word “narrow-minded” at all. I merely wrote of Ajahn Brahm’s “overly narrow understanding of the phrase “consciousness becomes manifest”.

It seems that as English is not your first language, the distinction between being narrow-minded and having an overly narrow understanding of something went over your head, and so you falsely charged me with calling Ajahn Brahmavamso narrow-minded. This initial error is excusable, but not your present persistence in the charge in spite of my informing you that you are in error and directing you back to the original post. 

In polite circles when a man tells you that you have misconstrued his meaning and taken offence where none was intended, the proper course for a gentleman is to take his word for it. As you decline to do so and have throughout the thread evinced little else but puerility and churlishness, let this post suffice as my final reply to you in this or any other thread.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 10, 2015 7:30 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
I think Ven. Pesala has adequately replied to this.

I would only add that what you attribute to me is not in fact what what I wrote and would probably serve better as a paraphrase of the Roman Catholic position rather than the Theravada Buddhist one. While there is considerable overlap in the two religions’ perspectives on abortion, Buddhism lacks Catholicism’s authoritarian element. When a Catholic priest finds himself in the position of counselling a woman who has been told that her life will be in jeopardy if she carries her child to term, the priest is required to instruct the woman to sacrifice her life for that of her child. A bhikkhu, on the other hand, will not normally instruct her to do anything. He will confine himself to informing her about the consequences of the choices available to her and then leave the matter to her conscience.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 10, 2015 12:43 PM
Title: Re: In the caves of withdrawal from the world
Content:
Really? I don’t see any indication of the writer’s being lost in a diṭṭhigahana; his musings read to me like a lucid and dry-eyed account of what eating and non-eating entail, granted Buddhist premises about the nature of things.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:20 AM
Title: Re: Beginning readings
Content:
I would say the following ten are the "most essential to Theravada thought", in the sense of being the texts which have had the greatest influence and/or which historically have been most frequently quoted in Theravadin doctrinal discussion:

1. Bhikkhu-pāṭimokkha
(Thanissaro's translation at ATI)

2. Dīgha Nikāya
(Th. Rhys Davids' pioneering translation at http://archive.org is better than the more recent one by Maurice Walshe)

3. Majjhima Nikāya
(Ñāṇamoli/Bodhi translation)

4. Dhammapada
(Many translations. I recommend those by K.R. Norman, Sangharakshita, and Buddharakkhita)

5. Suttanipāta
(K.R. Norman's translation)

6. Jātaka
(Birth Stories, ed. Cowell)

7. Milindapañha
(Th. Rhys Davids pioneering translation is better than the later one by Horner)

8. Visuddhimagga
(Ñāṇamoli's translation)

9. Dhammapada Atthakathā
(Burlingame's translation, "Buddhist Legends")

10. Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha
(Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation, "Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma", available as free download from http://store.pariyatti.org/Comprehensive-Manual-of-Abhidhamma-A--PDF-eBook_p_4362.html)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Feb 8, 2015 10:53 PM
Title: Re: Newby
Content:
Welcome to Dhammawheel!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Feb 8, 2015 10:51 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
Ivan,

If rebirth is the continuation of a process and not the passing on of a substance, then it is a mistake to ask what it is that transmigrates. One should be asking about the nature of the process. If you are interested in understanding this, then may I suggest that you read chapter 5 of the Abhidhammatthasangaha.

http://store.pariyatti.org/Comprehensive-Manual-of-Abhidhamma-A--PDF-eBook_p_4362.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Feb 8, 2015 10:09 PM
Title: Re: Hi
Content:
Hello Leanne, and welcome.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 11:19 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
For example, there arises a wholesome mind-door process whose cittas are accompanied by the abstinence-from-bodily-misconduct mental factor (kāyaduccarita-virati cetasika) which results in a person's holding back from an act of killing, stealing or sexual misconduct on an occasion when he had an opportunity to commit one of these and was about to do so. This abstention is wholesome body-door kamma.

Or, in another wholesome mind-door process, the freedom-from-greed mental-factor (alobha-cetasika) causes him to give somebody a gift by his own hand.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 9:01 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
Yes.

In terms of the ten unwholesome http://dictionary.sutta.org/fr_FR/browse/k/kamma-patha, one has still fallen into the unwholesome mind-door kamma of byāpāda — willing harm to a living being, but not the unwholesome body-door kamma of pāṇātipāta — killing a living being.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 8:42 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
No doubt it does seem like that to you. However, if I could only give you a pair of magical spectacles to put on that would permit you —perhaps for the first time in your life— to see the moral distinction between a willed instigation and an unwilled one, then I'm quite sure that after putting on those spectacles, you'd exclaim: "Eureka, there's not even the tiniest smidgen of a double standard here!"


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 5:34 PM
Title: Re: Fourfold Sangha
Content:
And you too.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 5:28 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
Bhante,

First let me note that when I used the word "approvingly" I meant to indicate that each recipient and passer-on of the order shares the volition of the original giver of it.

In the case of the donor and his servant, as they share the same volition —to offer alms to the sangha— they both perform a meritorious act of the same kind. But whereas the donor both gives and causes another to give, his servant only gives. The donor's merit is therefore augmented by the fact that he is the instigator of his servant's meritorious act. It is also augmented by the fact that the items offered are his property and not the servant's (though this may well be balanced out by the fact that it's the servant who does the preparations).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 5:08 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
That is normally the case, for people don't ordinarily buy meat out of an intention to cause animals to be killed. An exception would be in those restaurants where diners select a living lobster or fish from an aquarium, which will then be killed and cooked for them, together with any scenarios analogous to this.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 5:01 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
No, though it might be intended as a rough and incomplete paraphrase of the words of Puṇṇa in the Puṇṇovāda Sutta.

http://www.pitakataw.net/download/Tipitaka/BuddhistTexts/mn/mn_e_145.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 11:21 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
In my use of the verb, I was limiting "instigate" to those cases where one deliberately seeks to cause such-and-such action to be performed by another.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 11:15 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
When orders to commit an akusala kamma are passed down a chain of command, every person in the chain who approvingly passes on the order incurs the akusala kamma, but it's the fellow at the top who commits the weightiest kamma and the one at the bottom —the one who actually does the deed— whose action is the least weighty.

Applying it to the case of a bhikkhu who urges a pregnant woman to go to an abortionist and who then does so and has her unborn child killed: all three persons, the bhikkhu, the woman and abortionist, commit the same akusala kamma of intentional killing, but the weightiest is that of the bhikkhu, the lightest that of the abortionist. The bhikkhu kills the unborn child and turns the woman and the abortionist into killers; the woman kills the unborn child and turns the abortionist into a killer; the abortionist just kills the unborn child — he doesn't make anyone else do anything akusala.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 10:35 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
I don’t think that a dhammic framing of the issue would entail any talk of “rights” at all, for there is no notion of any such thing in the Suttas.

What is clear from the Suttas is that intentional killing is always an akusala action and that it is especially akusala when the living being killed is a human. And what is clear from the Vinaya is that the deliberate aborting of a human foetus is an instance of intentional killing of a human.

So, the proper framing of the issue, it seems to me, is not which person's rights should be prioritised, but rather, whether one should prioritise survival even though it will entail committing a weighty akusala kamma, or should prioritise virtue, even though it will entail putting one’s life on the line.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 7, 2015 10:14 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
But why did you think that? I mean the pilots had no authority to drop atom bombs on their own initiative and would scarcely have done so had Truman not issued orders to this effect.

If you perform some akusala kamma alone, then you alone will experience the painful vipāka of that kamma. If you instigate another to assist you with it or to do it for you, then you cause another to perform an action that will lead to his experiencing a painful vipāka too. Is it not therefore self-evident that involving another person in your performance of an akusala kamma, or delegating the performance of it to another person, is worse than doing it alone?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 6, 2015 11:04 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma: Is an abortion killing a living being?
Content:
But is this an instance of mere seeming or is there some principle of Dhamma upon which you make this judgment?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 5, 2015 6:28 PM
Title: Re: 200-year-old remains of Buddhist monk who is still in the LOTUS POSITION are discovered in Mongolia
Content:
Nonsense.

The scientists stunned him just as he was waking up. Meditating Mongolian monks stun easily.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 5, 2015 2:04 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
No, you’ve got it the wrong way round. The first precept encompasses both intentional killing by one’s own hand and intentional killing by instigating or hiring another. Of the two, the kamma is more weighty when you hire somebody else to do the killing. For you have still committed the act of intentional killing, but with the aggravating factor that you’ve been the instigator of another’s person’s committing an unwholesome kamma too.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 5, 2015 1:29 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
Three articles have been linked to — those of Rupert Gethin, and the venerables Pesala and Thanissaro. All three are supportive of your friend's understanding of the Dhamma, and if you read widely you will discover the views expressed by them to be faithful statements of the Theravada Buddhist position, indeed we might say of the pan-Buddhist position, for the Mahayana pandits don't dissent from this view. 

It's true, as you remark in another post, that Ajahn Brahmavamso does dissent. According to him the developing foetus only becomes a sentient being some weeks after conception. But he is virtually alone in his dissent and his argument appears to be based upon an idiosyncratic, unorthodox and overly narrow understanding of the phrase "consciousness becomes manifest."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 5, 2015 1:03 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
When we see the Pali word satta (Skt. sattva) translated as "sentient being", we shouldn't overstress the word "sentient". It doesn't carry the full sense of the English adjective and its insertion is no more than a translator's device to make it clear that plants, fungi, bacteria, etc., are not included here. Other translations such as "living beings" or simply "beings" don't make this clear.

In short, what we are talking about here are all beings in the 31 planes that are participants in saṃsāric becoming. An unborn child, at every stage of its development, is an example of such a being.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 5, 2015 7:31 AM
Title: Re: skillful renunciation
Content:
The jhānas depend upon nekkhamma, not nekkhamma upon the jhānas. Nekkhamma depends upon saṃvega.
Renunciation is mentioned immediately after virtue: (a) because renunciation perfects the achievement of virtue; (b) in order to list good conduct of mind immediately after good conduct of body and speech; (c) because jhāna succeeds easily for one who has purified his virtue; (d) in order to show that the purification of one’s end (āsaya) through the abandoning of the offensive mental defilements follows the purification of one’s means (payoga) by the abandoning of offensive actions; and (e) to state the abandoning of mental obsessions immediately after the abandoning of bodily and verbal transgressions.

[...]

(3) Renunciation has the characteristic of departing from sense pleasures and existence; its function is to verify their unsatisfactoriness; its manifestation is the withdrawal from them; a sense of spiritual urgency (saṃvega) is its proximate cause.
— Dhammapāla, Cariyāpiṭaka Atthakathā, trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi: Treatise on the Paramīs


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 5, 2015 7:19 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
I should think that anyone with the medical competence to do this would surely know that his action will bring about the child's death. How then could his intention be anything other than to kill? 

The only case I can imagine where this might be so is where the child has developed to the point where he has at least some chance of surviving if delivered prematurely.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 5, 2015 12:44 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma
Content:
http://www.urbandharma.org/pdf/geth0401.pdf


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 4, 2015 11:32 PM
Title: Re: Starting from the bottom up...
Content:
Rupert Gethin, The Buddhist Path to Awakening.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 4, 2015 1:54 AM
Title: Re: Modern Ascetic Movements
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 4, 2015 1:27 AM
Title: Re: Fourfold Sangha
Content:
You're welcome, though I think I'll bow out at this point. There really isn't much point in our continuing this discussion.

Suffice to say that in canon and commentary alike, catasso parisā means monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen, and is never used to mean anything other than these four groups. There is no "dispute" about this except the one that your imagination invents and stubbornly persists in.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2015 6:09 PM
Title: Re: Fourfold Sangha
Content:
No, it wouldn't. Such a long-drawn-out introduction is a feature of Mahayana sutras. It is never found in the Pali Canon.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2015 5:21 PM
Title: Re: Modern Ascetic Movements
Content:
Only with those householders at whose doors he went begging for food, but the conversations tended to be pretty short. When the posh folks on Highgate Hill found a dishevelled bearded Welsh gnome turning up on their doorstep begging for food, and explaining that he was living in a graveyard and meditating on corpses, predictably enough they weren't interested in developing a close acquaintance with him.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2015 2:34 PM
Title: Re: Modern Ascetic Movements
Content:
I once knew a Welsh Buddhist lay hermit who spent a year secretly living in the catacombs at Highgate Cemetery in London. He spent his time using the surrounding skeletons to practise the cemetery contemplations. In the mornings he would support himself by walking from house to house for alms. Unfortunately it seems that due to vandalism you can't even get in to Highgate these days unless you have either a tour guide escorting you or a pass stating that you have a deceased relative buried there. Otherwise I guess it would still be a great place to live — especially for socialist types, who'd no doubt feel inspired to be in the presence of the cemetery's most famous resident: Karl Marx.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_Cemetery

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2015 1:06 PM
Title: Re: Criteria for evaluating monasteries?
Content:
When I first went to Thailand I would practise aural comprehension by listening to Thai radio broadcasts for an hour a day. There are all kinds of religious broadcasts on Thai radio, but I soon discovered that the easiest things to understand were the Muslim sermons. Unlike the Buddhist radio preachers (mostly scholar monks from city monasteries), the Muslims tended to limit themselves to very simple language with a near-infantile vocabulary; unlike the forest monks they didn't use any unfamiliar regionalisms; and unlike the Thai newsreaders they didn't talk too fast. After about nine months I could get about 95% of what the Muslims were saying.

To get from that stepping stone to the point where I could understand Buddhist talks took about 2-4 years, i.e. two years before I could understand forest monks and four years before I could understand the more ornate language of scholar monks. I should add, however, that this is quite unusually slow; most western monks who ordain in their twenties seem to progress a lot more rapidly than I did.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2015 6:03 PM
Title: Re: Criteria for evaluating monasteries?
Content:
I think in one’s formative years it would probably be better to be in a monastery that does not have these things, or whose in-house rules make them off-limits for junior monks (I believe that’s the case in England at Chithurst monastery).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2015 12:27 PM
Title: Re: Criteria for evaluating monasteries?
Content:
I find the behaviour of a monastery’s sāmaṇeras to be a pretty reliable criterion. In Thailand these are nearly all teenage lads, most of whom would rather not be in the monastery at all, and so they’re not at all easy to train. If you go into a wat and observe that the sāmaṇeras are all occupying their time productively, then it’s a fair bet that the abbot’s got his act together and has a hands-on approach to training his charges. On the other hand, if the sāmaṇeras are all goofing about —running around, playing cards, throwing frisbees, torturing dogs and cats, watching TV, etc.— then the abbot is probably, incompetent, neglectful or just too old to do his job properly, so don’t waste your time there.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2015 7:46 AM
Title: Re: My relationship with my family and ethics.
Content:
Would you care to expand on the logistics of these forcible injections? I mean how is it that your parents and elder brother are in a position to do this?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 31, 2015 6:12 PM
Title: Re: What is the source of this quote?
Content:
This, posted twenty-two years ago to another forum, is as good a reply as any:
“The Buddhists’ arguments against [a supposed immutable soul] were various, but the principal point that they kept coming back to is that it is impossible to find a relationship between the world of experience (which is always changing) and this supposedly changeless Self. A changeless Self cannot act, since acting requires change. It cannot learn, since learning is a change of state. It cannot be aware of the change going on around it, since this would imply a plurality of inner characteristics within a substance that is supposed to be simple in nature. In other words, this Self would have no connection to anything about which we are concerned in everyday life. It is an entirely counterintuitive notion, and it is riddled with paradoxes. And, since nothing of theoretical or pragmatic value is gained by positing that there is a Self, it is an idea that one might as well give up. There is no point in countenancing paradox unless one is compelled to do so.”
— Richard Hayes


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 31, 2015 5:51 PM
Title: Re: ...full of stars
Content:
And here are Sagan and Moore together in 1974. I remember this particular programme as it was broadcast when I was nine and just a few months after I'd become a regular viewer of the series.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 31, 2015 5:44 PM
Title: Re: ...full of stars
Content:
I don't think he was the first. Sagan started broadcasting in 1980, but the monocled eccentric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore began his Sky at Night broadcasts way back in 1957.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2015 11:02 AM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
Good find.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2015 10:58 AM
Title: Re: Slave question
Content:
Here's the fellow. His real name was King Kawirolot Suriyawong and he ruled Chiang Mai from 1856 to 1870. The other pic is his wife, Princess Usa.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2015 10:37 AM
Title: Re: Slave question
Content:
Some time ago I learned from Sarasawadee Ongsakul’s http://silkwormbooks.com/products/history-of-lanna that Wat Phra Dhatu Sri Chom Thong, at whose Abhidhamma school I’m presently studying, had over five hundred slaves until well into the reign of Rama V.

It seems most of the wat's 19th century slaves were donated by a Lanna king whose nickname was King Ow Pai on account of the characteristic phrase with which he would sentence anyone who incurred his disfavour to be summarily executed. Apparently he would just point at the person and say: “Ow pai!” (“Take it away!”), the “it” being the person’s head. When someone like that offers you a gift it’s probably not a good idea to refuse.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2015 10:19 PM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
It finds support in the fourth of the four definitions of ati- given by the grammarian Buddhapiya in his commentary to Kaccāyana's Grammar:
1. Atikkamane: atirocati amhehi, atīto.
2. Atikkante: accantaṃ.
3. Atisaye: atikusalo.
4. Bhusatthe: atikkodho ativuddhi.

1. In the sense of ‘exceeding’: “He [the yakkha Indaka] outshines us!”; “the past”.
2. In the sense of ‘exceeded’: “Absolutely”.
3. In the sense of ‘excellence/abundance’: “Extraordinarily skilful”.
4. In the sense of ‘strong’: “vehemently angry”; “great growth”.
(Padarūpasiddhi 281, Opasaggikapada. my trans.)
In the Pali-English Dictionary, the adjective ‘bhusa’ and adverb ‘bhusaṃ’ are defined:
bhusa (adj.) [cp. Vedic bhṛśa] strong, mighty, great Dh 339 (taṇhā=balavā DhA iv.48); J v.361 (daṇḍa= daḷha, balavā C.).

nt. bhusaṃ (adv.) much, exceedingly, greatly, vehemently. In cpds. bhusaṃ° &amp; bhusa°. —S i.69; J iii.441; iv.11; v.203 (bhusa-dassaneyya); vi.192; Vv 69; Pv 338; iv.77; Miln 346; SnA 107 ('verbum intensivum'); Sdhp 289.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2015 9:33 PM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
Nobody has suggested "harden". Those who favour Miss Horner's translation understand ativassati to mean "it rains hard", using the adverb 'hard' in the primary sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary:
With effort, energy, or violence; strenuously, earnestly, vigorously; violently, fiercely. In early use, sometimes = intensely, exceedingly, extremely.

Sir Beues 4580 (MS. A.) The wind blew hardde with gret rage.
1628 Digby Voy. Medit. 51 It blew hard all night.
1697 W. Dampier Voy. I. 13 It rained very hard.
1798 Nelson 28 Dec. in Nicolas Disp. III. 212 The next day it blew harder than I ever experienced since I have been at sea.
1864 Mrs. Carlyle Lett. III. 237 If it snows as hard there as here.
The last three senses, "intensely, exceedingly, extremely", are particularly fitting here, and contrary to what one poster has suggested, they do fall within the semantic range of the prefix ati-.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2015 11:08 AM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
No. I had already stated in an earlier post what I understand the trope to mean: that there is less noise when rain falls onto open ground than when it falls onto a roof.

The post to which you replied was only concerned with remarking on the vividness that such a trope would have to an audience for whom rain was primarily apprehended as a sound rather than as a visual object.

Those posters whose minds are obsessed with "soddenness" would do well to offer some evidence that ativassati ever carries such a meaning.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2015 9:14 AM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
If we go with Horner’s translation, then there’s no doubt that the trope has undergone a loss of vividness in our own times. However, I think this should be attributed to the lack of plate-glass windows and doors in the Buddha’s day rather than the lack of plastic sheeting.

To put ourselves in the shoes of an ancient Magadhan, let’s start by asking: from which sense-objects would they infer that it was raining hard or raining soft? Chiefly it would be visible forms, sounds and (if they were outdoors) tangible objects. But since the normal thing to do when it’s raining is to go indoors, we can forget about tangible objects. Now what does our ancient Magadhan do when he’s gone indoors? Obviously he closes the doors and windows to stop the rain from coming in. And since the doors and windows are not made of glass, he can’t see outside and therefore his knowledge that it’s raining hard comes only from sounds cognizable to the ear. And so for him the sentence “it is raining hard” would be virtually equivalent to “there’s a lot of noise out there”.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2015 7:46 AM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
I was just looking at K.R. Norman's prose translation of the parallel passage in Elders' Verses. Norman is usually very careful, but on this occasion he gives the preposterous:
"It rains only on the covered, it does not rain on the opened. Therefore you should open the covered, then it will not rain on it."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2015 7:18 AM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
Opilāpeti, parisandati, pariplavati, sedeti, seceti, pāyeti, omadati, sammaddati, or vokirati.

Not all of the above actually occur as finite verbs, but I've constructed them on the basis of their past participles which are to be found. E.g. I've never seen vokirati, but one will meet with its past participle vokiṇṇa, "soaked".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 27, 2015 9:43 PM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
From the Vinaya Atthakathā:
channamativassatī ti āpattiṃ āpajjitvā paṭicchādento aññaṃ navaṃ āpattiṃ āpajjati idametaṃ sandhāya vuttaṃ.

“It rains hard on the covered” — this was stated in connection with one who, having committed an offence, concealing it commits another new offence

vivaṭaṃ nātivassatī ti āpattiṃ āpajjitvā vivaranto aññaṃ nāpajjati idametaṃ sandhāya vuttaṃ.

“It rains not hard on the open” — this was stated in connection with one who, having committed an offence, disclosing it does not commit any further offence.
Relating this to Horner’s translation: when a raindrop falls on, say, a roof or a lid, it makes a noise. It then bounces off, lands on the ground and makes a further noise. But if the raindrop falls on uncovered soil, grass, etc. then it is absorbed and so only gets to make one noise.

Relating it to Ajahn Thanissaro’s translation: the raindrops accumulate when they land on a covering but don’t accumulate if they fall on the ground.

Of the two I find Horner’s the likelier. With “It rains hard...” she plausibly treats ativassati as an impersonal verb (as the verb “to rain” usually is in Indo-European languages). But with “Rain soddens...” Thanissaro invents a subject where the Pali has none and then has this subject perform an action (“to sodden”), despite there being no grounds for supposing that “soddening” lies within ativassati’s semantic range.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 27, 2015 7:44 PM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
The rain descends with equal velocity in both cases, but when it reaches the earth it makes much more of a racket if it lands on a roof than if it lands on a stretch of open earth or grassland.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 27, 2015 5:31 PM
Title: Re: "Rain soddens what's covered..."
Content:
Indeed. The “rains hard” rendering is in I.B. Horner's translation of the Vinaya Piṭaka:
“It rains hard on a covered thing, it rains not hard on an open thing,
So open up the covered thing: thus it will not rain hard on that.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 26, 2015 10:54 PM
Title: Re: Benefits of studying the Vinaya
Content:
The five benefits Mahinda lists are certainly not in the Tipiṭaka. Nor have I met with them in any commentary (though there are a few commentaries I haven't yet read). However, as Ledi Sayadaw didn't mention the five benefits in the article posted by Ven. Pesala, I strongly doubt they are in any Pali text at all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 26, 2015 6:21 PM
Title: Re: Omar Khayyam
Content:
From the feline version of the same...

Wake! for the Golden Cat has put to flight
The Mouse of Darkness with his Paw of Light:
Which means, in Plain and simple every-day
Unoriental Speech—The Dawn is bright.

They say the Early Bird the Worm shall taste.
Then rise, O Kitten! Wherefore, sleeping, waste
The Fruits of Virtue? Quick! the Early Bird
Will soon be on the Flutter—O make haste!

The Early Bird has gone, and with him ta’en
The Early Worm—Alas! the Moral’s plain,
O Senseless Worm! Thus, thus we are repaid
For Early Rising—I shall doze again.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24258/24258-h/24258-h.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:13 AM
Title: Re: Pali pronunciation
Content:
I didn’t find it any problem when I was in my twenties, but now that I’m almost fifty I expect I would have some difficulty in taking up a new style. Luckily I don’t need to. When I’m up on my mountain it happens that I’m the most senior monk within about a 12-mile radius, so at funerals, house-blessings, etc. I get to lead and all the other monks have to adapt to me.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:37 AM
Title: Re: Pali pronunciation
Content:
I don't know of one. It would probably make a good subject for a doctoral thesis in musicology, for the variety is enormous. Although the chanting in the cities is much the same from place to place, with most wats just aping the Bangkok style, once you're in the countryside virtually every amphoe has its own style. I used to know four when I lived in Lamphun, and here in Chiang Mai I'm told there are sixteen altogether.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 26, 2015 6:11 AM
Title: Re: Pali pronunciation
Content:
There are several styles of chanting in Thailand. In one of the more ornate ones, called saraphanya or sawraphanya (สรภัญญะ, Skt. sarabhañña) the syllabification of double consonants is not only done clearly, but is actually accentuated. There are certain chants which are always performed in this style, such as the Buddhamaṅgalagāthā (aka Phra orahan paed thid — The Arahants of the Eight Directions).

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .



But any chant can be done in this style if one wants. In practice it's a style that's performed most often by (1) nuns, (2) schoolchildren, (3) on uposatha days in wats where the Pali is chanted with interlinear Thai translation, and (4) by monks at the "High Church" end of the Thai Buddhist spectrum, e.g. when chanting at ceremonies sponsored by the Bangkok royalty and aristocracy.

Schoolgirls paying homage to the Triple Gem, with interlinear Thai translation

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 24, 2015 10:26 PM
Title: Re: Couldn’t Dhamma protect Tibet?
Content:
It would appear that the op’s question was effectively answered 11 months ago in Ven. Pesala’s post. The Dhamma didn’t protect Tibet from the scourge of Mao’s communism because the statement that “the Dhamma protects the one who practises it” doesn’t refer the protection of nations. It doesn’t even refer to the protection of individuals from physical harm during their present life. Rather, it means that one who practises Dhamma is safeguarded against ‘evil destinies’ (duggati), meaning rebirth in the lower realms.

Dhammo have rakkhati dhammacāriṃ, dhammo suciṇṇo sukhamāvahati,
Esānisaṃso dhamme suciṇṇe, na duggatiṃ gacchati dhammacārī.

“Truly the Dhamma protects the practiser of Dhamma; the Dhamma well-practised brings happiness.
This is the reward of the Dhamma when well-practised: the practiser of the Dhamma does not go to a bad bourn.”
(Theragāthā, verse of Dhammika Thera)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 24, 2015 6:32 PM
Title: Re: The "Dharma" (Tibetan/Zen and Pure Land Buddhism) A question
Content:
Who says?

It's common enough for Mahayana modernists to say things like this, but I don't think those who say them can truthfully claim that they are being faithful to the historical Mahayana tradition. For such fidelity one would need to look to Mahayana fundamentalists like the late Master Hsuan Hua or the current Dalai Lama — persons who think that Mahayana texts really did have their provenance with the Buddha and really were preserved by nāgas.

Donald Lopez's The Heart Sutra Explained offers some interesting specimens of how Haribhadra and other Indian Mahayana apologists were wont to defend Mahayana sutras against the charge of spuriousness advanced by mainstream Indian Buddhists. It seem that none of them took the "just a legend" approach that's so common among Mahayana apologists today. On the contrary, they were very insistent on the nāga story being a literal historical truth.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 24, 2015 6:02 PM
Title: Re: No F Words in Pali
Content:
Well, they ought to say the two syllables with a high tone followed by a low one, but I can't remember if they actually do so since we don't get many of those people up in Phrao and it's ten years since I last went down to Trat.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 24, 2015 5:38 PM
Title: Re: Lying and telling jokes.
Content:
That's a great one. But when your children get a bit older you can start telling it like this...

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 24, 2015 12:02 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk ask for shelter?
Content:
Ven. Gavesako would know better how things are now, but back in the 80's when the Forest Sangha monks would walk thudong in Britain the route would be planned in advance, with lay supporters along the route being notified in advance and awaiting the monks' arrival.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 24, 2015 9:29 AM
Title: Re: Lying and telling jokes.
Content:
tasmātiha te, rāhula, ‘hassāpi na musā bhaṇissāmī’ti: evañhi te, rāhula, sikkhitabbaṃ.

Ñāṇamoli:
“Therefore, Rāhula, you should train thus: ‘I will not utter a falsehood even as a joke.’”

I.B. Horner:
“Wherefore, for you, Rāhula, ‘I will not speak a lie, even for fun’ – this is how you must train yourself, Rāhula.”

The scope of hassā musā is somewhat narrower than its usual English translations might seem to suggest. It would include such acts as falsely telling someone that she has a bug crawling in her hair or knowingly sending someone on a fruitless errand. It wouldn’t include telling jokes in the sense of funny fictional anecdotes with a punchline, whose fictional character is implicitly understood by speaker and audience.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 24, 2015 12:00 AM
Title: Re: No F Words in Pali
Content:
I doubt it. The German presence in the region is no more marked than that of any other western expats and Khmer doesn't have an 'f' sound and has just the same complement of velar consonants as Thai. If the pronunciation of kw as f is due to another language's influence it would be more likely Mon.

On Thai language websites there are lots of discussions of this matter, which can be found just by googling for the two ways of pronouncing the Thai for 'broom': ไม้ฝาด and ไม้กวาด. But I haven't come across any intelligent theories so far. Just nonsense like "It's a genetically caused speech defect that affects everybody in Chantaburi" and "It's just the Easterners' way of trying to sound posh."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 8:45 PM
Title: Re: No F Words in Pali
Content:
The absence of a "v" sound in Thai would suffice to explain why the Pali "v" is generally realized by Thais as a "w", but it wouldn't by itself explain why the Eastern Seaboard Thais have also managed to lose the velar consonants "k" and "kh" whenever these are followed by a "w".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 7:23 PM
Title: Re: Pali pronunciation
Content:
Correction: that should be velar, not alveolar.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 7:20 PM
Title: Re: No F Words in Pali
Content:
I've no idea, though the consonant F is actually dento-labial (i.e. made with upper front teeth in contact with lower lips), not bilabial.

A bilabial fricative would sound like an imperfect attempt to blow a raspberry.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 7:12 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk ask for shelter?
Content:
Yes, but the venerable is in a Chinese temple, not a Tibetan one, and the Chinese, though predominantly Mahayanists, tend to be as good at dāna and paṭisanthāra as Theravadins are.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 7:00 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk ask for shelter?
Content:
The question isn't intelligible. Would you care to rephrase it?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 6:55 PM
Title: Re: Monk misconduct
Content:
Well, maybe, but even if Hara Tanzan didn't actually do any such thing, from all that's reliably known about the man it's very much the kind of thing he would do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hara_Tanzan


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 6:14 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk ask for shelter?
Content:
I don't think it's a misunderstanding. It's about eschewing simple-minded literalism and being sensitive to how such a request will be perceived in different countries so that you avoid giving the sangha a bad name. In most of Europe, excluding such places as rural Iceland, to ask for accommodation for the night is to ask for something that's regarded as having monetary value. For example, as a teenager when I would go hiking in the Derbyshire Peak District most farmers would demand a fee just to let me pitch my tent in their field for the night. I was costing them nothing, but they still wanted paying. Now imagine if a bhikkhu approaches such a farmer and not only wants accommodation for the night but hopes to get it for free. He'll most likely get short shrift and later down at the pub the farmer will tell all his mates about the cheeky Buddhist beggar that paid him a visit that day and how he sent the ragamuffin away with a flea in his ear.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 11:19 AM
Title: Re: No F Words in Pali
Content:
In the Thai dialects spoken in some of Thailand's Eastern Seaboard provinces the consonant clusters corresponding to the Pali kv and khv are generally realized as voiceless labial fricatives. So whenever I've found myself chanting with monks from Trat, Prachinburi, etc. I notice that they'll usually say 'faci' instead of 'kvaci' and 'fāhaṃ' instead of 'khvāhaṃ'.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 10:52 AM
Title: Re: Did samanera was a forest monk?
Content:
It seems to me that the word's etymology lends support to the received understanding, for 'samaṇa' means about the same as 'bhikkhu' and 'sāmaṇera' means a 'little samaṇa'.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2015 9:24 AM
Title: Re: Pali pronunciation
Content:
For lazy people the rules of Pali pronunciation can be cut down to 6.

Rule 1:
There are 8 vowels in Pali, which are pronounced with their continental values.

Rule 2:
There are 33 consonants in Pali:

ka kha ga gha ṅa
ca cha ja jha ña
ṭa ṭha ḍa ḍha ṇa
ta tha da dha na
pa pha ba bha ma
ya ra la va sa ha ḷa ṃ

Rule 3:

Since almost no English-speaking Buddhists bother to distinguish retroflex consonants from dentals, we can eliminate ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ḍha, ṇa and ḷa.

Rule 4:

Since almost no English-speaking Buddhists bother to distinguish non-aspirates from apirates, we can eliminate the latter. So now we have only 19 consonants:

ka ga ṅa
ca ja ña
ta da na
pa ba ma
ya ra la va sa ha ṃ

Rule 5:

Of these 19, the consonants ka, ga, ja, ta, da, na, pa, ba, ma, ya, ra, la, va, sa, and ha have more or less the same sound that they do in English.

Rule 6:

We are now left with just 4 consonants whose pronunciation needs to be learned: ca (pronounce as as a voiceless palatal non-aspirate) and the three nasals: ṅa (alveolar), ña (palatal), and ṃ (nasalis simplex).

Pretty painless, eh?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 22, 2015 10:33 AM
Title: Re: TEACHERS' PLEDGE
Content:
I wonder what this means? Do American Zen Buddhists not have any teacher’s code of ethics? If so, why not just borrow the perfectly serviceable one formulated by America’s lay vipassanā-wallahs back in 1990? http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/fliers-forms/Ethics%20and%20Reconciliation%20Policy.pdf

Or does it mean that they do have a code, but it’s an invisible or a semi-visible one or a code that’s kept in hiding? And so the 92 teachers have got together and pledged to make the code more visible — to bring it out into the light of day, so to speak? But why merely ‘pledge’ to do it? Given how easily it might be done, why not just do it?

 “[F.R.] Leavis demands moral earnestness; I prefer morality... I mean I’d sooner live among people who don’t cheat at cards than among people who are earnest about not cheating.”
(C.S. Lewis, dialogue with Kingsley Amis)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 21, 2015 9:18 PM
Title: Re: bodhisatta aspiration
Content:
No. The detailed account of the Bodhisatta's career is from the commentaries, chiefly those to the Jātaka, Buddhavaṃsa and Cariyāpiṭaka. Below is probably the most accessible treatment in English at present — Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation of the section on the ten perfections in Dhammapāla's commentary to the Cariyāpiṭaka:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel409.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 21, 2015 8:08 PM
Title: Re: bodhisatta aspiration
Content:
In order to be certain of being fulfilled it must be made in the presence of a Buddha, and by a suitably qualified person (with some pretty stringent qualification criteria), and must be followed by a prediction from that Buddha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:38 PM
Title: Re: Pali pronunciation
Content:
I doubt it for there isn't any need for it. For English words one needs such a thing because their pronunciation is so vagarious, but this is not at all the case with Pali words. Once one has learned the rules of Pali pronunciation —which can be done with just a few hours study and practice— there will be no Pali words that one cannot pronounce correctly.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 20, 2015 9:16 PM
Title: Re: Pali Resources
Content:
The moderator who moved it from Early Buddhism to Pali Resources isn't presently online, but I myself would consider it to be of more relevance here. After all, fewer than three pages of the book are devoted to the use of metrical studies in chronological stratification —the only topic that would be of relevance to early Buddhism studies— while all the rest is devoted simply to Pali metre in its own right.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 20, 2015 12:12 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
So long as we're doing conventional truth/sammuti-sacca the term 'rebirth' (or even 'reincarnation', up to a point) is fine, because in sammuti-sacca we are speaking as if there existed a being who persists through saṃsāric time, who acts and experiences the ripening of his actions, who has past lives and is liable to have future lives, etc. etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 20, 2015 11:49 AM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
This is Rev. Nārada's translation, whose accompanying commentary is much inferior to that in the revised Bodhi/Rewata one. I believe there are some online copies of the latter available, but you need to avoid the one put out by Allan Bomhard of the Charleston Buddhist Fellowship as it's full of mistakes.

Edit: This is a free pdf version of a reliable copy, from the link posted earlier by Mike: http://store.pariyatti.org/Comprehensive-Manual-of-Abhidhamma-A--PDF-eBook_p_4362.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 20, 2015 7:25 AM
Title: Re: Dependant origination
Content:
"The Book of Analysis", U Thittila's PTS translation of the Vibhaṅga, is now available online (with the permission of the PTS, so I'm told).

https://wattveluvona.blogspot.com/2012/03/tripitaka-or-three-baskets.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 20, 2015 7:17 AM
Title: Re: A.K. Warder's Pali Metre finally free and for all!
Content:
Anyone interested in the subject of Pali prosody will also find the "Indian Prosody" section of Ven. Anandajoti's website a veritable goldmine:

http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 20, 2015 6:57 AM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
In the Suttas some indications are given in the Dīgha Nikāya’s Mahānidāna Sutta and Majjhima Nikāya’s Mahātaṇhāsaṅkhaya Sutta. For the detailed treatment of the commentaries, the most accessible source is the “Process-Freed” chapter of the Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha (translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi and Dr. Rewata Dhamma as Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 19, 2015 9:07 PM
Title: Re: Rebirth vs Reincarnation...
Content:
You will find this to be something of a bone of contention among English-speaking Buddhists. On the one hand there are those (mainly Theravadins) who maintain that there's an important difference in meaning between the two terms and insist that 'rebirth' alone is the correct one. On the other hand there are those (mainly adherents of the Tibetan schools) who maintain that there isn't any difference in meaning and so it doesn't matter which word one uses. Some will even go so far as to claim that 'reincarnation' is the better term, on the grounds of it being the more familiar of the two.

Those who insist on the use of 'rebirth' most commonly object to 'reincarnation' on the grounds that it suggests the idea of a soul that is reborn, which is not how past and future lives are conceived in the Buddha's teaching. Their opponents reply that this argument is weak, for the word 'rebirth' also suggests some sort of egoic entity that persists from one life to the next. The only difference is that if we use 'rebirth' then we are more likely to refer to the egoic entity as a 'person' or with some proper noun, rather than with the word 'soul'. From the point of view of ultimate truth, the sentences, "The person died and was reborn," "Fred died and was reborn," and "The person died and her soul reincarnated" are all equally expressive of falsehoods if they are taken literally. From the point of view of conventional truth, however, what they express differs in phrasing and not in meaning. In my view, this is a sound rebuttal of the argument commonly advanced by those who insist on 'rebirth'.

Having said that, although the common argument for insisting on 'rebirth' is a weak one, there is another (and much better) reason for preferring 'rebirth' to 'reincarnation', namely, that the 'carn' part of reincarnation means 'flesh'. But the Buddha's teaching includes the possibility of rebirth in the Brahma realms, where the matter is unfleshly, and the Arūpa realms, where there is no matter at all. That being so, the word 'reincarnation' is semantically inadequate to encompass the full range of Buddhist afterlife doctrine.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 19, 2015 8:40 PM
Title: Re: Anatta
Content:
The silly buffoon doesn't even know what "proper noun" means. Unless it is the name of a man called Citta, the Pali word 'citta' is a common noun, not a proper noun.
Proper noun: a name used for an individual person, place, or organization, spelled with an initial capital letter, e.g. Jane, London, and Oxfam . Often contrasted with common noun.

Common noun: a noun denoting a class of objects or a concept as opposed to a particular individual. Often contrasted with proper noun.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 19, 2015 8:33 PM
Title: Re: Anatta
Content:
There's no evidence that Ken has ever studied Pali. His tossing about of Pali grammatical terms is just a P.T Barnum performance aimed at pulling the wool over people's eyes by creating a false appearance of expertise. To anyone familiar with the meaning of the terms it will be immediately obvious that it's all just a meaningless word salad.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jan 18, 2015 7:55 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
My disdainful phrase was directed not at peace-loving Australians, but statist Australians. These people are not really peace-loving. They might profess to love peace, but what they really love is power. They might profess to be freedom-loving, yet this is belied by all that they do, in particular by their constant assault on the right of free speech. The multiculturalist bureaucrats of Australia, like multiculturalist bureaucrats everywhere else, are just arrogant and authoritarian busybodies whose highest joy appears to consist in the never-ending expansion of state power via frivolous litigation.


Edit: Whoops, the thread was closed as I was writing my reply, so I didn't notice it. Mr Man, I'll reply to your question by pm.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:56 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
I think the Sutta passages most relevant are those that castigate and refute fatalism (niyativāda), Islam being, in most of its forms, probably the most fatalistic theism imaginable — a fatalism that puts even Jansenism and double-predestinarian Calvinism in the pale.

And then there's the Mārayācana section of the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, in which the Buddha tells Māra that he will not pass away until he has disciples capable of rightly refuting the wrong views of outsiders. This, in my view is what the Buddhist response to Muslims should be, Islam being probably the most evil congeries of micchādiṭṭhi the world has ever known.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:26 PM
Title: Re: What music are you listening to right now?
Content:
Godfrey St. John-Burns, with an exciting new rendition of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild”
if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:04 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Yawn all you like, but you're still wrong. It simply wasn't a case of a "Buddhist responding to a perceived act of blasphemy."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:58 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Not just Hindus. Thai Buddhists don't perceive any contradiction in venerating Hindu shrines for good luck. Almost any time you take a taxi in that part of Bangkok the driver will salute the Erawan shrine as he goes by.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:53 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
No comparison really, for this wasn't religiously motivated anger. The man's attackers were the people employed to look after the shrine, together with incense and candle sellers, dancing girls, and others whose livelihood depended on it. Naturally they were angered at the man for the loss of livelihood his vandalism had caused them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 11:15 AM
Title: Re: Robe colour
Content:
One reason is that the Buddha permitted a variety of materials to be used for robe-dying and these will inevitably generate different colours. Red clay gives a dark pink hue, while the boiled chips from the wood of a giack-fruit tree give a dull ochre. Another possible reason is differing ideas of what the Pali names for colours mean. There are a number of difficulties in translating the Pali names for colours into the languages of SE Asia (or even into English for that matter). There isn't always a perfect match between the chromatic range of a particular colour in Pali and that of a colour in some other language. Pali, for example, has a word for 'blue', while Thai does not. What Thai has is "sky-coloured" (sii faa) and "silver-nitrate-coloured" (sii nam-ngoen), the former for light shades of blue and the latter for dark shades. But unlike in English and Pali, Thai lacks any conception of 'blueness' or any idea of sii faa and sii nam-ngoen being two shades of a single colour. They are not perceived to be so, any more than an English-speaker would perceive yellow and and orange as two shades of a single colour.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 10:30 AM
Title: Re: Phonetic description of annoying teenage noises
Content:
That could well be. I nearly choked on my coffee yesterday when I saw what Ven. Anandajoti had written on my Facebook timeline: "You forgot to mention regressive alcoholic palatal flops."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 3:28 AM
Title: Re: Zen, Zazen and Dogen
Content:
No, sorry.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 3:03 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist wanting to be a better Buddhist...
Content:
Have you consulted Buddhanet's world directory? There seem to be about half a dozen Theravadin establishments currently listed in Houston:

https://tinyurl.com/pewo2v6


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 2:22 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist wanting to be a better Buddhist...
Content:
Welcome.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 2:17 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
I don't think one can say for certain. I mean Titmuss (as usual) just sort of riffs and at no point states why he would like his readers to identify with the two murderers. Doing so could be one of the approaches to overcoming resentment in mettabhāvanā, in which case the blogger may be acquitted of the charge of fluffy-bunnying. On the other hand, if he means something like: “All of us are always just doing the best that we can, so let’s all try to be nice and not too judgmental about each other...” then yep, that would be getting into fluffy bunny territory.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 1:35 AM
Title: Re: Zen, Zazen and Dogen
Content:
http://www.wwzc.org/dharma-text/four-noble-truths.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 17, 2015 12:24 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
And the blatantly unequal enforcement of them is a matter of public record in every single country that's opted for multiculturalism rather than laïcisme or something similar.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 9:10 PM
Title: Re: Phonetic description of annoying teenage noises
Content:
Yes, though compared with other technical jargons, that of phonetics is fairly easy to pick up. Especially when you've got a talented populariser like Harbeck explaining it.

In this video he explains 9 rather unusual sounds; the first 8 are found in actual languages, while the 9th is a mere theoretical possibility but not as yet found anywhere.

1. Bilabial trill
2. Pharyngeal fricative
3. Implosive velar stop
4. Uvular trill
5. Alveolar click
6. Palatal click
7. Lateral click
8. Pulmonic ingressive voiceless lateral fricative
9. Pulmonic ingressive voiceless palatal trill
if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 8:35 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Oh, but I do accept them, Dan! I accept, for example, that freedom of speech should not include incitement to murder. As I’ve said already, I think that those placard-carrying Muslims who marched through British streets demanding the death of Salman Rushdie should have been arrested and charged with incitement, as should all these incendiary imams who preach “Death to Jews!” every Friday.

What I oppose is an expansion of these constraints that’s aimed at the enforcement by the state of simple good manners. I don’t consider opposing boorishness to be a legitimate function of the state. I don’t consider arresting people for calling other people rude names to be a legitimate role for the police. I believe in the adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones…” for heaven’s sake. I value good manners as much as anyone, but I think they should be taught by parents and enforced not by the state but by all the traditional informal mechanisms of enforcement, that span the gamut from the sharp glance at someone who’s made a thoughtlessly offensive remark to ostracism from polite society for those who make a habit of it. Why must the state be poking its nose in all the time?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 3:44 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Everyone except critics of Islam and irreverent cartoonists?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 3:00 PM
Title: Re: Why we can be certain that God does not exist
Content:
Apatheism may well be an easy fit for those raised in secular or religiously lukewarm households. However, I think that for most of us who’ve come into Buddhism from a strong theistic background (which I suspect may be the case with Ven. Sujāto, an ex-Catholic), an ideology of principled apathy is simply not an option. The God concept haunts us and is something we absolutely need to get out of our system.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:28 PM
Title: Re: devas and nagas are real entities?
Content:
I don't think so. In calling the earth to witness the Buddha wasn't arousing himself to practise diligently, but was simply preventing Māra from stealing his seat.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:57 PM
Title: Phonetic description of annoying teenage noises
Content:
Phonetics doesn't often make for comedy, but when Prof. James Harbeck gets his hands on it...


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:34 PM
Title: Re: devas and nagas are real entities?
Content:
For a solitary Buddhist ascetic it’s advantageous to believe that devas exist, for without such faith only two of the three ‘authorities’ (adhipateyya) are available to him. (See the paragraph in bold in the sutta below)

For everyone else I suppose it doesn’t greatly matter one way or the other. Unless of course they get attacked by yakkhas. Now if that should happen, then the non-believers will be in deep shtook because it won’t occur to them to call for help from the forty-one devas named in the Atanatiya Sutta as being oath-bound to protect the Buddha’s followers.


from the Adhipateyya Sutta

Authorities

“Bhikkhus, there are these three authorities. What three? Oneself as one’s authority, the world as one’s authority, and the Dhamma as one’s authority.

(1) “And what, bhikkhus, is oneself as one’s authority? Here, having gone to the forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty hut, a bhikkhu reflects thus: ‘I did not go forth from the household life into homelessness for the sake of a robe, almsfood, or lodging, or for the sake of becoming this or that, but rather [with the thought]: “I am immersed in birth, old age, and death; in sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and anguish. I am immersed in suffering, afflicted by suffering. Perhaps an ending of this entire mass of suffering can be discerned.” As one who has gone forth from the household life into homelessness, it would not be proper for me to seek out sensual pleasures similar to or worse than those that I have discarded.’ He then reflects thus: ‘Energy will be aroused in me without slackening; mindfulness will be established without confusion; my body will be tranquil without disturbance; my mind will be concentrated and one-pointed.’ Having taken himself as his authority, he abandons the unwholesome and develops the wholesome; he abandons what is blameworthy and develops what is blameless; he maintains himself in purity. This is called oneself as one’s authority.

(2) “And what, bhikkhus, is the world as one’s authority? Here, having gone to the forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty hut, a bhikkhu reflects thus: ‘I did not go forth from the household life into homelessness for the sake of a robe … but rather [with the thought]: “I am immersed in birth, old age, and death … Perhaps an ending of this entire mass of suffering can be discerned.” As one who has gone forth from the household life into homelessness, I might think sensual thoughts, thoughts of ill will, or thoughts of harming. But the abode of the world is vast. In the vast abode of the world there are ascetics and brahmins with psychic potency and the divine eye who know the minds of others. They see things from a distance but they are not themselves seen even when they’re close; they know the minds [of others] with their own mind. They would know me thus: “Look at this clansman: though he has gone forth from the household life into homelessness out of faith, he is tarnished by bad unwholesome states.”

There are deities, too, with psychic potency and the divine eye who know the minds of others. They see even from a distance but are not seen themselves even when close; they too know the minds [of others] with their own mind. They too would know me thus: “Look at this clansman: though he has gone forth from the household life into homelessness out of faith, he is tarnished by bad unwholesome states.”’

He then reflects thus: ‘Energy will be aroused in me without slackening; mindfulness will be established without confusion; my body will be tranquil without disturbance; my mind will be concentrated and one-pointed.’ Having taken the world as his authority, he abandons the unwholesome and develops the wholesome; he abandons what is blameworthy and develops what is blameless; he maintains himself in purity. This is called the world as one’s authority.

(3) “And what, bhikkhus, is the Dhamma as one’s authority? Here, having gone to the forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty hut, a bhikkhu reflects thus: ‘I did not go forth from the household life into homelessness for the sake of a robe … but rather [with the thought]: “I am immersed in birth, old age, and death … Perhaps an ending of this entire mass of suffering can be discerned.” The Dhamma is well expounded by the Blessed One, directly visible, immediate, inviting one to come and see, applicable, to be personally experienced by the wise. There are fellow monks of mine who know and see. As one who has gone forth from the household life into homelessness in this well-expounded Dhamma and discipline, it would be improper for me to be lazy and heedless.’ He then reflects thus: ‘Energy will be aroused in me without slackening; mindfulness will be established without confusion; my body will be tranquil without disturbance; my mind will be concentrated and one-pointed.’ Having taken the Dhamma as his authority, he abandons the unwholesome and develops the wholesome; he abandons what is blameworthy and develops what is blameless; he maintains himself in purity. This is called the Dhamma as one’s authority.

“These, bhikkhus, are the three authorities.”

(Bhikkhu Bodhi trans. Numerical Discourses)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 11:45 AM
Title: Re: Kammaṭṭhāna errata
Content:
In the 16-ñāṇa formulation of the progress of insight, the supramundane portion comprises the change-of-lineage, path, and fruition knowledges. The rest are mundane.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 7:44 AM
Title: Re: Boran kammatthana
Content:
Not really. I think you've overlooked Bhikkhu Bodhi's words "in the mundane portion of the path". In other words, in the commentarial exposition of the sukkhavipassaka, he does not attain mundane jhāna and then emerge from it and use the jhāna factors as a basis for insight (= "the mundane portion of the path"). Nonetheless the sukkhavipassaka is in jhāna during the supramundane portion of the path when there arise the path and fruition consciousnesses with Nibbāna as their object.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:02 AM
Title: Re: Is selling fattening food a Right Livelihood?
Content:
It would be provided one didn't cheat when weighing the produce, or shortchange the customers, or commit any of the three bodily or four verbal akusala kammapatha while engaged in the selling.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:41 AM
Title: Re: sex and romantic relationships
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2015 7:52 PM
Title: Re: sex and romantic relationships
Content:
If I had appealed to my personal experience, then your question would be appropriate. But since I limited myself to citing an authority (because that's what you had asked for!) and then drawing what seemed like a reasonable inference from it, your question is impertinent and intrusive.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2015 2:03 PM
Title: Re: sex and romantic relationships
Content:
The Buddha.
"That's the way it is, householder. That's the way it is — for sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, &amp; despair are born from one who is dear, come springing from one who is dear."
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.087.than.html
So unless you limit your sex life to prostitutes who mean nothing to you, then there will be people who are dear to you, with all that that imports.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2015 5:45 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
I suspect that this silly man just got the city names mixed up and was probably thinking of either Burnley, Blackburn or (most likely) the Yorkshire city of Bradford, with its Jihadist/Loony Left Member of Parliament George Galloway.

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .

If Emerson did in fact mean the Islamic Republic of Bradford, then what he had to say wouldn’t actually be all that far off the mark. He says, for example, that “Birmingham” is a city where the police don’t dare to take any action against Muslims. Well, I can remember twenty years ago when there were hundreds of Muslims marching through Bradford bearing “Kill Salman Rushdie!” placards and our supine police didn’t dare arrest a single one of them for incitement to murder.

He also speaks of “Birmingham” as being run by Shariah courts, with the British legal system no longer having any de facto jurisdiction. In Bradford this wouldn’t be true of criminal courts, but in civil matters the city’s Muslims are in fact subject to strong pressure, including threats of social ostracism and the boycotting of their businesses, to settle all inter-Muslim civil disputes in Shariah courts (courts in which women are not treated as equals) rather than in normal English courts.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:42 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
I wasn't aware that the term was pejorative. It seems that the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary are not aware of this either.

Had I wanted to be pejorative (which I didn't, for I was writing in a genial vein), I would have borrowed one of Winston Churchill's many colourful expressions, my favourite being "Bolshevik baboons".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2015 9:46 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Yes. Actually I'm not too sold on his economics either, nor his uncritical support for Israel. But on religious lunacy in general, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIaGWURONRU, the man's an absolute delight.

"Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he is on our side." — Richard Dawkins


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:41 AM
Title: Re: Can karma be purified?
Content:
Welcome to Dhammawheel.  

In the Pali language karma is in fact spelled kamma. Only one poster has misspelled it 'kama', which is probably just a typo since he's spelled it right in the rest of his post..


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:33 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Also interesting is that so far 94% of this left-wing tabloid's readers agree with the mayor. It's good to know that the lefties are getting sick of these choleric nuisances too, rather than constantly pandering to all their phoney grievances and demands for special treatment.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2015 1:51 AM
Title: Re: Thelonious Monk
Content:
Yes, a 'roll' in piano-playing is an arpeggio.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:05 AM
Title: Re: What is the freedom of speech?
Content:
Or on the more elementary grounds that your analysis doesn't reckon with rhetorical conventions that are well-understood by speaker and audience alike and which the Buddha had no hesitation in using. For example, making a point by way of hyperbole or the witty coining of ersatz etymologies, to name but two pedagogical skills that seem to have been much prized in his time.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2015 7:38 AM
Title: Re: Pacifism, Ethics and Dhamma
Content:
I believe you mean role-play (or rôle-play, for the more pedantic).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2015 12:25 AM
Title: Re: a convoluted path
Content:
Welcome.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 12, 2015 11:58 PM
Title: Thelonious Monk
Content:
I expect Thelonious Monk must have played quite a few rolls in his career, but I'm not sure if it's true of monks in general.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 12, 2015 9:52 PM
Title: Re: Fourfold Sangha
Content:
If you mean the four assemblies, then sāmaṇeras, sikkhamānās and sāmaṇerīs are anomalies who don't really fit in anywhere. We can't call them upāsakas/upāsikās because they're pabbajita (‘gone forth’). We can't call them bhikkhus/bhikkhunīs because they're anupasampanna (‘not fully-accepted’). We might perhaps describe them as the religious equivalent of transitional fossils, with the sāmaṇera standing in relation to the upāsaka and the bhikkhu much as homo rhodesiensis stands in relation to homo neanderthalensis and homo sapiens sapiens.

Such a description wouldn’t apply in Sri Lanka though, where for many men sāmaṇeraship isn’t a transitional status but one that they stay in all their life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 12, 2015 9:00 AM
Title: Re: comparison?
Content:
The change from the “good friendship” (kalyānamittatā) that was so highly praised by the Buddha to the “lama/disciple contract” (samaya) of Tibetan Buddhism, is the spiritual equivalent of a transformation of fellowship into serfdom. But this is probably reflective not so much of the doctrines of the schools but rather of the political forms of society in which each had its provenance: the republicanism of the Shakyans, Licchavīs, Mallas etc. versus the oriental despotisms of central Asia.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jan 11, 2015 9:38 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk ask for shelter?
Content:
Hi Opanayiko,

A bhikkhu can ask for shelter from his relatives or from laypeople who have formally invited him to ask for the four requisites. From any other householder he is permitted to ask for building materials to build a lodging for himself. For further remarks on the last point, see Ajahn Thanissaro’s explanation of the http://zugangzureinsicht.org/html/lib/authors/thanissaro/bmc1/bmc1.ch05_en.html rule.

Unmentioned in Thanissaro’s account is that some bhikkhus think the permission to ask for building materials can be extended to include asking a householder for a room for the night. Other bhikkhus think it can’t. In the Theravada countries of Asia it’s pretty much a non-issue because no matter which direction a bhikkhu goes walking in, or how far he walks, when it gets to nightfall there’s sure to be a monastery nearby where he can put up for the night.

When travelling around in the West my own policy would differ from one country to another. In continental Europe and central Asia I never asked for a room from householders, but just slept in ditches, barns, derelict buildings, etc. In Britain there’s a good network of lay Buddhists who are willing to put up monks for the night, so travelling there is easy provided you plan your trip well and notify everyone in advance. Easiest of all is Iceland, where there’s an old tradition that one should never refuse a traveller a bed for the night (dating from the old days when this would be a matter of life or death in wintertime), so there I didn’t hesitate to ask. Travelling around the island I slept in churches, priests’ homes, sheep farms, eider duck farms, a whaling station, a herring fishing station, shepherds’ huts, and once at Stykkishólmur harbour I shared a plastic fish skip with a pair of drunken tramps. Everyone I ran into seemed very happy to help me.

In fact during ten years as a monk in Europe only one place ever turned me away at the door: a Tibetan Buddhist monastery just outside Liège. I was hitch-hiking from London to Vienna to visit my old teacher, and had been picked up in Brussels and driven to the Tibetan monastery by a Transcendental Meditation teacher. But the monks said that they were holding a Tantric retreat and that the presence of a Hinayana monk would bring bad vibrations, or something like that. Apparently Hinayana vibrations are so bad that I couldn’t even be suffered to sleep under a tree in the monastery garden.

So, I left the Belgian bodhisattvas to enjoy their unadulterated vibrations, walked into Liège and sat down on a park bench. There I was approached by a friendly homosexual Thai waiter. He said that he and his Belgian boyfriend would be working all night in the Thai restaurant that his boyfriend owned, so I was welcome to sleep in their apartment. He then wrote down his address and gave me the key. While at work that night he had a whip-round among the Thai restaurant staff and the next morning he and his boyfriend presented me with a lovely breakfast and a train ticket to Vienna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:27 PM
Title: Re: “While he *still* does not attain to…”
Content:
If a translator opts for 'while', then he needs to add 'still' to disambiguate. If he uses 'when', then the sentence is already unambiguous and so 'still' is not needed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:54 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Not really. All mainstream European Christian churches are now fully humanised.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:40 AM
Title: Re: Book of the Discipline download
Content:
The incomplete translation of the Vinaya by Oldenberg and Th. Rhys Davids is about 130 years old, but the Book of the Discipline (the complete translation by I.B. Horner) was published only in 1938.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 10:47 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Certainly one would like to think that this might be the case, hence my question to Ahura Mazda in http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=22657&start=20#p324742.

But his reply, as you may have noticed, is pessimistic, as are those of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Ibn Waraq, Anwar Shaikh, Taysir Abu Saada, Walid Shoebat, and so many other intelligent apostates who've applied themselves to the problem.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 10:07 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
Thanks. I'll watch it tomorrow when I have a faster connection.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 10:03 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Games-Muslims-Play.htm#2-256


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 7:49 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Muslims
Content:
I fully agree with you that those whom obsequious politicians and multiculturalist know-nothings like to laud as "moderate Muslims" or "peaceful Muslims" are not really Muslims at all. But can you explain why you think it's desirable that these people have their eyes opened to the contradiction inherent in their position? Would it not be better to simply leave them to infect "real Muslims" (= Muslims who rigorously emulate Muhammad's conduct in the Hadiths = violent Muslims) with their whims and wishes and humanistic values? Or do you think this to be impossible - i.e. that the real/violent Muslims are simply immune to being infected?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 5:44 PM
Title: Re: is masturbation a lower hindrance than sex?
Content:
You wouldn't really need much of a "transportation infrastructure" for a plant that's indigenous to South Asia, is a staple of Ayurveda, and grows virtually everywhere.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 5:30 PM
Title: Re: Recreational Reading and the 8-Precept Observance
Content:
Vinaya texts, though intended for monks, are in fact helpful for ironing out some of the details of the precepts for laypeople, especially the last three of the eight precepts.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 1:47 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Terrorism
Content:
Sowing the seeds of vibhajjavādic vigilance and circumspection.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 12:47 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Terrorism
Content:
But getting us to hate them isn't the Jihadists’ goal at all.

Their goal is a caliphate, with Muslims ruling the roost and the rest of us subjected to dhimmitude - if we’re allowed to live at all. Their more immediate goal —at which the current atrocity in France is aimed— is the silencing of all criticism or mockery of Islam and its prophet. And this insufferable patsy of a priest is just lending them a helping hand with his sequacious liberal platitudes.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 12:41 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Terrorism
Content:
What is needed, in my view, is a frank recognition that Muslims are unassimilable cultural and moral aliens who are absolutely out of place in a secularised post-Enlightenment Europe. Since their Shariah commitment does not permit them to embrace the shared values of such a Europe, they simply do not belong amongst us.

So what is best? I would say less kipping and more Kipling:

[...]

“The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control –
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

[...]

“This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf—
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.”

http://www.bartleby.com/364/308.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2015 12:37 AM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Terrorism
Content:
But why break one sīla's by slandering him? Just telling the truth about Muhammad will more than suffice.

Here's a good example: an American evangelical Christian gives an amusing presentation of a Hadith which relates the Prophet's fondness for cross-dressing, and especially in the clothes of his child-bride Aisha:

if (typeof bbmedia == 'undefined') { bbmedia = true; var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = 'bbmedia.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(e, s); }https://phpbbex.com/ .


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 8, 2015 2:07 AM
Title: Re: Can karma be purified?
Content:
I think you're misreading it. Ajahn Thanissaro is not endorsing this view. When he says "according to this understanding..." he means according to the Jain understanding [which is wrong]. So he's merely remarking that a lot of modern Buddhists subscribe to the very same error as the Jains.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2015 11:11 PM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
Whatever it might be, the micchādhamma mentioned in the Cakkavattī-Sīhanāda Sutta is one that appears during a “dark period” (i.e. one in between Buddha-sāsanās) in which the world has already arrived at a very advanced stage of anthropo-degeneration. Since nothing taught by the Buddha would still be present in the world, there would be no point in his going into any detail about it or laying down any guidance for the beings who live at this time. The message of the Cakkavattī-Sīhanāda Sutta is a message left for us, not for them:

“Keep to your own pastures, bhikkhus, walk in the haunts where your fathers roamed. If ye thus walk in them, then shall Māra no lodgement find.” (DN. 26)

("Own pastures" = four satipaṭṭhānas)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2015 6:58 PM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
Homosexual acts are not mentioned at all in the Pali texts in connection with the third precept.

Among Buddhist moral writers I have encountered two opinions on what observance of the third precept would entail for a gay Buddhist who takes his sīla seriously.[*] The more common one is that he should simply take the same strictures as would apply to a heterosexual lay Buddhist and apply them to his own orientation. For example, he would refrain from relations with men already attached, men living dependent on their parents, etc. If a gay Buddhist takes this approach then when residing in, or travelling through, countries where homosexuality is illegal, he would regard other men as saparidaṇḍa and refrain from having sex with them.

[*] Or three if you count the Tibetan view that all homosexual acts transgress the third precept.

The other, less common, view is that homosexual acts are not mentioned in connection with the third precept on account of their not being regarded by the ancient Indians as sexual acts at all. It is claimed by some scholars that having oral or anal sex with other men was viewed as simply a recreation, on a par with having a massage or climbing a tree or going for a swim, in which any young batchelor (except a brahmin) might indulge prior to settling down in marriage. If a gay Buddhists adopts this view, then he may not regard any homosexual acts at all as contravening his sīla. Should he happen to live in a country where homosexuality is illegal, whether he would refrain from homosexual sex would depend on whether he acknowledged any religious obligation to obey the law of the land. In the case of a bhikkhu there is an explicit Vinaya obligation to obey the law. According to Namdrol on Dharmawheel there is such an obligation for Buddhist laypeople too, but I’ve never seen this stated in any Pali text.

So those are the two views. My own is preference is for the first, for even if it’s true that the Indians in general didn’t regard homosexual acts as sexual, there seems little doubt that the Buddha did. E.g., in the Vinaya it’s decreed that breaches of chastity between a bhikkhu and another man entail exactly the same class of offence as breaches involving a female.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2015 5:37 PM
Title: Re: “While he *still* does not attain to…”
Content:
“While he still does not attain to the rapture and pleasure that are secluded from sensual pleasures and secluded from unwholesome states, or to something more peaceful than that, covetousness invades his mind and remains, ill will invades his mind and remains, sloth and torpor invade his mind and remain, restlessness and remorse invade his mind and remain, doubt invades his mind and remains, discontent invades his mind and remains, weariness invades his mind and remains.”
I don’t think it’s the case that ‘still’ translates any particular Pali word, but rather that it is required in English for disambiguation. Its function is to show that the word ‘while’ is being used in a temporal rather than an adversative sense. In other words, it shows that ‘while’ here means ‘during the time that ...’ and not ‘although’.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2015 1:55 PM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
Indeed.

What I said wouldn't apply, for example, in the case mentioned by Robert where the woman is already contracted. Nor would it apply in countries where prostitution is illegal, for in this case a sex-worker would be an improper partner of the saparidaṇḍā type: a woman with whom sex would entail punishment.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2015 2:53 PM
Title: Re: Very new to this
Content:
Welcome.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2015 7:59 AM
Title: Re: Is Brahman a term for God?????
Content:
I'd never heard the word before, but according to the Oxford Dictionary its earliest recorded use was by Laurence of Arabia in his autobiography The Seven Pillars of Wisdom:
"That hot pissy aura of thronged men in woollen clothes."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2015 12:37 AM
Title: Re: Remembering past lives
Content:
Not in the Pali; it’s only phrased like this to make it sound natural in English translation.

Vincent: “I recollected MY manifold past lives.”
Pali: “anekavihitaṃ pubbenivāsaṃ anussarāmi.”
Form-equivalent translation: “manifold former-dwelling recall.”

Vincent: “there I was so named.”
Pali: amutrāsiṃ evaṃ nāmo.”
Form-equivalent translation: “there was thus name.”

Though even if ‘I’ and ‘my’ had been emphatically stated in the passage, rather than merely suggested by the verb inflections, it would not indicate eternalism. It would be just an instance of the Buddha’s use of “worldly conventions, expressions, idioms and designations (lokasamaññā lokaniruttiyo lokavohārā lokapaññattiyo) without being deceived by them.” (see the Poṭṭhapādasutta).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 3, 2015 8:39 AM
Title: Re: sex and romantic relationships
Content:
Although in the Suttas the life of a samaṇa is generally depicted as a quick way up, we are also warned (e.g. in the http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.22.budd.html of the Dhammapada) that for some it may be a quick way down. For some, therefore, the decision not to embrace the brahmacariyā, or to abandon it after embracing it, may be a quite rational and prudent one, e.g. if they know that they don't have the necessary restraint to live such a life honourably.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 2, 2015 11:48 PM
Title: Re: Meat problem, conflict between Theravada and Mahayana
Content:
If you want the consciences of other Buddhists to reject it and to embrace vegetarianism, there are plenty of good arguments at your disposal. Invoking kamma is not one of them, for it will be persuasive only to those Buddhists who misunderstand the doctrine of kamma, and will be rejected as nonsense by those Buddhists who understand it correctly.

For more on this, see the Sujāto article that Cooran linked to above:
"There is a wider problem, and I think the discussions of the issue among Buddhists generally avoid this. And the wider issue is this: meat eating is clearly harmful. That harm is a direct but unintended consequence of eating meat. Since there is no intention to cause harm, eating meat is not bad kamma.

There are therefore two logical possibilities: eating meat is ethical; or kamma is not a complete account of ethics." (my emphasis)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 2, 2015 6:38 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
And here's the paper to which Ihara is responding:

Damien Keown, http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/humanrights.html.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 2, 2015 6:33 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
Craig Ihara: Why There are No Rights in Buddhism: a reply to Damien Keown. From Buddhism and Human Rights, edited by Damien V. Keown, Charles S. Prebish, and Wayne R. Husted. (Curzon Press 1998), pp. 43-51
I maintain that the notion of Dharma may be part of a vision of society in which human life is ideally a kind of dance with well defined role-responsibilities ... Although there are beneficiaries in such a society, it does not follow that it embodies a point of view in which there are “others to whom something is owed or due, and who would be wronged if denied that something.”


 ./download/file.php?id=2461
(465.52 KiB) Downloaded 25 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 2, 2015 6:19 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
I would say that in a Buddhist universe he might have a legal right to do so, but the idea of a natural right to do this (or anything else for that matter) would be unintelligible. If I can find it, I'll post an article later on why there are no (natural) rights in Buddhism.

In the meantime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 2, 2015 4:00 PM
Title: Re: Meat problem, conflict between Theravada and Mahayana
Content:
Only if you subscribe to the Jain conception of karma.

In the Buddhist conception kamma, is identified with volition (cetanā) and does not occur in the absence of volition.

A housewife, for example, doesn't go to the supermarket to buy a tin of sardines in the hope that her purchase will persuade the owners of fishing trawlers to go out and catch some more sardines. She might be vaguely aware that her purchase will contribute towards such an outcome, but her knowledge of this fact is not constitutive of the volition with which she purchases the sardines.

To give an analogy: in Vinaya monks are required to sweep certain parts of their monastery on certain days of the month. In a forest monastery they know that in doing so their sweeping will almost certainly bring about the deaths of a few ants and other small bugs that are hiding. Yet even though the monks know this to be inevitable, provided they don’t do their sweeping with the aim of killing these bugs and take care not to kill any bug that’s visible to them, the Vinaya is explicit that their killing is without cetanā and therefore non-culpable.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 2, 2015 3:00 PM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
Sorry, it should read "neither-painful-nor-pleasant" (adukkhamasukhaṃ). I'll change it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 2, 2015 9:05 AM
Title: Re: First and Third Noble Truth
Content:
According to the Abhidhamma, the vedanās that accompany seeing, hearing, tasting and scenting are always neither-painful-nor-pleasant. Painful (dukkha) and pleasant (sukha) apply only to the vedanās that arise with body-consciousness; sad (domanassa), happy (somanassa) and equanimous (upekkhā) apply to the vedanās that arise with mind-consciousnesses.

That this is indeed the case will become evident from a comparison of the vedanās that accompany eye-consciousness and those that accompany body-consciousness, when one stares too long at a man engaged in arc welding.

So in the case of your giack-fruit, all who eat it will experience neither-painful-nor-pleasant vedanā accompanying the tongue-consciousness in the sense-door-process, but will be distinguished from each other according to whether it's domanassa, somanassa or upekkhā that they experience in the ensuing mind-door-process.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 1, 2015 6:35 PM
Title: Re: The Matanga girl who falls for Ven Ananda
Content:
I don't recall meeting with the story in Pali sources. Carus is making a liberal use of Eugène Burnouf's Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme Indien (Paris 1844), p. 206, including changing the Mataṅga girl's Sanskrit name, Prakṛti, to its Pali form.

Burnouf gives the Śārdūlakarṇa-avadāna story in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divyavadana as his source. See attached file from the English translation of Burnouf by Buffetrille and Lopez.


 ./download/file.php?id=2459
(72.18 KiB) Downloaded 99 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:52 PM
Title: Re: Resistance by parents to ordination
Content:
Yes, indeed. We're a rather small family, so it's no trouble keeping in touch with everyone by phone, Skype and Facebook.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:49 AM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
That's a non sequitur. The words "kept" and "broken" apply just as well to vowed observances as they do to rules or laws.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Dec 30, 2014 2:33 AM
Title: Re: "One-life-only" negates Dhamma
Content:
The term padaparamo is given in the Ugghaṭitaññūsutta (AN.ii.135), together with the ugghaṭitaññū, vipañcitaññū, and neyya, but they are only defined in the Abhidhamma's Puggalapaññatti:
Katamo ca puggalo ugghaṭitaññū? Yassa puggalassa saha udāhaṭavelāya dhammābhisamayo hoti: ayaṃ vuccati puggalo ‘ugghaṭitaññū’.
Katamo ca puggalo vipañcitaññū? Yassa puggalassa saṃkhittena bhāsitassa vitthārena atthe vibhajiyamāne dhammābhisamayo hoti: ayaṃ vuccati puggalo ‘vipañcitaññū’.
Katamo ca puggalo neyyo? Yassa puggalassa uddesato paripucchato yoniso manasikaroto kalyāṇamitte sevato bhajato payirupāsato evaṃ anupubbena dhammābhisamayo hoti: ayaṃ vuccati puggalo ‘neyyo’.
Katamo ca puggalo padaparamo? Yassa puggalassa bahumpi suṇato bahumpi bhaṇato bahumpi dhārayato bahumpi vācayato na tāya jātiyā dhammābhisamayo hoti: ayaṃ vuccati puggalo ‘padaparamo’.
(Pugg.41)

B.C. Law:



pugg.jpg (164.02 KiB) Viewed 2292 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Dec 30, 2014 1:35 AM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
Yes.

And Buddhist women with gigolos, if they're so inclined.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:59 PM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
Well, there is plenty of informative material online. When you’ve finished with the Walshe booklet, if you want to learn how matters stood in Sri Lanka before sexual morals got reinvented by Dharmapala and company, just try googling ‘Ceylon’ in combination with words like ‘polygyny’, ‘polyandry’, ‘cicisbeism’, ‘polykoity’, etc.

Polyandry, it seems, was especially common in pre-modern Ceylon, most often in the form of one woman sharing two brothers.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Dec 29, 2014 11:53 AM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
Sorry, but you don't know your own history. The contemporary Sri Lankans' anti-fornication belief, like their anti-homosexuality belief, is not "old Sri Lankan tradition" at all. It's a modern development arising from Buddhist revivialists like Anagarika Dharmapala trying to outdo the missionaries by being more Christian than the Christians.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Dec 29, 2014 11:13 AM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
In the absence of any financial constraints upon his appetite, I expect he’ll end up making rather a swine of himself.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Dec 29, 2014 11:05 AM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
For example, a budding Casanova goes to a singles bar every Friday or Saturday night in quest of a woman for a one-night-stand, but takes care not to go home with anyone who's married or engaged or still living in dependence on her parents or brothers, etc. etc. By confining his amatory attentions to women who are not in any of the prohibited classes, the Buddhist philanderer's observance of the third precept remains intact.

Edit: If you are living in Sri Lanka or some other Theravada country, it's possible that my answer will differ from what you are used to being told about the third precept. I am aware of the widespread popular view in Buddhist Asia which, as in the Abrahamic religions, holds all acts of "fornication" (sex between unmarried persons) to be breaches of the third precept. This opinion is not, however, supported in the texts, which allow that lawful sexual acts may be between married persons, engaged persons, "or even a temporary arrangement" (khaṇikāyapi).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:07 AM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
If would be undeniable if natural (as opposed to legal) rights in fact existed and if they were in fact inalienable. But notwithstanding your fervent belief in them, both contentions are disputed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2014 9:31 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
Well, I don’t think you really disagree with me, even if you think that you do. It’s just that we are speaking with respect to different senses of the word ‘right’. You, if I understand you aright, are using it in the sense of, “That which is consonant with equity or the light of nature; that which is morally just or due.” I am using it in the sense of, “Justifiable claim, on legal grounds, to have or obtain something, or to act in a certain way.”

Now whether a Muslim woman in France possesses the former is a moot point, but it is undeniable that under the laws of France she does not possess the latter.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2014 5:23 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
It doesn’t have to be! Religious intolerance of the sun, for example, has seldom been expressed in language more elegant than James Rainford’s:
A nun in the sun
was heard to declare
“I’m as hot as a bun
with a cross to bear.”

Her companion replied
“And I’m fairly cooking.
I’d cast my habit aside,
but our Lord may be looking.”

So they sat on the beach
and prayed for a breeze
to refreshingly reach
past their tightly clenched knees.


https://thesanctumofsanity.blogspot.com/


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2014 3:28 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
Where behaviour is a danger to national security or is liable to negatively impact the whole society, it surely becomes a matter of law.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2014 3:16 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
They don't contradict it. They allow that different women do it for different reasons.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2014 2:04 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
You already brought up this whopping great Aunt Sally in the hijab thread a few month back. I say now as I said then, that when overall context and motive are reckoned with (and as Buddhists we surely ought to reckon with them, since kamma is cetanā) there is simply no comparison between the veiled Catholic nun and the veiled Muslimah.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:39 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
As the opening post purports to be about pindapata in the West, I think your introduction of the sartorial wrongheadedness of the Muslimah might be going a little off topic. Still...

If you mean merely that to wear a burqa‘ or niqāb is not an intrinsically unwholesome act, I wouldn’t dispute it for a moment. In practice, however, it seems to me to be inseparable from unwholesomeness when done by Muslim women living in Western countries. And that for one of three reasons. Either because: (1) they have been forced to do it by men; or (2) they do it as an expression of their hatred, defiance, contempt or unacknowledged envy for a surrounding culture that’s incomparably superior to any that the Muslims have ever established; or (3) even where the woman is not herself motivated by an evil will, the mere wearing of such garments serves to perpetuate an evil institution — one that has its origin in pathological male jealousy and which involves a cruel, repressive and irrational sexualization of females from about the age of two.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2014 12:09 PM
Title: Re: Should Alms round be banned in Western Countries?
Content:
In the case of my own country, Britain, I would say no, on the grounds that there’s no public demand for such a ban, and no obvious public good to be served, or public evil to be averted, by one.

Moreover, although it's declined a lot since Vatican II, there is a longstanding tradition of walking for alms by monks and nuns in Catholic mendicant orders like the Carmelites and Poor Clares, so it's not a culturally alien innovation like hiding oneself inside a burqa‘ or niqāb.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Dec 27, 2014 10:16 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Terrorism
Content:
Dear Ben and James,

On the subject of Muslim women's dress I refer you to my posts in the https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=21864 thread and to Pat Condell's short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlkxlzTZc48 which addresses the case of those Muslim women who voluntarily wear the burqa‘ or niqāb (2:30 onwards).

The only thing I would wish to add to Condell's remarks are that these much-trumpeted cases of Muslim women in the West who, though perfectly free to dress as they wish, and though fully-exposed to Western Enlightenment values in general, and to feminism in particular, nevertheless choose to wear the burqa‘ or niqāb, — these cases are really just a smokescreen aimed at silencing critics of Islamic oppression of women by diverting attention from what is much more typically going on in Muslim communities.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Dec 27, 2014 8:12 PM
Title: Re: Can a Bodhisatta go to hell?
Content:
The Suttanipāta Commentary (Sn-a I 50) rules out a Bodhisatta's rebirth in the Avīci hell and the Lokantarikā hells. That it doesn't mention the rest of the hells might be read as implying that a Bodhisatta may be born in them.

See here for the full list of eighteen inauspicious births that are impossible for a predicted Bodhisatta:

http://www.bps.lk/olib/bl/bl157-u.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:40 PM
Title: Re: Buddhist response to Terrorism
Content:
0:10:15 - 0:10:55  

I’m glad to learn that I’m not the only bhikkhu who applauds the French government for its ban on the public wearing of the burqa‘ and niqāb and its refusal to compromise with the spokesmen for 7th century barbarism.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:34 PM
Title: Re: Is "God" to be found in any of the Buddhist scriptures?
Content:
It’s not in the Pali Canon, but even if we had no canon we’d still be entitled to dismiss the story as an anachronistic fiction. Since the Buddha was teaching long before the rise of the Hindu bhakti cults there wouldn’t in his time have been any such thing as “a devotee of the god Rāma”.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:17 PM
Title: Re: Friends share? Mudita? Wrong speech? Karuna, etc ?
Content:
Hi Sattva,

In my case I omitted to read or reply to your post because I normally skip threads in the Lounge unless there’s something in their title to indicate that they are, or might be, Dhamma-related. (That’s why I’m reading this one  )

Best wishes,
Dhammanando


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Dec 27, 2014 4:48 PM
Title: Re: Resistance by parents to ordination
Content:
Some examples from later times are found in Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the phrase, without permission from his mother and father in his Vinaya Atthakathā. Here’s the passage in full:



Here, the phrase “from his mother and father” was said in regard to the man and woman who conceived him. If both are living, then leave must be obtained from both of them.

If the father or mother is deceased, then leave must be obtained from [the parent] who is still living.

Even if they have themselves gone forth, leave must still be obtained from them.

* * * *

When obtaining leave, he may either go and obtain it himself, or may send another person, saying to him, “Go to my mother and father and having obtained their leave come back.”

* * * *

If he says, “I am one who has obtained permission,” he may be given the going forth if it is believable.

* * * *

A father has himself gone forth and wishes his son to go forth; having obtained leave of the mother, let him go forth; or, a mother wishes her daughter to go forth; having obtained leave of the father, let her go forth.

* * * *

A father, not concerned for the welfare of his wife and son, runs away. The mother gives her son to some monks, saying, “Let him go forth.” When asked, “Where has his father gone?” she replies, “He has run away to disport himself.” — It is suitable for him [the son] to be given the going forth.

A mother has run away with some man or other. The father gives [his son to some monks, saying], “Let him go forth.” The principle in this case is just the same as above.

The Kurundī* states: ‘A father is absent. The mother gives her son permission, saying, “Let him go forth.” When asked, “Where has his father gone?” she replies, “I shall be responsible for whatever is due to you from the father.” — It is suitable for him [the son] to be given the going forth.’

[* Kurundī: a Sinhalese commentary frequently cited by Buddhaghosa as the source of his Vinaya exegesis.]

* * * *

The mother and father are deceased. Their boy has grown up in the company of [relatives] such as his maternal aunt. When he is being given the going forth, his relatives start a quarrel or criticize it. Therefore, in order to stop the quarrel, he should obtain their leave before being given the going forth. But if given the going forth without having obtained their leave there is no offence.

They who undertook to feed him in his childhood are called “mother” and “father”, and with respect to these the principle is just the same as above. The son [is reckoned as] one living dependent on himself, not on a mother and father.

* * * *

Even if he be a king, he must still obtain leave before being given the going forth.

* * * *

Being permitted by his mother and father, he goes forth, but [later] reverts [to being a householder]. Even if he goes forth and reverts seven times, on each occasion that he comes [to go forth] again he must obtain leave [from his mother and father] before he may be given the going forth.

* * * *

If [his mother and father] say: “This [son of ours], having reverted and come home, does not do any work for us; having gone forth he will not fulfil his duty to you; there is no point in him obtaining leave; whenever he comes to you, just give him the going forth.” When [a son] has been disowned in this way, it is suitable for him to be given the going forth again without even obtaining leave.

* * * *

He who when only in his childhood had been given away [by his mother and father, saying], “This is a gift for you; give him the going forth whenever you want,” may be given the going forth whenever he comes [to ask for it], without even obtaining leave.

But [a mother and father], having given permission [to their son] when he was only in his childhood, afterwards, when he has reached maturity, withdraw their permission; he must not be given the going forth without obtaining leave.

* * * *

An only son, after quarrelling with his mother and father, comes [to the sangha, saying], “Let me go forth.” Upon being told, “Come back after you have obtained leave,” he says, “I’m not going! If you don’t let me go forth, I shall burn down your monastery, or stab you with a sword, or cause loss to your relatives and supporters by cutting down the plants in their gardens, or kill myself by jumping from a tree, or join a gang of robbers, or go to another country.”

It is suitable to let him go forth in order to safeguard life. If his mother and father then come and say, “Why did you let our son go forth?” they should be informed of the reason for it, saying, “We let him go forth in order to safeguard life. You may confirm this with your son.”

* * * *

Then, [one saying] “I shall jump from a tree [if you don’t let me go forth],” has climbed up and is about to let go with his hands and feet. It is suitable to let him go forth.

* * * *

An only son, having gone to another country, requests the going forth. If he had obtained leave before departing, he may be given the going forth.

If he had not obtained leave, having sent a young monk to get [the parents] to give their leave, he may be given the going forth. If it is a very distant country, it is suitable to just give him the going forth and then send him with other bhikkhus to inform [the parents].

But the Kurundī states: ‘if [the country] is far away and the way to it is [across] a great wilderness (or desert), it is suitable to give him the going forth, [thinking], “having gone there [later] we shall obtain leave [of the parents].”’

* * * *

If a mother and father have many sons and speak thus: “Venerable sir, may you give the going forth to whichever [one] of these boys you choose,” then having examined the boys, he may give the going forth to the one he chooses.

If an entire [extended] family or an entire village is given permission [by someone, saying], “Venerable sir, may you give the going forth to whichever [one] of the boys in this family or this village you choose,” he may give the going forth to the one he chooses.
(Vin-a. v.1011-12, my translation)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Dec 27, 2014 12:20 PM
Title: Re: Ven Dhammanando's cats
Content:
No, feline fur. Vicarious hair is what you get on crinigerous vicars.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:24 AM
Title: Re: Ven Dhammanando's cats
Content:
It's not really a case of persuasion. It's just that most animals are given to the monastery as kittens or puppies and I'm the one who usually feeds, medicates and grooms them. Then as soon as they acquire a little agility they like to climb up my sanghati (the folded robe that monks wear over their left shoulder).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:21 PM
Title: Re: Womanizing?
Content:
Womanizing (itthidhutta) is advised against in the http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.06.piya.html on the grounds of its conducing to a man's worldly downfall, meaning loss of his wealth.

"The man who is addicted to women (given to a life of debauchery), is a drunkard, a gambler, and a squanderer of his earnings — this is the cause of his downfall."

However, not all instances of womanizing would break the third precept.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Dec 26, 2014 7:00 AM
Title: Re: Thinking, pali word, meditation
Content:
Kāma-vitakka, vyāpāda-vitakka, vihiṃsā-vitakka

Thoughts of sensuality, ill will, or cruelty.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Dec 26, 2014 6:28 AM
Title: Re: Long Breath/Short Breath: Control Breath or Natural Breath?
Content:
Why do you say that?

The objects of mindfulness in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta's account of kāyānupassanā include such volitional objects as: walking, standing, sitting, lying down, going out, coming back, looking at something, looking away from something, bending and extending one’s limbs, carrying one’s outer robe, upper robe and bowl, eating, drinking, chewing, tasting, urinating, defecating, talking, and remaining silent.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Dec 26, 2014 6:17 AM
Title: Re: Happy Birthday David N. Snyder
Content:
Happy birthday!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:44 PM
Title: Re: Merry Christmas!
Content:
Two Queens' Christmas Messages

Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMEOrszol4U


Queen Doreen of Walsall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2LCSiDvlfs


