Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:12 AM
Title: Re: Romantic Love
Content:
Only to someone led astray by Buddhadāsa. To a Buddhist of orthodox view it shows merely that strongly developed traits can persist not only during a single lifetime but also through saṃsāric time — a phenomenon abundantly attested to in the Suttas and Vinaya.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 15, 2015 7:50 AM
Title: Re: Romantic Love
Content:
No. Since the Sutta describes both the celibate and the non-celibate householders as being "clothed in white" the phrase merely signifies that they were householders and not monastics.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 15, 2015 7:45 AM
Title: Re: Romantic Love
Content:
Visākhā, wife of Puṇṇavaḍḍhana and mother of Migāra, is reported in the Suttas to have been a married and highly fecund lay sotāpanna.

http://www.softerviews.org/DPPN/visakhaa.html

More importantly:
“There are not only one hundred, Vaccha, or two or three or four or five hundred, but far more male lay followers, my disciples, clothed in white enjoying sensual pleasures, who carry out my instruction, respond to my advice, have gone beyond doubt, become free of perplexity, gained intrepidity, and become independent of others in the Teacher’s Dispensation.”
(Mahāvacchagotta Sutta)
This refers to stream-entry. The same is repeated for the higher ariyan stages up to non-returning (though excluding arahatta). The same is also repeated for female lay followers. The phrase “enjoying sensual pleasures” (kāmabhogin) indicates that these spiritual virtuosos were not brahmacarīs.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 15, 2015 7:01 AM
Title: Re: Emotions and Buddhism
Content:
According to the texts the abandoning of sakkāya-diṭṭhi results in an overriding of certain physiological functions that we are wont to call "instinctive".

From Numerical Discourses:
“Bhikkhus, there are these two that are not terrified by a bursting thunderbolt. What two? A bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed and a thoroughbred elephant. These are the two that are not terrified by a bursting thunderbolt.”

“Bhikkhus, there are these two that are not terrified by a bursting thunderbolt. What two? A bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed and a thoroughbred horse. These are the two that are not terrified by a bursting thunderbolt.”

“Bhikkhus, there are these two that are not terrified by a bursting thunderbolt. What two? A bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed and a lion, king of the beasts. These are the two that are not terrified by a bursting thunderbolt.”

Commentary: “The arahant is not terrified because he has abandoned personal-existence view (sakkāyadiṭṭhiyā pahīnattā); the thoroughbred elephant, because his personal-existence view is very strong (sakkāyadiṭṭhiyā balavattā).”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 14, 2015 7:26 PM
Title: Re: The Buddha's suicide
Content:
Yes, the concentration of ojā was too great even for them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 14, 2015 7:17 PM
Title: Re: The Buddha's suicide
Content:
In the opening section of each of his commentaries Buddhaghosa lays down the following classification for the degree of authoritativeness of different sources of Dhamma:

1. Sutta: "the well-said" = the three baskets of the Tipiṭaka.
2. Suttānuloma: "the according with the well-said" = a direct inference from the Tipiṭaka.
3. Atthakathā: "treatise on the meaning" = an ancient commentary.
4. Attanomati: "personal opinion" = the expositions and views of later generations of teachers.

In this scheme, sutta is viewed as the strongest source of authority (i.e. to be regarded as inerrant) and attanomati the weakest. So this is what's recommended, though frankly it's a recommendation that one finds more honoured in the breach nowadays. For example:

In some scholarly conservative quarters there is a tendency to treat atthakathā as being equal in weight to sutta and to dismiss non-traditional suttānulomas out of hand as being mere attanomati.

Among some "back-to-the-Suttas" Buddhists one sees the opposite tendency: a failure to recognize one's own attanomati as being just that, and then an elevation of it to the status of suttānuloma.

Among some followers of Theravadin guru cults (especially the Thai forest tradition) one finds the attanomati of this or that teacher being treated as the sole source of authority and other three viewed with uninterest or even contempt. In effect attanomati is here being elevated to the status that properly belongs to sutta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 14, 2015 1:05 PM
Title: Re: The Buddha's suicide
Content:
The devas’ capacity (and their eagerness) to do this sort of thing is attested to in the Suttas, but the claim that they actually did so on this occasion is commentarial.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 14, 2015 11:10 AM
Title: Re: Emotions and Buddhism
Content:
To say that fear arises due to craving does not mean that fear is craving. In the present case, fear would arise in a person who is not free of craving on account of the tiger's formidable capacity to frustrate his craving for existence (bhava-taṇhā).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 14, 2015 8:43 AM
Title: Re: The Writings of R. G. de S. Wettimuny
Content:
I think Wettimuny is right, though it seems curious to me that such a claim would be made by a follower of a four-Nikāya fundamentalist like Ñāṇavīra. If one's conception of arahatta were derived strictly from the Suttas, one would be unlikely to conceive of this attainment as being anything but purgative and an arahant devoid of compassion (at least of active compassion) would be perfectly possible (a position that I have in fact seen championed by some followers of Ñāṇananda).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 14, 2015 8:23 AM
Title: Re: The Buddha's suicide
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Aug 13, 2015 11:20 PM
Title: Re: Thanissaro on King Mongkut
Content:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bm86temxlh7vcdx/Gray%20%7C%20Soteriological%20State.pdf

The 1986 PhD thesis of Christine Gray.

Though they make no mention of any formal taking of the bodhisattva vow, chapters 4 and 5 give an interesting picture of how seriously King Ramas III and IV took their bodhisattvaship.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Aug 13, 2015 10:27 PM
Title: Re: The Buddha's suicide
Content:
I suppose that from the commentarial point of view it would be necessary to retain a record of the event in order to show that Gotama had completely fulfilled the thirtyfold regularities common to all Buddhas, thereby leaving his attainment of anuttara sammāsambodhi beyond any doubt. The twenty-ninth regularity is “consuming a meal of flesh on the day of their Parinibbāna” (Bv-a. 298).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:47 PM
Title: Re: Thanissaro on King Mongkut
Content:
I don’t myself know what evidence there is. However, I forwarded your question to my Icelandic anthropologist friend who’s a Thailand specialist. He wrote back to say that he can’t provide any sources right now as he’s driving around in the Arizona Desert, but will do so when he returns to his college in a few days.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:00 PM
Title: Re: The Buddha's suicide
Content:
The commentarial thinking is that the Buddha's death was not due to there being anything wrong with Cunda's food. The Buddha's words acquitting Cunda of any fault were spoken because there really was no fault and not merely to assuage any remorse that might arise in him.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:21 PM
Title: Re: My rough plan
Content:
As it's an Ajahn Maha Boowa youtube channel that's hosting the video, most likely Baan Tard is the monastery they're headed for.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 12, 2015 4:13 PM
Title: Re: My rough plan
Content:
It's not Wat Pah Baan Taad. It's Wat Bodhisomphorn, a Dhammayutt monastery in the town of Udorn. Very few abbots of Dhammayutt forest wats possess a license to give ordinations, and so in most cases a would-be Dhammayutt forest monk will ordain in a city wat and then request his upajjhaya's permission to go and live in a forest wat.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:45 PM
Title: Re: The Buddha's suicide
Content:
It's that there was nothing wrong with Cunda's meal and it wasn't the cause of the Buddha's passing. The reason it was inedible for anyone but a Tathāgata wasn't because it consisted of bad pork or poisonous mushrooms, as modernists like to speculate. Rather, it was because a huge number of devas had infused the food with celestial ojā out of a desire to acquire merit by participating in the offering of the last meal.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 12, 2015 12:50 PM
Title: Re: Thanissaro on King Mongkut
Content:
If memory serves me right, it does accord with the findings of Stanley Tambiah. King Mongkut and the other bigwigs of the early Dhammayuttika Nikāya valued the Dhamma primarily as a source of civic virtue rather than as a path to liberation. This remained the case with the Dhammayutts until the appearance of the Ajahn Sao/Ajahn Mun tradition, together with the post-war Burmese-inspired revival of Abhidhamma studies and satipaṭṭhāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:21 AM
Title: Re: Thanissaro on King Mongkut
Content:
It’s common knowledge and there’s nothing in the least remarkable about it. Traditionally for the monarchs of Siam, Burma, Laos and Cambodia, being a Bodhisattva (at least nominally) was pretty much part of the job description, along with being a Protector of the Dhamma and an incarnation of Rama, Vishnu, Shiva or Indra.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:42 PM
Title: Re: My rough plan
Content:
I can't advise you myself as I'm not up to date regarding how matters stand for those seeking ordination. However, I recommend that you try sending your queries to these people:

http://assistthaivisa.com/

They are very reliable and up to date, and although it's a commercial service they're running they won't charge you for giving advice.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Aug 11, 2015 10:47 AM
Title: Re: Monastic rules on eating
Content:
When monks are sick they can take the allowable medicines at any time of the day or night.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Aug 11, 2015 10:36 AM
Title: Re: Monastic rules on eating
Content:
There's no Vinaya limit as to quantity. In the Suttas the Buddha recommends that bhikkhus stop eating five mouthfuls before they feel full in order to avoid post-prandial lethargy, but he didn't make this into a Vinaya rule.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Aug 11, 2015 8:51 AM
Title: Re: Did Buddha say drinking Alcohol is bad?
Content:
The Vinaya doesn't say anything about when the fifth precept for householders was first taught. It reports only the occasion when this training rule was laid down for bhikkhus. It would be true to say that this training rule didn't exist from the very beginning, but only trivially true for the same applies to all the Vinaya training rules — each one was established in the aftermath of some errant bhikkhu performing the action in question.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Aug 11, 2015 8:30 AM
Title: Re: The Buddha's suicide
Content:
Bad translation. The Pali doesn't say that the Buddha was "not pleased" but only that he dismissed (or perhaps "rebuked" — apasādesi) Upavāṇa. It was the visiting devas who were not pleased, for Upavāṇa was obstructing their view of the Buddha.

If, however, the sutta had reported that the Buddha was not pleased with Upavāṇa, that would still fall a long way short of attributing "crotchetiness" to him.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:31 AM
Title: Re: Buddhism and raising children, how?
Content:
In the present case I think that's because you're taking the man's humour (in particular his auxesis and faux-curmudgeonliness) a little too literally.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:54 PM
Title: Re: Are the Police in the USA out of control?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Aug 10, 2015 9:51 PM
Title: Re: Are the Police in the USA out of control?
Content:
To what then should we attribute such gross disproportions as those below?



1.jpeg (59.95 KiB) Viewed 2902 times


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2.jpeg (56.18 KiB) Viewed 2902 times


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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:48 AM
Title: Re: Pali chanting for deceased
Content:
http://www.dharmawheel.net


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Aug 10, 2015 2:32 AM
Title: Re: Pali chanting for deceased
Content:
"It is the rule that whereas other women carry the child in their womb for nine or ten months before giving birth, it is not so with the Bodhisatta’s mother, who carries him for exactly ten months before giving birth. That is the rule"
(Mahāpadāna Sutta, DN. 14)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Aug 9, 2015 12:58 PM
Title: Re: Pali chanting for deceased
Content:
It's not that bad! In any case the chanting takes only about ten minutes at the most. One will find it done in many different styles, some of them quite beautiful and others an absolute cacophany. Something like this is probably the commonest:

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 Aug 9, 2015 12:46 PM
Title: Re: Pali chanting for deceased
Content:
I think that goes beyond what the texts support. They seem to allow only for the possibility of an alleviation of the sufferings of one particular sub-species of preta. Not a liberation from the preta state itself.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Aug 9, 2015 11:34 AM
Title: Re: Pali chanting for deceased
Content:
I'm not very familiar with the Buddhist funeral customs outside of Thailand, so I don't know whether the Five Subjects for Frequent Reflection are used anywhere. In Thailand they form part of the morning chanting in most monasteries, but I've never heard them chanted at a funeral.

I have heard that the Sri Lankan custom is to recite the Salla Sutta at funerals and this strikes me as a much more reasonable practice than what we do in Thailand. As there's nothing that can be done for the deceased, a funeral should serve as an occasion for salutary reflection by the living. The Salla Sutta serves this purpose.

In Thailand, however, the custom is to recite the mātikās to the seven books of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, a practice that's aimed at the benefit of the deceased rather than the people attending the funeral. The underlying belief is that the spirit of the deceased is hanging around the coffin and needs to be urged to go and get reborn. And so the chanting of the Abhidhamma is aimed at informing the spirit that the rūpadhammas that make up its corpse are no use to it anymore and so it's time to let go of attachment to it and move on. Given the Theravada's rejection of the doctrine of an intermediate state between death and rebirth, the custom is obviously an irrational superstition. There's also a certain irony to the Thai practice, considering that the Theravadin rejection of the intermediate state heresy is actually contained in one of the books of the Abhidhamma!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 8, 2015 7:06 PM
Title: Re: Pali chanting for deceased
Content:
I think the Salla Sutta is the most appropriate.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.3.08.irel.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 8, 2015 6:59 PM
Title: Re: AN 2.19: Kusala Sutta — Skillful
Content:
I would say so. I think that ‘skilful’ (a word with no moral connotations at all) is ridiculously over-used by English-speaking Buddhists. Admittedly, the commentaries do recognize cheka, ‘skilful’, ‘clever’, as one of the meanings of kusala, but the examples that they give for this sense of the word are phrases like “a skilful acrobat” or “he drives the chariot skilfully”.

In moral contexts kusala is never glossed as cheka but as ārogya (‘healthy’), anavajja (‘blameless’), and sukhavipāka (‘[having a] pleasant ripening’). The translation ‘wholesome’ captures this sense much better than ‘skilful’.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 8, 2015 9:40 AM
Title: Re: Term for the Bodhisatta's pre-enlightenment ascetic practices
Content:
Padhāna and vayāma mean about the same. For example in the Suttas' description of the four components of right effort (sammā-vayāma) each one is termed a padhāna or a sammappadhāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 8, 2015 9:36 AM
Title: Re: Term for the Bodhisatta's pre-enlightenment ascetic practices
Content:
They are from the same root. Cariyā is conduct. Ācāra or samācāra is proper conduct. An ācariya is one who trains someone in ācāra.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 8, 2015 9:04 AM
Title: Re: Term for the Bodhisatta's pre-enlightenment ascetic practices
Content:
Possibly, though the commentaries do contain the term dukkaracariyā. At the lexical level this would seem to mean roughly the same as dukkarakiriyā, though in practice I believe it's usually used when speaking of the arduousness of the Bodhisatta path in its entirety (i.e. the many lifetimes of developing the paramī) rather than just the austerities that certain Bodhisattas practise in their final life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 8, 2015 8:32 AM
Title: Re: Term for the Bodhisatta's pre-enlightenment ascetic practices
Content:
Padhāna — effort, exertion.
Kaṭukā dukkarakārikā — severe difficult-to-do tasks / austerities.
Attakilamathānuyoga — devotion to self-torment.
Dukkarakiriyā — conduct that's difficult to do.
Atidukkarakiriyāya — conduct that's extremely difficult to do.
Paṭipattidukkarakiriyā — practice consisting in conduct that's difficult to do.
Catubbidhadukkarakiriyā — the fourfold difficult-to-do conduct.

The first three are the terms the Buddha uses in the Suttas. The fourth is the usual term in the commentaries (and also in modern SE Asian usage). The rest are less common commentarial terms.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 7, 2015 11:51 AM
Title: Re: Are monks allowed to touch their mothers?
Content:
Sorry about my irrelevant earlier reply. I misread the question.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 7, 2015 11:43 AM
Title: Re: Punabbhava (“re-becoming”)
Content:
The Thais use this too. Phob nii / phob naa are used interchangeably with chaat nii / chaat naa. Phob is the Thai pronunciation of bhava, and chaat is how they pronounce jāti; nii and naa are 'this' and 'future'.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 7, 2015 11:17 AM
Title: Re: May as well (^_^)
Content:
Thanks for the interesting intro. May I ask what it was that drew you to Santi Monastery?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 7, 2015 11:12 AM
Title: Re: Monastics & smiling
Content:
The 11th and 12th sekhiya rules of the Pāṭimokkha prohibit a bhikkhu from laughing loudly when in company:
11. I shall not go laughing loudly in inhabited areas.

12. I shall not sit laughing loudly in inhabited areas.
The Ruṇṇa Sutta teaches that it's childish to indulge in an excess of mirth involving the display of one's teeth and that when there's a proper occasion for a bhikkhu to smile it should be done in a measured manner. But this is a Dhamma exhortation and not a Vinaya rule.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Aug 7, 2015 9:55 AM
Title: Re: Are monks allowed to touch their mothers?
Content:
In Thailand one could do this in theory, though in practice it would be unfeasible as a long-term option for a westerner because the special monastic visa extensions are granted only to bhikkhus and mae chees. In Burma I think such visa extensions are available to anyone staying long-term in a monastery or meditation centre. As for the Forest Sangha monasteries in Britain, Ven. Gavesako will know better than I how things are now. It used to be the case that although anagarikaship was generally regarded in the FS as the first stage in a programme that would eventually culminate in bhikkhuhood, exceptions would occasionally be made for men who wanted to live the brahmacariya but were unsuitable for (or debarred from) bhikkhuhood for one reason or another.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Aug 6, 2015 10:25 AM
Title: Re: One frame of reference develops any of the rest?
Content:
See the Satipatthana and Anapanassati Suttas. The former confirms that mindfulness of breathing is part of body-contemplation. The latter confirms that the development of mindfulness of breathing fulfils all four satipatthanas.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.010.nysa.html

https://suttacentral.net/en/mn118


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Aug 6, 2015 7:00 AM
Title: Re: How do Theravadins handle statue ettiquite?
Content:
If the Buddha rupa is really an old one, and not one of the thousands of modern Thai rupas that have been treated to make them look old, then the eye-opening and saksit-infusing ceremonies, and all the other superstitious mummeries, will already have been carried out. It only remains for you to place it in some elevated location in your home and to treat it respectfully.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 5, 2015 2:42 PM
Title: Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?
Content:
My Pali name, meaning “bliss of Dhamma”, was chosen by my former preceptor, Ajahn Khemadhammo, in consultation with the late Dr. Rewata Dhamma, the seniormost monk at my sāmaṇera ordination in 1984. Khemadhammo wanted to name me after Ānanda, the Buddha’s long-term attendant, but as Thai custom disapproves of giving monks the names of the Buddha’s eighty great disciples the name had to be combined with something else. Dr. Rewata suggested that Khemadhammo should give me part of his own name, either ‘khema’ or ‘dhamma’, and so ‘Dhammānando’ was what I ended up with.

The avatar is a photo taken by the German nun Ayya Phalañāṇī at my mountain hermitage in Phrao. On my shoulder is my feline companion Bajazeth, Emperor of the Turks —or ‘Bajji’ for short— named after a character in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great and Händel's Tamerlano, and corresponding to the historical Sultan Bayezid I.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 5, 2015 2:04 PM
Title: Re: Questions About Kamma and Rebirth
Content:
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with it. What does he say?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 5, 2015 1:59 PM
Title: Re: Just The Buddha?
Content:
It has always been Buddhist doctrine that some humans were humans in the life before their present one, while others have ascended into the human realm from the lower realms, and yet others have descended from the higher realms. That being so, these teachings cannot be treated as fantasies concocted as retorts to modern objections to rebirth such as "If there's rebirth, how come the world's population is increasing?"


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 5, 2015 1:16 PM
Title: Re: Questions About Kamma and Rebirth
Content:
Asian Buddhists who use the two terms indiscriminately usually do so either because of a poor grasp of English, such that they’re not aware of any difference in meaning between them, or else a poor grasp of Buddhist doctrine, such that they don’t distinguish the Buddhist conception of the afterlife from the Hindu one. For example, they may not be familiar with the Milindapañha’s distinction between the verbs saṅkamati and paṭisandahati :-
The King said: “Revered Nāgasena, does that which does not pass over (saṅkamati) reconnect (paṭisandahati)?”

“Yes, sire, that which does not pass over reconnects.”

“How, revered Nāgasena, does that which does not pass over reconnect? Make a simile.”

“Suppose, sire, some man were to light a lamp from (another) lamp; would that lamp, sire, pass over from that (other) lamp?”

“No, revered sir.”

“In the same way, sire, that which does not pass over reconnects.”

"Make a further simile."

“Do you remember, sire, when you were a boy learning some verse from a teacher of verses ?”

“Yes, revered sir.”

“But, sire, does that verse pass over from the teacher?”

“O no, revered sir.”

“In the same way, sire, that which does not pass over (yet) reconnects.”

“You are dexterous, revered Nāgasena.”
(Mil. 71-2, Horner tr.)
Of the two terms, “reincarnation” carries too strong a sense of something (i.e. a soul) passing over.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 5, 2015 11:32 AM
Title: Re: Just The Buddha?
Content:
You've got it the wrong way round. The cosmological doctrines that are invoked in response to questions about human population increase, etc., existed for millenia before anyone ever thought to raise such questions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 5, 2015 8:58 AM
Title: Re: renamed::: help finding monastery???
Content:
Have you ever stayed there? I haven't done so for over twenty years, but I remember it as not particularly pleasant. Firstly it's surrounded by marshy land and therefore extremely mosquito-ridden. Secondly, Ajahn Sanong is a very popular preacher and so the wat gets very noisy and busy on weekends and uposatha days.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Aug 5, 2015 6:30 AM
Title: Re: the great vegetarian debate
Content:
The precept applies only to the property of humans. The Vinaya rules it to be no offence to take something from an animal or a peta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Aug 4, 2015 7:32 AM
Title: Re: What Dhamma Book are you reading right now?
Content:
Gananath Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth

Contents of the Buddhism-related chapters...
1. Karma and Rebirth in Indic Religions: Origins and Transformations

[...]

3. The Imaginary Experiment and the Buddhist Implications

The Transformation of the Rebirth Eschatology
Emergence of the Karmic Eschatology
Upanishadic Ethicization: The Earliest Indic Model
The Model and the Buddhist Interconnections

Ethicization in Its Historical Context:
• The Samanic Religions
• Contemporary Tribal Religions
• Ethicization, Axiology, and the Brahmanic Tradition

Nonethicized Samanic Religions: The Doctrines of the Ājīvikas

Eel-Wrigglers and Hair-Splitters: Contentious Discourses in Buddhist Thought

Ethical Transformation and the Axial Age:
• Ethical Prophecy and Ethical Asceticism
• Rationalization and the Transformation of Thought

The Limits of Innovative Thought:
• Temporality, Impermanence, Nirvana
• Karma, Causality, and the Aporias of Existence
• Ethicization, Karma, and Everyday Life
• Ascetic Religiosity and the Escape from the World

4. The Buddhist Ascesis

The Imagined Buddha
The Renunciatory Ideal in the Buddhist Imagination
The Buddha as Seer: The Life Fate of the Buddhist Dead

Samanism and Shamanism:
• Ecstasis, Enstasis, and Spirit Possession
• Ethicization and the Creation of a God-Making Machine
• Ethicization and Axiologization
• Buddhism, Axiologization, and the Vedic Tradition

Axiologization Continued: Homo Hierarchicus and Homo Aequalis in India

[...]

7. Imprisoning Frames and Open Debates: Trobriander, Buddhist, and Balinese Rebirth Revisited

Reincarnation, Procreation, and the Embodiment of the Soul
Buddhism, Procreation, and Rebirth
Balinese Rebirth: Contentious Discourses on Rebirth and Karmic Eschatologies
Methodological Postscript


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Aug 3, 2015 11:21 AM
Title: Re: Monastic rules on eating
Content:
A bhikkhu can practise vegetarianism or veganism and still be Vinaya-observant, provided he doesn't do it in the way that East Asian Mahayana monastics are wont to do, i.e., by issuing gastronomic directives to their lay supporters.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Aug 3, 2015 11:15 AM
Title: Re: Monastic rules on eating
Content:
Yes.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Aug 2, 2015 1:10 PM
Title: Re: Is seeing Dependent Origination a must for Nibanna?
Content:
Quite so. It seems to me that a much commoner danger nowadays than the one that concerns Dan is the under-estimation of the importance of developing understanding at the sutamaya and cintāmaya levels. This is a prerequisite for bhāvanā-maya paññā, yet one often sees it treated as though it were an optional extra, or even (and worse) a distracting irrelevance.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 1, 2015 9:47 AM
Title: Re: What is a phenomena?
Content:
And I might add that when making a start on Being and Nothingness, it would be worth investing in the excellent commentary to it by Joseph Catalano:

https://www.amazon.com/Commentary-Jean-Paul-Sartres-Nothingness-Reprint/dp/0226096998

There's also an online paper by Catalano, http://files.lfranchi.com/papers/catalano.lying.to.oneself.sartre.pdf. If you can understand the paper then you should be able to understand his commentary.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 1, 2015 7:12 AM
Title: Re: What is a phenomena?
Content:
Sartre's _Being and Nothingness_? Come off it.  

A non-philosopher won't get anywhere with this, unless she has already completed the sort of reading described above by Khalil Bodhi (and with the addition of Hegel's Phänomenologie and Husserl's Ideen). Just to understand Sartre's introduction requires a knowledge of half a dozen Husserlian technical terms, all of them given by the author in German.

If one's going to begin with Sartre, then the first English translation of _The Transcendence of the Ego_ by Robert Kirkpatrick and Forrest Williams would be the place to begin. The translators' introduction is especially helpful:


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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 1, 2015 6:58 AM
Title: Re: Top 3 (or more) favorite buddhist books or talks?
Content:
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a try.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Aug 1, 2015 6:05 AM
Title: Re: Changing My Life Around
Content:
Wow, that's a mess all right. It makes mine look so darn boring...




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.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:06 PM
Title: Re: Book: Sartre and Early Buddhism.
Content:
It is already available online, though I don't know if this is with the author's consent. I read a copy when it was first printed and from what I can recall of it I doubt admirers of Ñāṇavīra and Ñāṇānanda will find anything in it to interest them. The author's account of Husserlian phenomenology is typical of the invariably poor stuff that's turned out by the philosophy students at Mahachula University. It's a wholly derivative and cringeworthy exposition that doesn't seem to be the fruit of any great mental effort at all. Moreover, the author does not mean "early Buddhism" in the sense that this term is used by Ñāṇavīra or in academic Buddhist studies. If memory serves me right he actually means the fully developed Theravada in its entirety. It includes, for example, the 12th century Abhidhammatthasangaha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:25 PM
Title: Re: Is seeing Dependent Origination a must for Nibanna?
Content:
Yes, that seems to me a good way of putting it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 31, 2015 12:51 PM
Title: Re: Changing My Life Around
Content:
What is the point of that?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 31, 2015 10:25 AM
Title: Re: Things Most Worth Living For
Content:
That one's got squid in it, which is rather different from the dish I'm talking about. The old Thai lady who regularly offers it to me makes it as a vegetarian dish like this:




Except that she throws in about ten times more chilli than this dainty Australian.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 31, 2015 8:07 AM
Title: Re: Is seeing Dependent Origination a must for Nibanna?
Content:
Generally yes. That is, the principle yaṃ ñāṇaṃ, taṃ dassanaṃ ("That which is called understanding is also called seeing" —Vin. iii. 91) is applicable in most cases, though there are some contexts in which the two terms have distinct meanings.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 31, 2015 7:53 AM
Title: Re: Things Most Worth Living For
Content:
Walking in the mountains at dawn and in tenebrous forests at dusk.

Teaching Dhamma and English to Pgaz K'nyau hill-tribe children.

Yam (spicy Thai salads), especially yam sap-parod (spicey pineapple salad with cashew nuts) and yam ta-khrai (lemongrass salad).

Good coffee.

Reunions with old friends.

Taking care of abandoned cats.

Reading 18th century English prose, 19th century poetry, the occasional novel or biography, and academic articles in the fields of general linguistics, history and anthropology of Southeast Asia, and comparative religious studies.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 31, 2015 7:04 AM
Title: Re: Is seeing Dependent Origination a must for Nibanna?
Content:
Paññā or ñāṇa is the term for "understanding".

Paññā arises progressively through three levels: that constructed by hearing/learning (suta-maya), by thinking (cintā-maya), and by development (bhāvanā-maya).

"Seeing" (dassana) is another name for bhāvanā-maya paññā.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:48 PM
Title: Re: Top 3-5 favorite buddhist books and/or talks?
Content:
Rhys Davids' translation is not marred by the excessive abridgement of Walshe's, has much more interesting and informative footnotes, and the English is more elegant. Then with regard to accuracy, Walshe's translation, although executed a century later than RD's, does not really represent a significant improvement over it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 29, 2015 2:03 PM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
Probably. The identity or close etymological association between the words for 'sky', 'cloud', 'deity' and 'day' is so common and so widespread a feature in the ancient Indo-European languages that it would be no surprise if it went all the way back to Proto-Indo-European itself. But confining ourselves to the case of Pali, we find the word 'megha' (which unambiguously means 'cloud') used interchangeably with 'deva' in Sutta passages about rain.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 28, 2015 9:54 AM
Title: Re: Why these are called Imperfections of Insight ?
Content:
Passaddhi is reckoned here as uddhacca inasmuch as it carries the insight-developing yogi away from his proper task.
How is his mind agitated by overestimation of dhammas [manifested in contemplation]?

While he is giving attention as impermanent, tranquillity arises in him. He adverts to the tranquillity thus: ‘tranquillity is a [Noble One’s] dhamma’. The distraction due to that is agitation. When his mind is thus agitated by overestimation, he does not correctly understand appearance as impermanent, he does not correctly understand appearance as painful, he does not correctly understand appearance as not self. Hence it was said ‘His mind is agitated by overestimation of dhammas [manifested in contemplation]. There is [later] an occasion when his cognizance is internally composed again, resettled, restored to singleness, and reconcentrated. Then the path is produced in him.’

[repeat, replacing 'tranquillity' with each of the other upakkilesas]
(Paṭisam. ii. 101-2. Ñāṇamoli tr.)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 28, 2015 8:56 AM
Title: Re: Why these are called Imperfections of Insight ?
Content:
Though some of these might (for all I know) be attributable to the eighth upakkilesa, I believe that for most of them common-or-garden opinionatedness would be the likelier cause.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 28, 2015 3:43 AM
Title: Re: Confusion over long retreats, e.g 3 months?
Content:
If you mean a 10-day retreat where all the meditators start on the same day, finish on the same day, and are instructed in groups (as with the Goenka courses), I haven't myself heard of such an arrangement for 3-month retreats. Generally if you go to a meditation centre for three months, then you'll get individual daily instruction from the teacher and the retreat will begin whenever you happen to show up. On the other hand, if you go to a forest monastery, then it's more likely that your stay will simply entail doing as the monks do.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 27, 2015 10:47 PM
Title: Re: Why these are called Imperfections of Insight ?
Content:
They are alluded to in the Yuganaddha Sutta under the name of "restlessness about Dhamma" (dhammuddhaccaviggahita):
“Again, a bhikkhu’s mind is seized by restlessness about the Dhamma. But there comes an occasion when his mind becomes internally steady, composed, unified, and concentrated. Then the path is generated in him. He pursues this path, develops it, and cultivates it. As he is pursuing, developing, and cultivating this path, the fetters are abandoned and the underlying tendencies are uprooted.
(AN. 4. 170. Bh. Bodhi tr.)
Then they are individually named by Sāriputta in the Paṭisambhidāmagga's expanded version of the Yuganaddha Sutta. Finally they are expounded in detail by Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga's account of sammasana-ñāṇa. As for Sarath's link, this is a typical modern exposition of the kind emanating from the Thai modified Mahasi tradition.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 27, 2015 4:06 PM
Title: Re: Why these are called Imperfections of Insight ?
Content:
That isn't necessary, for what are described are not themselves imperfections but rather symptoms of an imperfection. In the writer's view, when the described phenomena arise in a yogi at the stage of sammasana-ñāṇa, each one is symptomatic of an excess of faith. And so the underlying imperfection in each of the twelve cases consists in an imbalance in the spiritual faculties.

If the same phenomena were to arise in other circumstances, then all of them except the first might well be unqualifiedly wholesome occurrences.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 27, 2015 1:41 PM
Title: Re: Why these are called Imperfections of Insight ?
Content:
Because those who are attached to them are impeded in their progress from the third ñāṇa to the fourth.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:36 PM
Title: Re: Executioner is not guilty!
Content:
The quoted passage is a rather free paraphrase from the Dhammapada Commentary, not a strict translation of it. What the Pali says is that in response to Sāriputta's question Tambadāṭhika came to perceive that the akusala in the executions he had carried out belonged to the king rather than to himself. This perception allayed his feelings of guilt, made his mind one-pointed and permitted him to attend to Sāriputta's teaching.

What the passage does not say is that Tambadāṭhika's perception was a correct one. In fact it was incorrect, for the orthodox view is that when one person does something akusala on another person's orders, the akusala kamma belongs to both of them. In short, what we have here seems to be a compassionate resort to skilful means on the part of Sāriputta, and not a revision of standard Buddhist kamma doctrine.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 27, 2015 11:54 AM
Title: Re: First day MaeChee
Content:
Anumodanā.

"Well-taught is the Dhamma, fare the Brahma-faring for making an utter end of ill!"
(Vin. i. 12, Horner trans.)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 26, 2015 10:20 AM
Title: Re: Looking for specific food?
Content:
It's not meat. The Pali word is pūva and is explained in the Vinaya Piṭaka as being a cake baked as a present for someone. 

This is Vinaya Piṭaka's version of the Dhammapada Commentary's story:
At Sāvatthī in the Jeta Grove in Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. Now at that time a woman lay-follower, the mother of Kāṇā, had faith and was virtuous. Kāṇā came to be given to a certain man in a village. Then Kāṇā went to her mother’s house on some business or other. Then Kāṇā’s husband sent a messenger to Kāṇā, saying: “Let Kāṇā come back, I desire Kāṇā’s return.” Then the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother, saying: “It is awkward to go empty-handed,” cooked a cake. When the cake was cooked, a certain monk walking for alms came up to the dwelling of the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother. Then the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother, gave the cake to that monk. He, having gone away, told another, and she gave him a cake. He, having gone away, told another, and she gave him a cake. No sooner was a cake ready than it immediately disappeared.

A second time did Kāṇā’s husband send a messenger to Kāṇā, saying: “Let Kāṇā, come back, I desire Kāṇā’s return.” A second time did the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother, saying: “It is awkward to go empty-handed” … it immediately disappeared.

A third time did Kāṇā’s husband send a messenger to Kāṇā, saying: “Let Kāṇā, come back, I desire Kāṇā’s return. If Kāṇā does not come back, I will take another wife.” A third time did the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother, saying: “It is awkward to go empty-handed” … it immediately disappeared.

Then Kāṇā’s husband procured another wife. Kāṇā heard: “It is said that another wife is taken by this man.” She stood weeping. Then the lord, dressing in the morning, taking his bowl and robe, came up to the dwelling of that woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother, and having come up he sat down on the appointed seat. Then the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother, approached the lord, and having approached and greeted the lord, she sat down at a respectful distance. As she was sitting down at a respectful distance, the lord spoke thus to the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother:

“Why does this Kāṇā weep?”

Then the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother, told this matter to the lord. Then the lord, having … gladdened the woman lay-follower, Kāṇā’s mother, with talk on dhamma, rising up from his seat, departed.

Now at that time a certain caravan was desirous of going from Rājagaha to the south. A certain monk, walking for alms-food, entered that caravan for alms-food. A certain lay-follower had barley-meal given to that monk. He, having gone away, told another, and he had barley-meal given to him. He, having gone away, told another, and he had barley-meal given to him. He, having gone away, told another, and he had barley-meal given to him. As soon as provisions for the journey were ready, they disappeared. Then that lay-follower said to these people:

“Masters, wait until tomorrow. As soon as provisions for the journey are ready, they are given to the masters. I will prepare provisions for the journey.”

Saying: “Master, we are unable to wait, the caravan is setting out,” they went away. Then as that lay-follower, having prepared provisions for the journey, was going along last, thieves robbed (him). People … spread it about, saying: “How can the recluses, sons of the Sakyans, not knowing moderation, accept (provisions)? This (man) having given to them, going along last, was robbed by thieves.”

Monks heard these people who … spread it about. Then these monks told this matter to the lord. Then the lord in this connection, on this occasion, having given reasoned talk, addressed the monks, saying:

“Because of this, monks, I will make known a rule of training for monks, founded on ten reasons: for the excellence of the Order … for following the rules of restraint. And thus, monks, this rule of training should be set forth:

“If a monk, going up to a family, (who) asking, should invite him (to take) cakes or barley-gruel, two or three bowlfuls may be accepted by a monk desiring them. Should he accept more than that, there is an offence of expiation. Having accepted two or three bowlfuls, having taken them back from there, they must be shared together with the monks. This is the proper course in this case.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:36 AM
Title: Re: Looking for specific food?
Content:
Yes, that was how almsround was normally practised in those days (and still is today by Indian sadhus). Rather than the modern practice of walking continuously until a waiting lay almsgiver invites you to stop, a monk would stop silently at each house and wait until its occupants had noticed him and then either dismissed him or invited him to wait and receive food. If a monk had undertaken the sapadānacārikaṅga ascetic practice (i.e. that of walking an uninterrupted almsround), then he would stop undiscriminatingly at every house. If he hadn’t, then he would stop at the houses where he knew that people would be likely to give or at those where the people were wont to give food that was agreeable to him.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 25, 2015 7:14 PM
Title: Re: Are monks allowed to touch their mothers?
Content:
No. In the Vinaya Piṭaka it is prohibited in the vinītavatthu to the second saṅghādisesa rule, though the act amounts to only a very minor offence.
Tena kho pana samayena aññataro bhikkhu mātuyā mātupemena āmasi. Tassa kukkuccaṃ ahosi: “bhagavatā sikkhāpadaṃ paññattaṃ, kacci nu kho ahaṃ saṅghādisesaṃ āpattiṃ āpanno” ti? Bhagavato etamatthaṃ ārocesi. “Anāpatti, bhikkhu, saṅghādisesassa; āpatti dukkaṭassā” ti.


Now at that time a certain monk stroked his mother for the sake of a mother’s affection. He was remorseful, and said: “What now if I have fallen into an offence entailing a formal meeting of the Order?” He told this matter to the lord.

He said: “Monk, this is not an offence entailing a formal meeting of the Order, it is an offence of wrong-doing.”
(Vin. iii. 126, = Book of the Discipline I. 211)

(The same is then repeated for a monk's daughters and sisters)

A modern commentary by Ven. Thanissaro on Saṅghādisesa 2, the parent rule to the above clause:

http://pratyeka.org/a2i/lib/authors/thanissaro/bmc1/bmc1.ch05.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 25, 2015 5:09 PM
Title: Re: If there is no soul, why doesnot the mind takes rebirth as multiple entities?
Content:
I don't think the term is found in the Suttas. In the Abhidhamma the supramundane cittas are the eight kinds of consciousness which cognize Nibbāna, and which by that cognition cause certain fetters to be eradicated or weakened and produce an irreversible change in the mental continuum: the stream-entry path consciousness, stream-entry fruition consciousness, the once-returning path consciousness. once-returning fruition consciousness ... etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 25, 2015 6:32 AM
Title: Re: If there is no soul, why doesnot the mind takes rebirth as multiple entities?
Content:
Because ucchedavāda is not the doctrine of the ultimate non-existence of an attā. 


Sassatavādins: there is an attā that is imperishable.

Ucchedavādins: there is an attā that is perishable.

Sons/daughters of the Sakyan: in the ultimate sense an attā is not to be found.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 24, 2015 9:45 AM
Title: Re: If there is no soul, why doesnot the mind takes rebirth as multiple entities?
Content:
You may think whatever you like, but Buddhist doctrine is that cittas arise singly and discreetly and therefore the cittasantati has no forks.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 24, 2015 8:34 AM
Title: Re: If there is no soul, why doesnot the mind takes rebirth as multiple entities?
Content:
Apparently not, for the mental continuum is not conceived as being capable of either generating forks or being fed by tributaries.

If it could generate forks, then it would be false to say that “consciousness is lone-faring” (ekacaraṃ cittaṃ — Dhp. 37).

And if it could be fed by tributaries, then it would be false to say “I am the owner of my kamma, the heir of my kamma... etc.” (kammassako’mhi kammadāyādo — AN. iii. 73), for I would in fact be the heir of the kammas of a plurality of beings.

As to why this is the case, I believe the question is wrongly put. The absence of forks and tributaries in the mental continuum is a sheer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute_fact rather than something that stands in need of explanation. That being so, any proffered explanation will at best be no more than a restatement of the facts.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 24, 2015 6:49 AM
Title: Re: Wat Dhammakaya
Content:
For an exposition of the original meditation teachings of Phra Mongkhol Thepmuni (as opposed to Wat Dhammakaya's adaptation of them), see the writings of the late Suratano Bhikkhu (Terry Magness), in particular the booklets Vistas and Sammā Samādhi II. All his published works can be downloaded here:

http://www.triple-gem.net/BookList.html

But caveat lector ... though Magness's exposition is a lot less far out than that of the abbot of Wat Dhammakaya, it's still pretty freaky stuff.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 23, 2015 9:24 PM
Title: Re: Jack Kornfield "Psychedelics and Spiritual Practice"
Content:
With regard to the issue of intoxicants, it doesn’t matter in the slightest which parts of the Suttanta and Vinaya Piṭakas one believes to be early and which one believes to be late: exhortations against surā-meraya-majja are liberally scattered throughout all of them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 10, 2015 7:08 AM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
No, I certainly think that it's unwholesome. Even in those cases where the person is not a thinly-disguised ucchedavādin but is genuinely open-minded about the possibilities, genuinely in a limbo, it's still unwholesome. For either it will be a vital and momentous question for him, or it will not. If it is, then he will be wracked and enervated by the hindrance of doubt, which is always unwholesome. And if it isn't —if it's just something he shrugs his shoulders about— then he is frivolous and chaffy, and is lacking in any proper sense of proportion.

"Since there really is a world beyond..." (MN. 60)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:29 AM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
Just as you were replying I edited my post, giving the example of the ox-duty ascetic. Others would be the case of the soldier and the actor who believe that soldiering/acting will get them to heaven. But most important are the numerous suttas where the Buddha goes through the list of ten kusala and ten akusala kammapathas and in each case states unqualifiedly that the action in question leads to heaven or hell.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:18 AM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
I would agree if you'd said that this was part of the point of it; indeed from the point of view of liberation it's the most vital part. But it certainly is not the whole of the point of it: the texts are unequivocal that the mere holding of the tenfold sammādiṭṭhi is in itself a cause for a bright rebirth and that the mere holding of the tenfold micchādiṭṭhi/threefold niyata-micchādiṭṭhi is in itself a cause for rebirth in hell. To foster, or merely to tolerate, the persistence of a right or wrong view in one's mind is a kamma-creating act. The ox-duty ascetic practice, for example, at best leads to rebirth as an ox, but if undertaken in the belief that it leads to heaven, then it leads to hell. But the hell-conducive kamma here is not the ox-duty practice but rather the wrong view about it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:07 AM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
I suppose it could, but it would be wrong. Your proposed parallel is premised on the mistaken assumption that "It's very much about..." is synonymous with "It's solely about..."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 9, 2015 2:36 PM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
Is this question intended for me? If so, then let me remark that I have not stated agnosticism about rebirth to be an example of a niyatamicchādiṭṭhi. 

Certainly the positive denial of rebirth would be a niyatamicchādiṭṭhi, for by denying it one would be asserting that there are kammas that don’t bear fruit (since not all kammas performed will ripen in the same life). But as for rebirth-agnostics, it seems to me that they occupy a sort of doctrinal limbo, in which they fail to arrive at either the Buddha's right view or the fixed-outcome wrong views of outside teachers.

Within this doctrinal limbo, the tenfold view would be something like:
Giving gifts might yield fruit or it might not.

Making offerings might yield fruit or it might not.

Making sacrifices might yield fruit or it might not.

Good and bad actions might ripen as pleasant and painful vipākas or they might not.

There might be a this world or there might not.

There might be another world or there might not.

There might be duties owed to one’s mother, of which the fulfillment will yield fruit, or there might not.

There might be duties owed to one’s father, of which the fulfillment will yield fruit, or there might not.

Living beings might be liable to rebirth or they might not.
[Alternatively: There might be apparitionally produced beings or there might not]

There might be good and virtuous samaṇas and brāhmaṇas in the world who have realised for themselves by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other world, or there might not.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 9, 2015 1:51 PM
Title: Re: Indra In Buddhism
Content:
That depends on the religion. In Buddhist texts Indra is long-lived but mortal, though the station or office of Indra is immortal, in the sense that there is always a deva occupying it. In early Brahmanism Indra is conditionally immortal, with his immortality being dependent upon his getting enough Soma to drink. In post-Bhagavad Gita Hinduism he is unqualifiedly immortal.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 9, 2015 1:28 PM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
In the Suttas one finds the thing but not the term. That is to say, the Suttas describe certain views as being wrong (e.g. acausalism) and as liable to ripen as rebirth in hell, while other views (e.g. personality view) are not described as ripening in this way. To views that ripen as rebirth in hell the commentaries apply the label niyata-micchādiṭṭhi. The term's earliest occurrence is in the Paṭṭhāna of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, though in that text no examples are given.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 9, 2015 11:43 AM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
The list of items in the tenfold wrong view are those which exemplify the three niyata-micchādiṭṭhis, "wrong views of fixed outcome", namely, acausalism, nihilism and the doctrine of kammic inefficacy. The wrongness of these views does not lie only in the sort of actions to which they might lead. Rather, it lies in the very holding of the views. That is, the very holding of any niyata-micchādiṭṭhi is in itself an unwholesome kamma. Hence the two dozen or so suttas that state rebirth in hell to be the consequence of maintaining that: "There is nothing given, nothing offered ... etc."

In short, it's very much about doctrinal purity.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 9, 2015 9:17 AM
Title: Re: Right view with effluents
Content:
The tenfold wrong view is expressed in rather terse phrases, some of which need unpacking. "There is no mother ... no father", for example, doesn't mean that mothers and fathers don't exist. It means that there are no obligations towards them and no value in filial piety.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 8, 2015 10:10 PM
Title: Re: Indra In Buddhism
Content:
Yes. Of the Buddha's various disciples in the deva world, Sakka is probably the one who features most often in the Suttas.

http://aimwell.org/DPPN/sakka.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 8, 2015 7:30 PM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
I already posted a link to the entry for 'Upaka' in Malalasekera's Dictionary of Pali Proper Names. The narrative presented there and in the Pali texts cited by Malalasekera will give you the traditional view. 

If you then compare that with the modern re-telling by Ajahn Sumedho, and the repetition of Sumedho's re-telling by his disciples Amaro and Sucitto and whoever else, then it will be clear that these re-tellings are about a very different Buddha from that of the Pali texts. The Buddha depicted in the Forest Sangha's modernist re-telling is a fumbling bumbling Buddha who hasn't yet got his pedagogical act together. He is not the Buddha of any of the "lion's roar" suttas. He is not a Buddha who was in full possession of the ten Tathāgata powers from the very night of his awakening. He is a very fallible Buddha who needs to make a botch of things before he can figure out how to do them right.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 8, 2015 6:52 PM
Title: Re: New Meditation Center
Content:
On a communal meditation retreat it’s desirable that meditators wear simple, modest, loose-fitting clothes, with undistracting muted colours. The traditional all-white (or white-top-&amp;-black bottoms) uniform of SE Asian meditation centres is as good as any for this purpose.

On the other, I wouldn’t recommend that you institute any sort of dress code right from the start. In a non-Buddhist country where the preponderance of those who come to you will probably not be Buddhists but just people with an interest in meditation, if you insist on a dress code it’s likely to be perceived as cult-like and controlling. You might get nobody at all showing up. So I think this would be something better postponed until you have a mature and flourishing lay community.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 8, 2015 9:14 AM
Title: Re: What is the last thing to let go?
Content:
Yes, when it's being used as a term for the tadaṅga (substitution of opposites) kind of relinquishment. But no when it's being used as a term for the pakkhandana (full-arrival) relinquishment when Nibbāna is realised. In the latter case we are talking about an extinguishing and not a mere opposition.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 8, 2015 9:03 AM
Title: Re: Sutta References Compilation
Content:
In my pre-computer days (i.e. up to 1996), my main aids for locating half-remembered Sutta passages were the PTS's Pali English Dictionary and Malalasekera's Dictionary of Pali Proper Names. If I could remember some key word from the sutta and the word was a relatively rare one, then I'd look it up in the PED and if I was lucky there would be a citation from the sutta I was after. Or if I could remember the person to whom the sutta was addressed (and provided it wasn't someone like Ānanda, with numerous suttas to his name), I'd look up his name in the DPPN and more often than not Malalasekera would have a citation for the sutta I was looking for.

Nowadays, however, things are much easier. Though I still rely on my memory of key words and names, the main resource that I use to search for them is the Sixth Council Tipitaka CD published by Goenka's organization.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 8, 2015 8:53 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
My memory of listening to their talks as a layman back in the early eighties. You'll probably find some examples if you search their books for "Upaka", "first teaching", and "complete failure".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 8, 2015 8:44 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
That's what Ajahns Sumedho and Amaro are always saying when they tell the Upaka story. But they are quite mistaken. In fact for a vāsanābhāgiya sutta (one aimed not at the generation of insight but only at planting a wholesome seed in the listener's mind) the talk to Upaka worked perfectly. The man was sufficiently intrigued to come back for more, ordained as a bhikkhu, and died a non-returner.

http://aimwell.org/DPPN/upaka.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 7, 2015 3:45 PM
Title: Re: What is the last thing to let go?
Content:
Alobha opposes all three kinds of craving; Nibbāna extinguishes all three.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 7, 2015 2:41 PM
Title: Re: What is the last thing to let go?
Content:
The usual oppositions are:

Nekkhamma(-vitakka) vs. kāma(-vitakka).
(Thoughts of) renunciation vs. (thoughts of) sensual desire.

Paṭinissagga/vossagga vs. ādāna (= taṇhā + upādāna)
Relinquishing vs. appropriation (= craving + grasping)

Taṇhā vs. nibbāna
Craving vs. blowing out.

or:

Taṇhā vs. alobha
Craving vs. non-attachment

Alobha and Nibbāna might both be said to be "the exact opposite of craving", but in different senses. Alobha is the wholesome root that's directly opposed to the unwholesome root of lobha (of which craving is one form). Nibbāna is the "exact opposite" in the sense that the third noble truth is the opposite of the second: it's what puts an end to it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 7, 2015 1:19 PM
Title: Re: Arahants are not fully free from attachment, aversion and ignorance?
Content:
Part of the upādisesa is viññāṇakkhandha. Part of viññāṇakkhandha are kiriyacittas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 7, 2015 10:34 AM
Title: Re: Arahants are not fully free from attachment, aversion and ignorance?
Content:
Broadly yes, though I think the phrase "with residual clinging" is not the best way to translate "upādisesa" as it might be taken as indicating that the arahant himself is not free of upādāna.

Better is Gethin's rendering: "that which has a remnant of attachment", meaning either that the khandhas of an arahant are the product of his past upādāna, and/or, that they may presently serve as objects of the upādāna of others.

Tadetaṃ sabhāvato ekavidhampi saupādisesanibbānadhātu anupādisesanibbānadhātu ceti duvidhaṃ hoti kāraṇapariyāyena.

"Although from the point of view of its particular nature it [Nibbāna] is one, from a specific point of view it is two: the element of Nibbāna with a remnant of attachment and the element of Nibbāna without a remnant of attachment."
(Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha VI. 63)


Commentary

Sabhāvato ti attano santilakkhaṇena.

"From the point of view of its particular nature" — in that its particular characteristic is peace.

Upādīyati kāmupādānādīhīti upādi, pañcakkhandhassetaṃ adhivacanaṃ, upādiyeva seso kilesehīti upādiseso, tena saha vattatīti saupādisesā, sā eva nibbānadhātūti saupādisesanibbānadhātu.

"Attachment" [upādi] — what one becomes attached to by attachments [upādāna] to the objects of sense-desire etc.; it is a term for the five aggregates.

"Remnant of attachment" [upādisesa] — just the attachment that remains as a result of the [past] defilements.

"That which has a remnant of attachment" [sa-upādisesa] — that which occurs together with that [remnant]: just that Nibbāna-element is the Nibbāna-element with a remnant of attachment.
(Abhidhammatthavibhāvinī VI. 63)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 7, 2015 9:15 AM
Title: Re: English Translation of the Madhyama Agama (Taisho 26)
Content:
Links to the Hamburg University website will often have a short shelf-life as the site-owners are constantly renaming pages. When a link disappears the solution (if you know the article's name) is to search the site with Google.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 6, 2015 3:57 PM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
Yes. However, the subject of Siha's query is not what constitutes saddhā and the absence of saddhā, but rather, what constitutes wrong view and whether the mere absence of saddhā suffices for this. 

Now it seems to me that the absence of saddhā doesn’t in itself constitute wrong view any more than the presence of saddhā entails right view. For example, Sāti the fisherman's son and Ariṭṭha the vulture-trainer had saddhā in the Buddha, yet totally screwed up views. Jains, on the other hand, have no saddhā in the Buddha, yet in the Vinaya they were classed as kammasakatavādins (those who held to a doctrine of ownership of kamma). And so if a Jain monk converted to Buddhism and wished to ordain as a bhikkhu the Buddha did not require him to undergo the probationary period required of non-Buddhists who formerly held wrong views.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 6, 2015 2:35 AM
Title: Re: Thai traduction (3 marks)
Content:
Ah, I see. I mistook the vertical characters for letters from the Japanese Hiragana syllabary.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 6, 2015 2:16 AM
Title: Re: Thai traduction (3 marks)
Content:
But where is the aniccaṃ, dukkhaṃ, anattā ?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 11:31 PM
Title: Re: Was Buddhaghosa a Brahmin sympathizer?
Content:
The names of Sakka in the Abhidhānappadīpikā (a 13th century Pali thesaurus):
sakko purindado deva, rājā vajirapāṇi ca,
sujampati sahassakkho, mahindo vajirāvudho.
vāsavo ca dasasatanayano tidivādhibhū,
suranātho ca vajira, hattho ca bhūtapatya’pi,
maghavā kosiyo indo, vatrabhū pākasāsano.
The relevant ones here here are Sahassakkha and Dasasatanayana, both meaning Possessor of a Thousand Eyes" though Buddhaghosa substitutes another name with the same meaning: Dasasatalocana.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 11:22 PM
Title: Re: Was Buddhaghosa a Brahmin sympathizer?
Content:
He didn't. Buddhaghosa is referring to Sakka / Śakra / Indra reverencing the Buddha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 11:10 PM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
That attainments were arrived at quickly proves nothing about whether they were achieved with ease or with difficulty.

“Bhikkhus, there are these four modes of practice. What four? 
(1) Practice that is painful with sluggish direct knowledge; 
(2) Practice that is painful with quick direct knowledge; 
(3) Practice that is pleasant with sluggish direct knowledge; and 
(4) Practice that is pleasant with quick direct knowledge. These are the four modes of practice.”
(Saṃkhitta Sutta, A. ii. 149)

Moreover, that some attainments were arrived at quickly in the Buddha's time — a time when ugghaṭitaññūs and vipacitaññūs were abounding — does not mean that any attainments will necessarily be arrived at quickly today, when most people are neyyas or padaparamas.

“Bhikkhus, there are these four kinds of persons found existing in the world. What four? One who understands quickly; one who understands through elaboration; one who needs to be guided; and one for whom the word is the maximum. These are the four kinds of persons found existing in the world.”
(Ugghaṭitaññū Sutta, A. ii. 135)

Bhikkhu Bodhi's notes:

(1) “The person of quick understanding is one for whom the breakthrough to the Dhamma (dhammābhisamaya) occurs together with an utterance. (Pp-a: Ugghaṭita means the opening up of knowledge (ñāṇugghāṭana); the meaning is that one knows as soon as knowledge opens up. Together with an utterance: as soon as [a statement on Dhamma] is uttered. The breakthrough occurs together with knowledge of the Dhamma of the four truths.)” 
(2) “The person who understands through elaboration is one for whom the breakthrough to the Dhamma occurs when the meaning of what has been stated briefly is being analyzed in detail. (Pp-a: This is the person able to attain arahantship when, after a concise outline of the teaching has been set up, the meaning is being analyzed in detail.)” 
(3) “The person to be guided is one for whom the breakthrough to the Dhamma occurs gradually, through instruction, questioning, careful attention, and reliance on good friends.” 
(4) “One for whom the word is the maximum is one who—though hearing much, reciting much, retaining much in mind, and teaching much—does not reach the breakthrough to the Dhamma in that life.”

Nett 125 (Be §88) correlates these four types with the four kinds of practice (see 4:161–62): the ugghaṭitaññū puggala with one emancipated by pleasant practice and quick direct knowledge, the vipañcitaññū puggala with one emancipated by either painful practice and quick direct knowledge or by pleasant practice and sluggish direct knowledge, and the neyya puggala with one emancipated by painful practice and sluggish direct knowledge. The padaparama puggala is not emancipated and thus the four alternatives do not apply.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 7:48 PM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
Next time you you talk to Thai lay people, see how many of them (if any) are familiar with the teachings in the Jambūdīpa Repetition Series of the Aṅguttara Nikāya’s Ekadhammavagga, http://librarun.org/book/21839/124. I think you’ll find that most of them have very much more optimistic notions about the afterlife than what was taught by the Buddha in these suttas and will be positively astonished to be told that most humans and devas are destined for the lower realms.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 1:40 PM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
Not according to any of my dictionaries' definitions of "romanticize". I haven't, for example, "described suicide in an idealistic or unrealistic fashion", for I haven't described it at all; nor have I "made suicide seem better or more appealing than it really is" (monks are not permitted to speak in praise of suicide); nor have I "presented suicide as fantastic, extravagant, quixotic or going beyond what is customary or practical."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 11:47 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
Sounds about right to me. It seems that even in the Buddha's day the figure was about two thirds:

Thus spoke the Blessed One. And while this explanation was being delivered, hot blood rose out of the mouths of sixty monks; another sixty monks abandoned the training and returned to the lower life, saying, "It is too difficult to do, Blessed One, it is too difficult to do"; while the minds of another sixty monks abandoned clinging and were liberated from the āsavas
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an07/an07.068.yaho.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 11:26 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
Who is romanticizing them? I have brought these cases up merely as evidence in support of Zom's contention that Dhamma practice can be very difficult.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 11:23 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
What Sīhā doesn't say —though most suicidal monks and nuns do (it's a stock feature in monastic hagiography)— is that she cannot bear to go on eating the almsfood of the faithful while her mind is so in thrall to the kilesas. (Think of the Suttas' "better to swallow a heated iron ball..." simile). But assuming that this too was on her mind, then continuing as a nun while in despair of making progress would have seemed an intolerable course. On the other hand, if she was an earnest nun (which seems likely, given her attainment of arahatta) then disrobing too would not have presented itself as an option (e.g. for reasons given at the end of the Mahasuññata Sutta). So notwithstanding the risk of rebirth in a state lower than the human, Sīhā may have considered suicide the least of the three evils available to her.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 10:32 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
You can blame the translator Olendzki for not following the Theragāthā commentary:
"Deva here means a cloud."
(ThagA. i. 134)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 10:27 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
Not necessarily. It might even conduce to it if a person despairs of progress in the present life and entertains the notion that s/he might be in a better position in the next one. The Therīgāthā verses of the suicidal nun Sīhā are of interest in this connection:

Distracted, harassed by desires of sense,
Unmindful of the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of things,
Stung and inflated by the memories
Of former days, o’er which I lacked control —
Corrupting canker spreading o’er my heart —
I followed heedless dreams of happiness, 
And got no even tenor to my mind,
All given o’er to dalliance with sense.

So did I fare for seven weary years, 
In lean and sallow misery of unrest.

I, wretched, found no ease by day or night,
So took a rope and plunged into the wood:
‘Better for me a friendly gallows-tree!
I’ll live again the low life of the world.’ *

Strong was the noose I made; and on a bough 
I bound the rope and flung it round my neck,
When see! . . . my heart was set at liberty!

* I.e., by continuing my round of rebirths. Cf. the Western idea of suicide–to ‘put an end to it all’ — with this of ‘starting it again.’


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2015 9:31 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi: "Facing the Great Divide", secular and classical Theravada
Content:
Telling of what? 

If one wanted to get some notion of whether progress in the Dhamma is likely to be easy or hard, can you suggest a better source than the Thera-/Therīgāthā's personal testimonies of 264 arahants and 73 arahantīs, all contemporaneous with the Buddha?



Sappadasa.jpg (122.42 KiB) Viewed 2632 times


(translated by K. R. Norman)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 4, 2015 3:40 PM
Title: Re: Top 3 (or more) favorite buddhist books or talks?
Content:
Yes, I read them on a laptop. Whenever possible I minimise eye strain by using Calibre to convert the file into html and then opening it with a word-processor, formatting it with a non-serif font (Calibri and Candara are my favourites) in a large font size, and then saving it as a pdf. When reading it I keep the screen light pretty dim. Also I read the files with the Acrobat program set to full-screen so that I don't have the distraction of menu bars, scroll bars, etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 4, 2015 8:31 AM
Title: Re: Top 3 (or more) favorite buddhist books or talks?
Content:
For any other fans of pioneering Pali translations, here's Fausbøll's Suttanipāta:

https://archive.org/details/SuttaNipataTranslatedByViggoFausboll

and here's Lord Chalmers':

https://archive.org/details/buddhasteachings032310mbp


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 4, 2015 8:14 AM
Title: Re: New Meditation Center
Content:
It's a traditional practice, but one based on the fact that in the Suttas upāsakas and upāsikās are sometimes referred to as "sāvakā gihī odātavasanā" and "sāvikā gihiniyo odātavasanā", that is, "male/female disciples who are householders clothed in white".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 4, 2015 7:49 AM
Title: Re: Top 3-5 favorite buddhist books and/or talks?
Content:
There are several other translations available, but the only one that I've ever studied alongside the Pali text is Dr. Saddhatissa's The Suttanipāta — a New Translation. I can't really recommend it, as it has neither the literary merit of Hare's nor the technical accuracy of Norman's, and his rendering of the Ratana Sutta is about the worst I've ever seen.

Other translations which I have not read (or perhaps have read but haven't studied with care) are the two pioneering translations of V. Fausbøll and Lord Chalmers, the 2001 translation by N.A. Jayawickrama, and the Access to Insight translations of individual suttas by Ajahn Thanissaro and John D. Ireland.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 4, 2015 6:55 AM
Title: Re: What is the last thing to let go?
Content:
Yes. Paṭinissagga is the broad term and then nekkhamma is a more specialised one. Nekkhamma is paṭinissagga with respect to desire for sense-pleasures.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 3, 2015 9:28 PM
Title: Re: Why Kusala is more powerful than Akusala?
Content:
Hi Thera,

There are over 20 articles on the page you have linked to. Which in particular is relevant to this thread?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 3, 2015 8:45 PM
Title: Re: Celebrating same-sex marriage in Buddhism
Content:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_flag_%28LGBT_movement%29


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 3, 2015 4:31 PM
Title: Re: What is the last thing to let go?
Content:
The corresponding verbs are vossajjati and paṭinissajjati.

Etamādīnavaṃ ñatvā, dukkhaṃ ārambhapaccayā,
Sabbārambhaṃ paṭinissajja, anārambhe vimuttino.

Ucchinnabhavataṇhassa, santacittassa bhikkhuno,
Vitiṇṇo jātisaṃsāro, natthi tassa punabbhavo ti.

"Knowing this peril, that 'Misery is because of exertion', giving up all exertion, for a bhikkhu who is released in non-exertion, whose craving for existence has been cut off, with calmed mind, the journeying on in [repeated] births has been crossed over. There is no renewed existence for him."
— Dvayatānupassanāsutta, Sn. 745-6 (Norman tr.)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 3, 2015 4:16 PM
Title: Re: What is the last thing to let go?
Content:
In the Suttas paṭinissagga and its synonym vossagga are the words that usually get translated ‘relinquishment’, ‘letting go’ and suchlike. What is relinquished is appropriation (ādāna) which is a term for taṇhā and upādāna.

In what sense is vipassanā a power?

Through contemplation of impermanence vipassanā is unshakable by perception of permanence, thus vipassanā is a power.

Through contemplation of pain it is unshakable by perception of pleasure, thus vipassanā is a power.

Through contemplation of not-self it is unshakable by perception of self, thus vipassanā is a power.

Through contemplation of dispassion it is unshakable by delight, thus vipassanā is a power.

Through contemplation of fading away it is unshakable by greed, thus vipassanā is a power.

Through contemplation of cessation it is unshakable by arising, thus vipassanā is a power.

Through contemplation of relinquishment (paṭinissaggānupassanā) it is unshakable by appropriation (ādāna), thus vipassanā is a power.

It is unshakable, immovable and cannot be shifted by ignorance and by the defilements and aggregates that accompany ignorance, thus vipassanā is a power. This is vipassanā as a power.
(Paṭisambhidāmagga 99)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 3, 2015 11:37 AM
Title: Re: Arguments that Buddhism is Not Solipsism
Content:
In the first case you can simply tell them that the caricature is baseless. In the second you can tell them that the scholarship is out of date and in any case the Yogācāra is merely one school.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 3, 2015 8:39 AM
Title: Re: Satipatthana in the context of the 37 factors of enlightenment
Content:
I suppose Ñāṇānanda will probably be referring to someone in Sri Lanka, though I don’t know to whom. Two examples that would be more familiar to western Buddhists would be Thich Nhat Hanh (e.g. Miracle of Being Awake) on the religious side and Jon Kabat-Zinn (e.g. Coming to our Senses) on the secular one. For both of these, even to say that they “overemphasize the role of attention” would be too charitable. In both the above books concentrating on what one is doing seems to be what the whole of bhāvanā is effectively reduced to.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 8:44 PM
Title: Re: Six Qualities of Dharm
Content:
Whether you think it's suitable or whether you think it's unsuitable, "well-proclaimed" (or "well-spoken" or "well-taught") is what the word svākkhāto means. 

There is no "self" in svākkhāto. If there were a "self" in it then it would be complete nonsense, because the Dhamma gets proclaimed by a person; it doesn't proclaim itself.

 Buddhaghosa on Svākkhāto

WELL PROCLAIMED

69. Well proclaimed: in this clause the Dhamma of the scriptures is included as well as the other; in the rest of the clauses only the supramundane Dhamma is included.

Herein, the Dhamma of the scriptures is well proclaimed because it is good in the beginning, the middle, and the end, and because it announces the life of purity that is utterly perfect and pure with meaning and with detail (see M I 179).

Even a single stanza of the Blessed One’s teaching is good in the beginning with the first word, good in the middle with the second, third, etc., and good in the end with the last word, because the Dhamma is altogether admirable. A sutta with a single sequence of meaning is good in the beginning with the introduction, good in the end with the conclusion, and good in the middle with what is in between. A sutta with several sequences of meaning is good in the beginning with the first sequence of meaning, good in the end with the last sequence of meaning, and good in the middle with the sequences of meaning in between. Furthermore, it is good in the beginning with the introduction [giving the place of] and the origin [giving the reason for] its utterance. It is good in the middle because it suits those susceptible of being taught since it is unequivocal in meaning and reasoned with cause and example. It is good in the end with its conclusion that inspires faith in the hearers.

70. Also the entire Dhamma of the Dispensation is good in the beginning with virtue as one’s own well-being. It is good in the middle with serenity and insight and with path and fruition. It is good in the end with Nibbāna. Or alternatively, it is good in the beginning with virtue and concentration. It is good in the middle with insight and the path. It is good in the end with fruition and Nibbāna. Or alternatively, it is good in the beginning because it is the good discovery made by the Buddha. It is good in the middle because it is the well-regulatedness of the Dhamma. It is good in the end because it is the good way entered upon by the Saṅgha. Or alternatively, it is good in the beginning as the discovery of what can be attained by one who enters upon the way of practice in conformity after hearing about it. It is good in the middle as the unproclaimed enlightenment [of Paccekabuddhas]. It is good in the end as the enlightenment of disciples.

71. And when listened to, it does good through hearing it because it suppresses the hindrances, thus it is good in the beginning. And when made the way of practice it does good through the way being entered upon because it brings the bliss of serenity and insight, thus it is good in the middle. And when it has thus been made the way of practice and the fruit of the way is ready, it does good through the fruit of the way because it brings [unshakable] equipoise, thus it is good in the end.

So it is “well proclaimed” because of being good in the beginning, the middle and the end.

72. Now, the life of purity, that is to say, the life of purity of the Dispensation and the life of purity of the path, which the Blessed One announces, which he shows in various ways when he teaches the Dhamma, is “with meaning” because of perfection of meaning, and it is “with detail” because of perfection of detail, as it is proper that it should be. It is “with meaning” because it conforms to the words declaring its meaning by pronouncing, clarifying, revealing, expounding, and explaining it. It is “with detail” because it has perfection of syllables, words, details, style, language, and descriptions. It is “with meaning” owing to profundity of meaning and profundity of penetration. It is “with detail” owing to profundity of law and profundity of teaching. It is “with meaning” because it is the province of the discriminations of meaning and of perspicuity. It is “with detail” because it is the province of the discriminations of law and of language (see XIV.21). It is “with meaning” since it inspires confidence in persons of discretion, being experienceable by the wise. It is “with detail” since it inspires confidence in worldly persons, being a fit object of faith. It is “with meaning” because its intention is profound. It is “with detail” because its words are clear. It is “utterly perfect” with the complete perfection due to absence of anything that can be added. It is “pure” with the immaculateness due to absence of anything to be subtracted.

73. Furthermore, it is “with meaning” because it provides the particular distinction of achievement through practice of the way, and it is “with detail” because it provides the particular distinction of learning through mastery of scripture. It is “utterly perfect” because it is connected with the five aggregates of Dhamma beginning with virtue. It is “pure” because it has no imperfection, because it exists for the purpose of crossing over [the round of rebirths’ flood (see M I 134), and because it is not concerned with worldly things.

So it is “well proclaimed” because it “announces the life of purity that is utterly perfect and pure with meaning and with detail.”

Or alternatively, it is well proclaimed since it has been properly proclaimed with no perversion of meaning. For the meaning of other sectarians’ law suffers perversion since there is actually no obstruction in the things described there as obstructive and actually no outlet in the things described there as outlets, which is why their law is ill-proclaimed; but not so the Blessed One’s Law, whose meaning suffers no perversion since the things described there as obstructions and the things described there as outlets are so in actual fact.

So, in the first place, the Dhamma of the scriptures is “well proclaimed.”

74. The supramundane Dhamma is well proclaimed since both the way that accords with Nibbāna and the Nibbāna that accords with the way have been proclaimed, according as it is said: “The way leading to Nibbāna has been properly declared to the disciples by the Blessed One, and Nibbāna and the way meet. Just as the water of the Ganges meets and joins with the water of the Yamunā, so too the way leading to Nibbāna has been properly declared to the disciples by the Blessed One, and Nibbāna and the way meet” (D II 223).

75. And here the noble path, which is the middle way since it does not approach either extreme, is well proclaimed in being proclaimed to be the middle way.

The fruits of asceticism, where defilements are tranquilized, are well proclaimed too in being proclaimed to have tranquilized defilement.

Nibbāna, whose individual essence is eternal, deathless, the refuge, the shelter, etc., is well proclaimed too in being proclaimed to have an individual essence that is eternal, and so on.

So the supramundane Dhamma is also “well proclaimed.”
[/list]


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 11:52 AM
Title: Re: Theravadin limerick challenge
Content:
I've no talent for composing limericks, but it occurs to me that the challenge-word inflected in the nominative case would make for a great song title: It Takes Two Dhutaṅgo.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 8:05 AM
Title: Re: Dhammakaya leader 'knows' the reincarnation of Steve Jobs!
Content:
No, I'm afraid not.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 7:41 AM
Title: Re: Sir Nicholas Winton (1909-2015)
Content:
An interview with him when he was 104.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 7:31 AM
Title: Re: Dhammakaya leader 'knows' the reincarnation of Steve Jobs!
Content:
I only wish I knew. As it is I've no idea at all what things are effective in freeing people from mental enslavement to this ghastly outfit. Perhaps the best person to consult on this would be Mano Laohavanich (the former monk Mettānando) who used to be quite a big shot in the organization but is now very critical of it.

He has two Facebook pages, but I don't know which (if either) is current...

https://www.facebook.com/mano.laohavanich

https://www.facebook.com/manomettanando.laohavanich


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 6:36 AM
Title: Re: Did the Buddha reject atman? Let's arrive at a conclusion
Content:
Wheelerism in a nutshell:

• The Buddha taught that there is a false self and a true Self.
• The former is the five khandhas.
• The latter is other than the five khandhas. It is the Absolute, the Atman of the Upanishads, and a bunch of Greek things.
• The Buddhist path consists in disidentifying with the khandhas so that the true Self can shine forth in all its glory.
• Buddhists, by teaching that no self is to be found, have got the Buddha's anatta teaching all wrong and replaced it with nihilism.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 6:06 AM
Title: Re: Dhammakaya leader 'knows' the reincarnation of Steve Jobs!
Content:
I've heard that for an infant candidate to get the Dalai Lama job he has to be able to identify objects that he owned in his former life that are mixed together with objects that he didn't own. So there is an empirical test of sorts; it probably wouldn't satisfy James Randi, but it's better than nothing. By contrast, the claims of Dhammachaiyo are made solely on his own authority and gullibly accepted by Dhammakaya followers without any evidence whatsoever.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 5:46 AM
Title: Re: Did the Buddha reject atman? Let's arrive at a conclusion
Content:
That's not Ken Wheeler.

This is Ken:

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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2015 4:32 AM
Title: Re: Top 3-5 favorite buddhist books and/or talks?
Content:
One more, just to round it up to 11 — my favourite Mahasi book...

Mahasi Sayadaw, A Discourse on the Sallekha Sutta

http://aimwell.org/sallekha.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2015 12:47 PM
Title: Re: Sutta reference on Buddha teaching sought
Content:
The Sutta reference has already been given: the Mahāsuññatasutta (M. iii. 111).

What I referred to was the commentary to this, in which the words "talk invariably concerned with dismissing them" are glossed as gacchatha tumhe, "You go away!" (MA. iv. 160)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2015 12:22 PM
Title: Re: Sutta reference on Buddha teaching sought
Content:
Even curter according to the Majjhima Atthakathā. Simply: "Go away!"


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2015 11:18 AM
Title: Re: Sutta reference on Buddha teaching so students leave quickly
Content:
It's mentioned also as the third of the eight great thoughts:
“When it was said: ‘This Dhamma is for one who resorts to solitude, not for one who delights in company,’ with reference to what was this said? Here, when a bhikkhu resorts to solitude, bhikkhus, bhikkhunīs, male lay followers, female lay followers, kings, royal ministers, heads of other sects, and disciples belonging to other sects approach him. In each case, with a mind that slants, slopes, and inclines to seclusion, withdrawn, delighting in renunciation, he gives them a talk invariably concerned with dismissing them. When it was said: ‘This Dhamma is for one who resorts to solitude, not for one who delights in company,’ it is with reference to this that this was said.

https://suttacentral.net/en/an8.30


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2015 9:37 AM
Title: Re: Top 3-5 favorite buddhist books and/or talks?
Content:
I think Bareau's Recherches is an interesting and valuable complement to Ñāṇamoli's Life. Bareau's work is more specialised in that it covers a much shorter period than Ñāṇamoli's (i.e. from the Bodhisatta's going forth until the conversion of Sāriputta and Moggallāna) but his work is based upon a wider range of sources: besides Pali the professor also knew Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese and had read widely in the extant Vinaya texts preserved in these languages. Also he tended to be rather more adventurous and speculative than Ñāṇamoli. This isn't always a good thing, for on occasion it leads to drivel like https://web.archive.org/web/20130312084254/http://www.buddha-kyra.com/wife.htm and elicits scathing reviews like this:


 ./download/file.php?id=2638
(32.59 KiB) Downloaded 80 times


On the other hand, at his best Bareau gives the reader a stronger sense than any other writer of what it was like to be living in ancient Magadha or Kosala.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 30, 2015 7:14 PM
Title: Re: Six Qualities of Dharm
Content:
To say that the Dhamma was "well-proclaimed" would mean that the Buddha made a good job of proclaiming it. To say that it was "self-proclaimed" would mean that the Dhamma proclaimed itself and the Buddha had nothing to do with it. I should think that's a pretty substantial difference.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 30, 2015 1:41 PM
Title: Re: Thai traduction (3 marks)
Content:
The Thais have many ways of glossing and/or translating anattā, but I don't recall hearing one like that.

ไม่มีอัตตา / mai mii attaa:
hasn’t an attā

ไม่มีตัวตน / mai mii tua ton:
hasn’t a self

ไม่ใช่อัตตา / mai chai attaa:
isn’t a self

เป็นสภาพที่บังคับบัญชาไม่ได้ / pen saphaap thii bang-khap-ban-chaa mai dai:
is a phenomenon that cannot be controlled

ไม่อยู่ในอำนาจ / mai yuu nai amnaat:
is not subject to control

เป็นสภาพว่างเปล่า / pen saphaap waang plao:
is an empty phenomenon

หาเจ้าของมิได้ / haa jao khong mi dai:
is ownerless

แย้งต่ออัตตา / yaeng tor attaa:
is opposed to attā


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 30, 2015 8:46 AM
Title: Re: Top 3-5 favorite buddhist books and/or talks?
Content:
Two lists of five — one ancient, the other modern

• Dīgha Nikāya: Dialogues of the Buddha (T.W. Rhys Davids)
• Suttanipāta: Woven Cadences (E.M. Hare); Group of Discourses (K.R. Norman)
• Vibhaṅga: Book of Analysis (U Thittila)
• Sammohavinodanī: Dispeller of Delusion (Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli)
• Visuddhimagga: Path of Purification (Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli)


• André Bareau, Recherches sur la biographie du Buddha dans les Sūtrapiṭaka et les Vinayapiṭaka anciens, 3 vols.
• Rupert Gethin, The Buddhist Path to Awakening
• Steven Collins, Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravada Buddhism
• Harvey B. Aronson, Love and Sympathy in Theravāda Buddhism
• Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli, The Life of the Buddha


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 30, 2015 8:39 AM
Title: Re: Thai traduction (3 marks)
Content:
Hi Dhammadana,

First a word of warning: with tattoos like these on your body you will be a laughingstock any time you put in an appearance in a gathering of Thais. South-East Asian tattooing generally has an apotropaic purpose (e.g. mantras and yantras for averting bullets or protecting one from snakes), while the three words that you want are popularly associated mainly with funerals.

Now of the two that you posted, the first is the Pali words aniccaṃ, dukkhaṃ and anattā in Thai script. The second is the common Thai translation of these words: "mai thiang", "pen thuk", and "mai chai tua ton". 

However, each of your Pali words has been written twice. They should be:

อนิจจัง
aniccaṃ

ทุกขัง
dukkhaṃ

อนัตตา
anattā


And here are the Thai translations with all the irrelevant stuff deleted:

ไม่เที่ยง
aniccaṃ

เป็นทุกข์
dukkhaṃ

ไม่ใช่ตัวตน 
anattā


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:24 PM
Title: Re: Six Qualities of Dharm
Content:
Svākkhāto = su + akkhāto: "Well-proclaimed".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:18 PM
Title: Re: Resources for long-term illness
Content:
And welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:17 PM
Title: Re: Resources for long-term illness
Content:
Dhammatube has some good talks by Bhikkhu Nirodho, an Aussie monk.

https://www.youtube.com/user/dhammatube/search?query=nirodho

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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2015 2:46 PM
Title: Re: Commentaries, Abhidhamma, etc. Why bother?
Content:
And verse 97 too:
Assaddho akataññū ca, sandhicchedo ca yo naro,
Hatāvakāso vantāso, sa ve uttamaporiso.

"Indeed foremost among mankind is that man who is a faithless ingrate,
And an opportunity-wasting, vomit-eating burglar."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2015 2:29 PM
Title: Re: Re-reading the Sutta Pitaka?
Content:
I reɑd the Dīɠɑ ɑnd Mɑjj̛imɑ Nikɑ̄yɑs, the Ɗɑmmɑpɑdɑ ɑnd the Suttɑnipɑ̄tɑ, dɑily, over ɑnd over, one ɑfter the other. (And the Aɓiɗɑmmɑ's Viɓɑŋɡɑ too).

Every couple of yeɑrs I re-reɑd the Aŋɡuttɑrɑ Nikɑ̄yɑ, the first ɑnd lɑst vɑɡɡɑs of the Sɑ̊yuttɑ Nikɑ̄yɑ, ɑnd the Ƭerɑɡɑ̄ƭɑ̄ ɑnd Ƭerīɡɑ̄ƭɑ̄.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2015 1:30 PM
Title: Re: Fake Buddhist monks are the new squeegee men of New York
Content:
Inspector Garthwaite is probably using it in the British English sense, where its semantic range includes a weaker sense where something is obtained not by violence, intimidation or coercion, but "... by importunity, strong arguments or any powerful influence" (OED).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2015 11:38 AM
Title: Re: Monks/Nuns and IPads
Content:
In practice monks applying the mahāpadesas will often draw different conclusion as to the allowability of this or that, disagreeing about what it is in the Vinaya that computers, cars, telephones, etc. can be most aptly compared to. 

One monk, for example, might take the view that a computer is an expensive luxury item, and as such is comparable to such prohibited items as rugs made of pure black goats' wool or ivory needlecases. 

A second monk might partially agree with this, but then argue that although it's improper for an individual monk to own a computer, it's ok for the sangha to collectively own one, treating it as being among the immovable property of the monastery.

A third monk might reason that since he only intends to use the computer for communicating the Dhamma, his ownership of it is comparable to the permitted practice of owning and wearing a pair of leather sandals with multi-level soles when going on a journey to teach the Dhamma in rough terrain outside the Middle Gangetic Valley.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2015 7:59 AM
Title: Re: Using the robes as rags etc.?
Content:
In most monasteries it's up to the individual bhikkhu. Exceptions are places like royal monasteries, where they tend to be rather prissy and fashion-conscious. For example, when I was living at Wat Benchamabophit (an A-category royal temple in Bangkok), if I got so little as an ink-stain on my robes I'd be pressured to change them for a new set immediately. Another exception would be the stricter forest monasteries, where monks would be expected to make their robes last for as long as possible and the robe-distribution officer may refuse to give you cloth to sew yourself a new robe if he doesn't think your present one is decrepit enough.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 28, 2015 11:30 PM
Title: Re: Are monks allowed to describe attainments for teaching?
Content:
The recollection of former dwellings (pubbenivāsānussati) is one of the three vijjās and the six abhiññās, both of which are classed as "dhammas exceeding the human". So if a bhikkhu tells an unordained person of any former lives that he has remembered by means of pubbenivāsānussati, and with the aim of letting the listeners know that he has this power, it would be a pācittiya offence.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be an offence for a bhikkhu to speak to unordained persons about any former lives that have been spontaneously remembered by him without any supernormal means. And possibly it wouldn't be an offence to speak of former lives that he has remembered by means of pubbenivāsānussati, but without stating that this was the means by which he remembered them. (The last point, however, is a disputed one).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 28, 2015 9:50 PM
Title: Re: Constant Jhana?
Content:
Your paraphrase seems to overlook some key words in Mahākoṭṭhita's question. What he asked Sāriputta was not simply what could be known in the absence of the five senses, but what could be known by a manoviññāṇa that was entirely purified.

And so Sāriputta wouldn't have mentioned the first jhāna, which is not entirely purified, but tainted by vitakka and vicāra, nor the second, which is tainted with pīti, nor the third, which is tainted with sukha. In the Suttas no absorption state short of the fourth jhāna is ever described as "upekkhā-sati-pārisuddhiṃ", "entirely purified by equanimity and mindfulness".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 28, 2015 9:10 PM
Title: Re: Ven. Sugatavamsa's Introductory Pali course
Content:
Niraye, tiracchānayoniyaṃ, pettivisaye, manussaloke, devaloketi sabbattha māgadhabhāsāva ussannā."

"And in hell, in the animal kind of generation, in the realm of ghosts, in the human world and in the world of deities, everywhere the Māgadha tongue is foremost."
It wouldn't necessarily imply that all animals speak the Māgadha tongue, because the same thing is said of humans too, and obviously we don't all speak it.

But as to what exactly the commentator did intend by 'ussannā' (translated here as 'foremost'), I'm not really sure. It could mean either that he thought Māgadhan was the language most widely spoken by animals or that it was the best of the various languages that animals speak.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 28, 2015 2:42 PM
Title: Re: Ven. Sugatavamsa's Introductory Pali course
Content:
No. I think they are based on the fact that Buddhaghosa and Dhammapāla were creatures of their age, and their age was twelve centuries before the likes of Sir William Jones and Lord Monboddo — an age when there were no such things as historical philology, comparative linguistics, Indo-European studies, or the scientific investigation of language acquisition in infants. What they have to say simply reflects the state of linguistics of that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnett,_Lord_Monboddo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jones_%28philologist%29

Buddhaghosa:

But here, as to saying that beings learn a tongue, this is only when it is told them; for a mother and father, when their children are small, lay them on a bed or on a chair and, speaking such and such words, do such and such work. The children define such and such speech of theirs thus: ‘By this that is mentioned, by this that is mentioned.’ As time goes on, they get to know the whole tongue.

The mother is Tamil, the father is Andhaka. The child born of them, if he hears the mother’s speech first, will speak the Tamil tongue; if he hears the father’s speech first, he will speak the Andhaka tongue. But not hearing either speech, he will speak the Māgadha tongue. And he who is reborn in a great forest without a village and where there is no-one else who speaks, he too, when he creates speech of his own accord, will speak only the Māgadha tongue.

And in hell, in the animal kind of generation, in the realm of ghosts, in the human world and in the world of deities, everywhere the Māgadha tongue is foremost.

Herein the rest of the eighteen tongues beginning with the Oṭṭa, the Kirāta, the Andhaka, the Greek and the Tamil, change; only this Māgadha tongue, correctly called the perfect (brahma) usage, the noble usage, does not change.

Also the Fully Enlightened One, in announcing the Buddha word of the Tipiṭaka, did so only in the Māgadha tongue.
(Sammohavinodanī 387-8; Dispeller of Delusion II. 128)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 28, 2015 11:57 AM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
No. 

‘In which I constantly abide’ is a rather poor translation. When a Pali verb is qualified by the adverb niccakappaṃ it indicates that the action it expresses is one engaged in regularly or frequently, but not necessarily continuously and without interruption. Niccakappaṃ most often qualifies the expression sādhukaṃ manasikaroti, “to pay careful attention to something” — obviously not something that anyone does, or even could do, uninterruptedly.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 28, 2015 11:49 AM
Title: Re: Ven. Sugatavamsa's Introductory Pali course
Content:
They mean exactly what they say: All the world's languages come from Pali. When Abhassara devas degenerate into humans, Pali is what they speak. If you're reborn in the Brahmā world, Pali is what you'll speak with the other Brahmā deities. If your mum had left you in the forest when you were a baby and you'd been raised by wolves, you'd have grown up speaking Pali. And having Pali as their mother tongue is one of the regularities found in all Sammāsambuddhas who appear in the world.

In saying all this, Ven. Sugatavaṃsa is repeating the claims made about the Pali language by the commentators, e.g., Buddhaghosa in his commentary to the Vibhaṅga, Dhammapāla in his commentary to the Udāna, Mahānāma in his commentary to the Paṭisambhidāmagga, etc. 

In modern Theravada pariyatti such claim aren't made as often as they were before the invention of scientific historical philology, but one will still hear them from Asian monks whose Pali education has been according to some very traditional monastic curriculum and who haven't had any exposure to modern linguistics.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 8:07 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
I don't see how one can make such a judgment, given that the ajahn's anecdote reports only the meditator's alleged unresponsiveness to external stimuli, while relating nothing at all about his subjective experience.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 5:15 PM
Title: Re: Ven. Sugatavamsa's Introductory Pali course
Content:
Yes. In the case of Pali my own (partial) solution to the syllabification problem is a new romanization system which I call Sundararomāna (“Elegant Roman”). Its main advantages are its elimination of the need to use two letters to represent a single Pali aspirated consonant; its elimination of all the unsightly underdots and overdots of the PTS system; and its reduction of the nasalis simplex consonant from the wide-bodied typographical nuisance it is today (i.e. ṃ or ṁ) into the unassuming little ring that it is in virtually every Asian Pali script:

aṃ = ɑ̊
iṃ = i̊
uṃ = ů

A couple of examples for comparison...

Sundararomāna:

“Pubbɑ̄pɑrɑɲɲū ɑtƭɑɲɲū, niruttipɑdɑkovido,
Suɡɡɑhītɑɲcɑ ɡɑɳhɑ̄ti, ɑtƭɑɲcopɑpɑrikƙɑti.”
(Ānɑndɑ, Ƭerɑɡɑ̄ƭɑ̄ 1031)

Knowing what comes first and last, knowing the meaning,
well-skilled in understanding words and their interpretation,
he seizes it in a good grasp and examines the meaning.


PTS system:

“Pubbāparaññū atthaññū, niruttipadakovido,
Suggahītañca gaṇhāti, atthañcopaparikkhati.”
(Ānanda, Theragāthā 1031)


Sundararomāna:

Ƙɑɡɡɑvisɑ̄ɳɑ Suttɑ

Sɑbbesu ɓūtesu niɗɑ̄yɑ dɑɳɖɑ̊, ɑviheȶɑyɑ̊ ɑɲɲɑtɑrɑmpi tesɑ̊,
Nɑ puttɑmicƈeyyɑ kuto sɑhɑ̄yɑ̊, eko cɑre ƙɑɡɡɑvisɑ̄ɳɑkɑppo.

Sɑ̊sɑɡɡɑjɑ̄tɑssɑ ɓɑvɑnti snehɑ̄, snehɑnvɑyɑ̊ dukƙɑmidɑ̊ pɑhoti,
Ādīnɑvɑ̊ snehɑjɑ̊ pekƙɑmɑ̄no, eko cɑre ƙɑɡɡɑvisɑ̄ɳɑkɑppo.

Mitte suhɑjje ɑnukɑmpɑmɑ̄no, hɑ̄peti ɑtƭɑ̊ pɑʈibɑdɗɑcitto,
Etɑ̊ ɓɑyɑ̊ sɑnƭɑve pekƙɑmɑ̄no, eko cɑre ƙɑɡɡɑvisɑ̄ɳɑkɑppo.

Vɑ̊so visɑ̄lovɑ yɑƭɑ̄ visɑtto, puttesu dɑ̄resu cɑ yɑ̄ ɑpekƙɑ̄,
Vɑ̊sɑkkɑłīrovɑ sɑjjɑmɑ̄no, eko cɑre ƙɑɡɡɑvisɑ̄ɳɑkɑppo.

Miɡo ɑrɑɲɲɑmhi yɑƭɑ̄ ɑbɑdɗo, yenicƈɑkɑ̊ ɡɑcƈɑti ɡocɑrɑ̄yɑ,
Viɲɲū nɑro seritɑ̊ pekƙɑmɑ̄no, eko cɑre ƙɑɡɡɑvisɑ̄ɳɑkɑppo.


PTS system:

Khaggavisāṇa Sutta

Sabbesu bhūtesu nidhāya daṇḍaṃ, aviheṭhayaṃ aññatarampi tesaṃ,
Na puttamiccheyya kuto sahāyaṃ, eko care khaggavisāṇakappo.

Saṃsaggajātassa bhavanti snehā, snehanvayaṃ dukkhamidaṃ pahoti,
Ādīnavaṃ snehajaṃ pekkhamāno, eko care khaggavisāṇakappo.

Mitte suhajje anukampamāno, hāpeti atthaṃ paṭibaddhacitto,
Etaṃ bhayaṃ santhave pekkhamāno, eko care khaggavisāṇakappo.

Vaṃso visālova yathā visatto, puttesu dāresu ca yā apekkhā,
Vaṃsakkaḷīrova sajjamāno, eko care khaggavisāṇakappo.

Migo araññamhi yathā abaddho, yenicchakaṃ gacchati gocarāya,
Viññū naro seritaṃ pekkhamāno, eko care khaggavisāṇakappo.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 4:33 PM
Title: Re: The causes for wisdom
Content:
Do you have a more precise link? This one leads only to a Facebook group, not to any particular talk or article.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 4:01 PM
Title: Re: Ven. Sugatavamsa's Introductory Pali course
Content:
A member has sent me a message asking how the Pali pronunciation of English-speaking Buddhists compares with that of the Sri Lankans and Thais. The short answer is that the pronunciation of most of us is nearly, but not quite, as bad as that of the Thais.

A longer answer would be that a native English-speaker who has had some elementary instruction in Pali pronunciation (e.g., enough for her to know that the "th" in Theravada is not pronounced like the "th" in think and that the Pali "c" is not like the "c" in cabin), but who does not usually make a conscious effort to get her pronunciation exactly right, will typically realise 18 consonants correctly and 15 wrongly. This is the usual pattern:

k … ✘ (needless aspirate inserted: e.g. Kassapa realised as Khassapa)
kh … ✔
g … ✔
gh … ✘ (aspiration neglected: e.g. Ghosa =&gt; Gosa)
ṅ … ✔

c … ✔
ch … ✘ (aspiration neglected: e.g. Channa =&gt; Canna)
j … ✔
jh … ✘ (aspiration neglected: e.g. jhāna =&gt; jāna)
ñ … ✔

ṭ … ✘ (retroflex realised as dental or alveolar; needless aspirate inserted: e.g. ṭāma =&gt; thāma)
ṭh … ✘ (retroflex realised as dental or alveolar: e.g. ṭhāna =&gt; thāna)
ḍ … ✘ (retroflex realised as dental or alveolar: e.g. ḍiṇḍima =&gt; dindima)
ḍh … ✘ (retroflex realised as dental or alveolar; aspiration neglected: e.g. aḍḍho =&gt; addo)
ṇ … ✘ (retroflex realised as dental or alveolar: e.g. aṇṇava =&gt; annava)

t … ✘ (needless aspirate inserted: e.g. Gotama =&gt; Gothama)
th … ✔
d … ✔
dh … ✘ (aspiration neglected: e.g. Dhamma = Damma)
n … ✔

p … ✘ (needless aspirate inserted: e.g. parisā =&gt; pharisā)
ph … ✔
b … ✔
bh … ✘ (aspiration neglected: e.g. bhojana =&gt; bojana)
m … ✔

y … ✔
r … ✔
l … ✔
v … ✔
s … ✔
h … ✔
ḷ … ✘ (retroflex approximant realised as dental or postalveolar: e.g. daḷhi =&gt; dalhi)
ṃ … ✘ (nasalis simplex realised as velar nasal: e.g. imam =&gt; imaṅ)

Then there are two further mistakes commonly made by English-speaking Buddhists that would be impossible for a Thai to make.

1. Wrong syllabification of aspirated consonants. For example, when the Forest Sangha monks in Britain are giving the refuges and precepts one often hears them mispronouncing buddhaṃ as bud-haṃ or saṅghaṃ as saṅg-haṃ. The correct syllabification is bud-dhaṃ and saṅ-ghaṃ.

2. The failure to pronounce both consonants in a double-consonant cluster. In English, for example, "mummy and "daddy" are pronounced /'mʌmi/ and /'dadi/, but if they were Pali words the double-m and double-d would need to be given their full value and with a clear hiatus between them. Most English-speaking Buddhists neglect to do this.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 3:51 PM
Title: Re: Ven. Sugatavamsa's Introductory Pali course
Content:
Actually the phonetic descriptions in the ancient grammars aren’t nearly precise enough for us to know whether this rhotic consonant is meant to be a trill (/r/; /R/), a tap (/ɾ/, /ɽ/) or an approximant (/ɹ/; /ɻ/), so any of them might conceivably be right. However, since out of these six possibilities the two kinds of trill (i.e. the alveolar and the uvular) are by far the commonest rhotic sounds in the world’s languages, the odds are that the Pali r will be one or the other.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 11:46 AM
Title: Re: Ven. Sugatavamsa's Introductory Pali course
Content:
Yes, that isn't surprising.

As their native tongue belongs to the same language family as Pali, the Sri Lankans’ way of pronouncing Pali is mostly in line with the phonetic descriptions given in the ancient Pali grammars, with only two or three mispronunciations. The Thais on the other hand, will typically pronounce 15 of the Pali consonants right and the other 18 wrong:

k … ✔
kh … ✔
g … ✘ (Thais mispronounce as kh)
gh … ✘ ( " kh)
ṅ … ✔

c … ✘ ( " j)
ch … ✔
j … ✘ ( " ch)
jh … ✘ ( " ch)
ñ … ✘ ( " y)

ṭ … ✘ ( " t)
ṭh … ✘ ( " th)
ḍ … ✘ ( " th)
ḍh … ✘ ( " th)
ṇ … ✘ ( " n)

t … ✔
th … ✔
d … ✘ ( " th)
dh … ✘ ( " th)
n … ✔

p … ✔
ph … ✔
b … ✘ ( " ph)
bh … ✘ ( " ph)
m … ✔

y … ✔
r … ✔
l … ✔
v … ✘ ( " w)
s … ✔
h … ✔
ḷ … ✘ ( " l)
ṃ … ✘ ( " ṅ)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 7:40 AM
Title: Ven. Sugatavamsa's Introductory Pali course
Content:
I haven't done it myself, but it looks very well-prepared and pupil-friendly.

http://www.pamc.org.sg/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70&Itemid=68&lang=en

http://www.pamc.org.sg/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95&Itemid=85&lang=en


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 7:23 AM
Title: Re: New wikipedia article, Dhyana sutras (Chan Jing)
Content:
In a section entitled Doctrinal differences with other schools a responsible Wikipedia contributor will be concerned with giving an accurate statement of the Theravada's distinctive features. Ekābhisamaya happens to be one of these, regardless of whether you think its compassionate to say so and regardless of what you think will appeal to the public's "better instincts".

That being so, if any amendment to the Wikipedia entry is warranted, it would consist not in excision but in amplification, e.g., an account of how the Theravada has traditionally interpreted those Sutta passages that appear to support the anupubbābhisamaya position and perhaps also some mention of those modern Theravadins who dissent from their school's traditional position on this question.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 27, 2015 1:16 AM
Title: Re: New wikipedia article, Dhyana sutras (Chan Jing)
Content:
would apply to every single one of the modern Burmese vipassanā traditions and any other meditation traditions that take the Abhidhamma seriously. All of them hold that the three lower fetters of sakkāyadiṭṭhi, sīlabbatapārāmāsa and vicikicchā are not gradually worn away but are wiped out in a single thought-moment when the yogi arrives at stream-entry noble path consciousness.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 26, 2015 11:54 PM
Title: Re: Using the robes as rags etc.?
Content:
It's still the custom to put worn-out robes to some use or other, but I don't think it's common for it to be done in precisely the way described by Ānanda. In a Thai forest monastery the commonest use for a worn-out robe is as a water-strainer, a sunshade for one's verandah or walking meditation path, or a false ceiling to keep one's hut cool in the hot season and warm in the cool season.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 26, 2015 11:44 PM
Title: Re: What Dhamma Book are you reading right now?
Content:
Michael Freedman,
The Characterization of Ānanda in the Pāli Canon of the Theravāda: A Hagiographic Study

https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/15547


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 26, 2015 11:30 PM
Title: Re: New wikipedia article, Dhyana sutras (Chan Jing)
Content:
Your quotation is from a section entitled "Doctrinal differences with other schools". In such a context the statement is quite correct: the developed Theravāda was indeed one of the ekābhisamaya or "sudden enlightenment" schools, as opposed to the anupubbābhisamaya or "gradual enlightenment" schools like the Andhakas, Sarvastivādins, Sammītiyas and Bhadrayānikas.

Since in the Suttas one will find passages that appear to support both views, this became quite a major topic of debate at the Third Council. For the Kathāvatthu's record of this:

https://suttacentral.net/en/kv2.9


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:33 PM
Title: Re: Is Jhana biochemical?
Content:
A beautiful example of this, in the person of Preah Mahā Ghosānanda, the late Cambodian patriarch, noted for his accomplishment in the illimitable meditations.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:28 PM
Title: Re: Is Jhana biochemical?
Content:
While a yogi is in jhāna, the pīti, sukha, etc. associated with each jhānic consciousness produce mind-generated subtle-materiality-clusters throughout the length and breadth of his body, and in such profusion as to completely surround and pervade all the coarser kamma-generated, nutriment-generated and temperature-generated materiality-clusters. Hence the celebrated simile of the Mahāsakuludāyi Sutta:

“He makes the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion drench, steep, fill, and pervade this body, so that there is no part of his whole body unpervaded by the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion. Just as a skilled bath man or a bath man’s apprentice heaps bath powder in a metal basin and, sprinkling it gradually with water, kneads it till the moisture wets his ball of bath powder, soaks it and pervades it inside and out, yet the ball itself does not ooze; so too, a bhikkhu makes the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion drench, steep, fill, and pervade this body, so that there is no part of his whole body unpervaded by the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion.” 
(Bh. Bodhi tr.)
Some teachers nowadays read this simile too literally, imagining that it is the pīti itself that is spreading through the body, which is not in fact the case. The jhānic pīti arises in the same place that all pīti arises: the heart-base. But though it arises only in one place in the body, there is no part of the body that fails to be affected by it.

Then upon emerging from jhāna, for some minutes or hours afterwards the sense-sphere wholesome consciousnesses in the ensuing javana-processes carry on generating subtle-materiality-clusters, thus imbuing jhāna yogis with their characteristic radiance of complexion (as in the Sutta's description of Anuruddha, for instance), elegance of posture, and buoyancy and fluidity of bodily movement.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2015 7:59 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
No, I wasn't thinking of either of those but of an episode in the Pārājikakaṇḍa (Vin. iii. 82). 

It relates that an unhappy bhikkhu, wishing to kill himself, jumped off Vulture's Peak and landed on top of a basket-maker. The basket-maker was killed but the bhikkhu survived. The matter was then reported to the Buddha. Since the bhikkhu had no intention of killing the basket-maker, obviously that action was no offence. But what about the attempted suicide? If it were the case that suicide was pāṇātipāta, then the bhikkhu's unsuccessful attempt would have amounted to an incomplete commission of the third pārājika. In that case we should expect the Buddha to have declared him guilty of a thullaccaya offence, as would be the case with a bhikkhu who made an unsuccessful murder attempt. Instead the Buddha pronounces the bhikkhu's action to be no offence at all. He then proceeds to establish a new minor rule making it a misdemeanour for bhikkhus to jump from high places.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2015 7:26 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2015 6:50 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
The suttas in question have been quoted time and time again in past jhāna threads. The interpretation which sees them as allowing for hearing (and the other sensory consciousnesses) to occur in jhāna has been refuted time and time again, notably by Sylvester.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2015 3:50 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
Only in the sense that the disjunction between inanimate (aviññāṇaka) rūpa, such as that of a stone or a rotting corpse, and animate (saviññāṇaka) rūpa, such as that of living humans and animals, is conceived as absolute and not merely a matter of degree.

Other than that the description's not a very comfortable fit. In vitalist theories...

1. The animating principle is usually an immaterial one. Buddhist doctrine posits both a material and a non-material jīvitindriya.

2. The animating principle is usually unitary. In Buddhist doctrine, besides the twofold distinction mentioned above, an instance of the material jīvitindriya is present in every single materiality-cluster (rūpakalāpa) in one’s body, so in effect there are billions of them.

3. The animating principle is either everlasting or at least lasts for the duration of a being’s life. In Buddhist doctrine the jīvitindriya is as ephemeral as any other dhamma.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2015 3:24 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
In all of the Suttas’ arahant suicide narratives, the commentarial understanding is that the monks in question cut their throats as worldlings and then attained a “betwixt the stirrup and the ground” arahantship in the short space of life that remained to them.

If the commentaries are right then the suicides were acts of men whose kilesas were still intact. If the commentaries are wrong then we must treat death by one’s own hand as being something other than pāṇātipāta, given that the Suttas unqualifiedly declare an arahant to be incapable of the latter. (There is in fact a strong Vinaya case to be made for this, quite independently of any conclusions one might draw from these alleged suicides by arahants). Either way the episodes don't provide any support for the notion that intentional killing of a living being might on occasion be an undefiled act.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2015 3:17 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
In the Vinaya (e.g., Vin. iii. 73) and in the Suttas (e.g., D. ii. 305), the life-faculty is that which when it is cut off makes you dead. In the Abhidhamma more precise and technical descriptions are given, but as these are descriptions concerned with fostering insight development, an examination of them for our present purposes would be overkill.

As to the would-be killer’s awareness of his victim’s life-faculty, except in the unlikely event that he has discerned it through bhāvanā, his knowledge of it will be no more than inferential. That is, he will know of it through its effects: the continuance of vitality in the living being, as manifested in its appearance and behaviour, or else detectable via the medical monitoring devices.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 8:02 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
The terms 'wholesome' and 'unwholesome' applied to resultant consciousnesses refer not to the consciousnesses themselves but to the past kammas that gave rise to them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 6:42 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
The six roots are greed, hate, delusion, non-greed, non-hate, non-delusion.

The five sensory consciousnesses all arise unaccompanied by any of these six.

In the case of the unwholesome resultant fivefold sense-consciousnesses it isn't necessary to draw attention to their rootlessness by naming them 'rootless', because every unwholesome resultant is rootless.

In the case of the wholesome resultant fivefold sense-consciousnesses it is necessary to draw attention to their rootlessness in order to distinguish them from those wholesome resultants that are accompanied by roots.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 6:11 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
The unwholesome-resultant ear-consciousness and the wholesome-resultant rootless ear-consciousness.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 6:00 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Sumedho interview: Rebirth and Pacifism
Content:
Dear Robert,

The commentaries understand opapātika to be used in two distinct senses: one in the context of the four modes of generation and the other in the context of mundane right and wrong view.

The first sense is found, for example, in the Mahāsīhanāda Sutta (MN. 12):
Katamā ca, Sāriputta, opapātikā yoni? Devā, nerayikā, ekacce ca manussā, ekacce ca vinipātikā: ayaṃ vuccati, Sāriputta, opapātikā yoni.

“What is spontaneous generation? There are devas, denizens of hell, certain human beings, and certain beings in the lower worlds; this is called spontaneous generation.

As for the second sense, in the tenfold mundane right and wrong view, the commentarial understanding is that opapātika has a broader range.
Natthi sattā opapātikā ti cavitvā upapajjanakā sattā nāma natthīti vadati.

“ ‘There are no beings who are opapātika’ — ‘Living beings who have passed away and then appeared again do not exist,’ he declares.”
(Commentary to the Sāmaññaphala Sutta)
In other words, the wrong view regarding opapātika is taken to be a denial of rebirth in general and right view an assertion of the same.

However, most English translators don’t agree with the commentaries that opapātikā has a different meaning in this second context. Consequently, they insist on translating it as if the first meaning applied throughout:
‘There is something given, something offered, something sacrificed; there is a fruit or result of good and bad actions; there is this world, there is the other world; there is mother, there is father; there are beings who are reborn spontaneously; there are good and virtuous recluses and brahmins in the world who have themselves realised by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other world.’
Now when opapātika gets translated this way it does indeed look as if it’s declaring the existence of “devas, denizens of hell, human beings, and certain beings in the lower worlds” to be an essential component of mundane right view. When it’s translated the commentarial way, however, it is simply asserting the fact of rebirth.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 5:06 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Sumedho interview: Rebirth and Pacifism
Content:
I don't know what Ajahn Sumedho's personal beliefs are with regard to the traditional Buddhist cosmology, or even whether he has any beliefs about it. 

You are right that I don't agree with the ajahn's notion of this cosmology being "simply a metaphor for the whole realm of human experience". There's simply no support for this idea in the Theravada texts (nor in the Mahayana ones, as far as I know). It's just something that some modern teachers have taken to saying when trying to "speak to the condition" of audiences who are sceptical about the traditional view.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 4:22 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
Since sound is cognizable only by the two kinds of ear-consciousness, all other consciousnesses —including the jhānic ones— arise in silence.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 3:51 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Sumedho interview: Rebirth and Pacifism
Content:
The existence of realms of devas, petas, asuras, nerayikas, etc., is certainly a part of the Buddha’s teaching. But believing in all this is not a part of mundane right view. Mundane right view is essentially about acceptance of the doctrines of ownership of kamma, the subjection to rebirth of all beings who are not free of the āsavas, and the possibility of an efficacious brahmacariyā. Acceptance of these does not necessarily entail having any particular convictions about the variety of states into which beings may be born.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 2:35 PM
Title: Re: Tipitaka Translation
Content:
The most useful for this purpose are in fact the translations of Bhikkhu Bodhi, for he mostly translates according to the commentarial understanding and on those occasions when he departs from it he does his readers the courtesy of appending a note to let them know how the passage was understood by the commentators.

As for those translations that consciously aim to follow the commentators throughout, the quality is generally poor.

I.B. Horner had a high regard for the commentaries and attempted to translate the Vinaya Piṭaka and Majjhima Nikāya in line with their glosses. Unfortunately her grasp of commentarial Pali was very weak, so as often as not she got it all wrong, especially in her Vinaya translation.

The translations by the Myanmar Piṭaka Association show a poor grasp of English diction on the part of the translators, resulting in frequently bad choices for rendering Pali technical terms.

So, the only ones that are really worth reading are the handful of translations of individual suttas and their commentaries by Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi, along with Ñāṇamoli’s translation of the Khuddakapāṭha and its commentary (Minor Readings and Illustrator).

The suttas in question are (by Bhikkhu Bodhi) the Brahmajāla, Sāmaññaphala, Mahānidāna and Mūlapariyaya, and (by Ñāṇamoli) the Sammādiṭṭhi.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 1:27 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Sumedho interview: Rebirth and Pacifism
Content:
There is no mention of heaven and hell in either the Suttas' statement of the tenfold mundane right view or the commentarial elaboration of it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 10:29 AM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
It was actually Epicurus's garden I had in mind, being both the place where the man taught as well as an Epicurean symbol for ataraxia / impassibility. But I suppose Candide's will do as well.

By the way, I don't know if you propose to read Candide in French or in English translation, but if the latter, do get the Norton Critical or the Oxford World Classics edition. The earlier English renderings were all butchered by heavy bowdlerization.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2015 5:51 AM
Title: Re: Non-attachment and social issues
Content:
Suppose that I'm a woman and on account of my sex am being paid less than a male employee for doing exactly the same job and doing it just as well as he. This state of affairs is manifestly an unjust one and if I campaign against it, then it doesn't "expose the defiled nature of the urge for equality". All it exposes is my lack of moral blindness and refusal to countenance my employer's bad habits.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 10:28 PM
Title: Re: Lance Cousins, RIP
Content:
Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies' obituary by Sarah Shaw.

http://ocbs.org/news-ocbsmain-88/374-ocbs-news-june-2015?start=1


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 10:19 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
Perhaps the wisest course for most people would be to just study the Dhamma and tend their own gardens, leaving the polemical defence of orthodoxy to those who enjoy a good argument. Life’s very short and there’s way too much bad doctrine and newfangled methods being taught for anyone to go around correcting all of it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 9:26 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
The aversion-rooted consciousness that causes one to kill has as its object the life-faculty of another being.
The mental factors that arise with that consciousness also have that other being's life-faculty as their object.
One of those mental factors, dosa, aims at the destruction of that life-faculty.

So in the present context, the object of the killer’s dosa is not the dog but the life-faculty that the dog retains and which will mean suffering for the dog so long as he continues to retain it. The mental factor of dosa aims at the ending of that life-faculty.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 6:50 PM
Title: Re: Shouldn't abyāpāda·saṅkappa cover avihiṃsā·saṅkappa?
Content:
Quite.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 5:50 PM
Title: Re: Non-attachment and social issues
Content:
One's judgment that some state of affairs involves an injustice needn't be conditioned by māna or rāga. For example, in the texts' treatment of sadisohamasmīti māna (the conceit of supposing oneself to be the equal of another), this conceit is classified as threefold according to whether one is in fact equal, superior or inferior to the person with whom one compares oneself. Now for such a classification to have any meaning presupposes that equality is something that may obtain in fact and not merely in one's conceiving of it. That beings so, there is an objective basis —a basis in reality and not merely in our conceits— to judge some state of affairs to be just or unjust and to champion this or that reforming cause on the basis of this judgment.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:45 PM
Title: Re: Shouldn't abyāpāda·saṅkappa cover avihiṃsā·saṅkappa?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:16 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
How the listener feels is irrelevant to determining whether a speech-act is kusala, akusala or (in the case of arahants) kiriyā. The speaker's intention alone determines this.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:12 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
It seems that we are working with different definitions of the term. Moral absolutism, as I understand it, is the position that at least some actions are intrinsically good or intrinsically bad, regardless of their consequences. In the Buddha's teachings the ten akusala kammapatha would be examples of intrinsically bad actions.

It's true that Buddhist sīla isn't entirely absolutist; for example, the laying down of the Vinaya rules was prompted as often as not by consequentialist considerations. However, to the extent that Buddhist ethics is concerned with kusala and akusala kamma it does assume an absolutist form: actions of body and speech by a non-arahant are always akusala when produced by a volition accompanied by greed, hate or delusion, and always kusala when produced by a volition rooted in non-greed, non-hate or non-delusion.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 1:17 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
A way where any third-rate samādhi experience gets passed as being jhāna. The easiest of all is probably the one that gets volubly advertised on Dhamma Wheel by Vimalaramsi’s students. Slightly more demanding would be that of Ayya Khemā and Leigh Brasington. And so on and so forth until we get to those who teach authentic Sutta-based jhāna with no fivefold sense-consciousnesses and no thinking.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 11:35 AM
Title: Re: Non-attachment and social issues
Content:
I don't think any of the suttas you cite support your position. They all have to do with the abandoning of māna-saṃyojana, the "fetter of conceit", and have nothing to say against participation in campaigns for sexual equality, gay rights, or other causes relating to social justice.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 8:48 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
Yes, for wrong speech is possible only for one in whom the three akusala roots are still unabandoned. Being unpleasant to the ear does not automatically disqualify speech from being right. See the Abhayarājakumāra Sutta.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.058.than.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 8:15 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
I disagree. Inasmuch as the Buddha states his moral pronouncements and exhortations to be made ekaṃsena, "absolutely", "definitively", "without qualification", "unequivocally", the Dhamma is certainly a species of moral absolutism.


Then the Venerable Ānanda approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, and sat down to one side. The Blessed One then said to him:

“I say definitively (ekaṃsena), Ānanda, that deeds of bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, and mental misconduct are not to be done.”

“Since, Bhante, the Blessed One has declared definitively that deeds of bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, and mental misconduct are not to be done, what danger is to be expected in acting thus?”

“Ānanda, I have declared definitively that deeds of bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, and mental misconduct are not to be done because in acting thus this danger is to be expected: one blames oneself; the wise, having investigated, censure one; a bad report circulates about one; one dies confused; and with the breakup of the body, after death, one is reborn in the plane of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower world, in hell. I have declared definitively that deeds of bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, and mental misconduct are not to be done because in acting thus this danger is to be expected.

“I say definitively (ekaṃsena), Ānanda, that deeds of bodily good conduct, verbal good conduct, and mental good conduct are to be done.”

“Since, Bhante, the Blessed One has declared definitively that deeds of bodily good conduct, verbal good conduct, and mental good conduct are to be done, what benefit is to be expected in acting thus?”

“Ānanda, I have declared definitively that deeds of bodily good conduct, verbal good conduct, and mental good conduct are to be done because in acting thus this benefit is to be expected: one does not blame oneself; the wise, having investigated, praise one; one acquires a good reputation; one dies unconfused; and with the breakup of the body, after death, one is reborn in a good destination, in a heavenly world. I have declared definitively that deeds of bodily good conduct, verbal good conduct, and mental good conduct are to be done because in acting thus this benefit is to be expected.”
(A. ii. 57-8)

______________________________________________

“What do you think, Dhānañjāni? Suppose someone here were to behave contrary to the Dhamma, to behave unrighteously for the sake of his parents, and then because of such behaviour the wardens of hell were to drag him off to hell. Would he be able [to free himself by pleading thus]: ‘It was for the sake of my parents that I behaved contrary to the Dhamma, that I behaved unrighteously, so let not the wardens of hell drag me off to hell’? Or would his parents be able to free him by pleading thus: ‘It was for our sake that he behaved contrary to the Dhamma, that he behaved unrighteously, so let not the wardens of hell [drag him off] to hell’?”

“No, Master Sāriputta. Even while he was crying out, the wardens of hell would fling him into hell.”

[repeat the same, replacing “for the sake of his parents” with “for the sake of his wife and children … slaves, servants, and workers … friends and companions … kinsmen and relatives … guests … departed ancestors … devas … king”]
(Dhānañjāni Sutta, M. 97)

______________________________________________

“Just as the great ocean is stable and does not overflow its boundaries, so too, when I have prescribed a training rule for my disciples, they will not transgress it even for life’s sake. This is the second astounding and amazing quality that the bhikkhus see in this Dhamma and discipline because of which they take delight in it.”
(Pahārāda Sutta, A. iv. 198)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 7:21 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
1. There is a pre-volition (pubbacetanā) to help the ailing dog. This is kusala.
2. Then arises the thought that the dog can be helped only by ending its existence.
3. Then arises a volition (cetanā) to end its existence. This is akusala in that such a volition is perforce accompanied by vyāpāda.
4. Acting on this volition one instructs a vet to euthanize the dog.
5. The vet does as ordered, the dog dies, and the akusala kammapatha of intentional killing is completed.

The volition that leads one to give the instruction to the vet is what determines the action to be akusala.

The pre-volition that came before does not determine the moral character of the action (kusala or akusala) but only the moral degree (light or weighty). Why? Because the pre-volition did not give rise to the speaking of the instructions to the vet. It was the later volition that did this and so it was the later volition that determined the moral character of the action.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 23, 2015 6:57 AM
Title: Re: Can a lay person achieve nirvana?
Content:
If the Milinda is right then these lay arahants' inability to ordain will lead to their death. If the Milinda is wrong then it won't. From the point of view of one who "awaits his time as a servant his wages" either outcome is a matter of indifference.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:02 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
you seem to be doing what so many do when this topic comes up for discussion, namely, confusing intention and motive.

John kills his granny because she is terminally ill and pleads to be put out of her misery.
Fred kills his granny because he is impatient to inherit her money.

The intention is identical in both cases: to kill a human being. Therefore the kamma is both cases is of an identical type: pāṇātipāta. The motives differ: that of John mitigates his akusala kamma, that of Fred aggravates it. But John's motive does not make his action into something different from pāṇātipāta. When an action is of an intrinsically akusala character (e.g., killing, stealing, lying, etc.), even the most admirable motive in the world will not transform it into a kusala action.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 22, 2015 7:45 PM
Title: Re: How much to Practise to gain Enlightenment
Content:
No, nobody can knowingly say how long it will take. Even among those who were taught by the Buddha himself there were some who were awakened just listening to a single Dhamma talk by him and there were others who were awakened only after decades of striving.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 22, 2015 7:37 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
But this is irrelevant to the thread, for unlike in the case of pāṇātipāta, the conduct you describe is not prompted by a mental factor that aims at the ending of its ārammaṇa.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 22, 2015 2:29 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
So if this is correct, then the jhāna-attainment rate of those who attempt samatha-bhāvanā will range from one in a million to one in a thousand million, while the jhāna-mastery rate will range from one in a hundred million to one in a trillion.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 22, 2015 1:23 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
In this sutta, ‘cause’ is being used to include both association condition and decisive support condition, which is to say it’s being used in a broader sense than in this thread. In the passage you’ve cited, lobha is a cause by way of decisive support condition and dosa and moha by way of association condition.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 22, 2015 11:16 AM
Title: Re: Can a lay person achieve nirvana?
Content:
It's not true. Those who say this are usually either citing some traditional local folk belief or else misreporting a teaching from the Milindapañha to the effect that it isn't possible to remain in the household life after one has attained arahantship. According to this text, a householder who attains will either go forth into the homeless life within a short period or will die.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 22, 2015 10:24 AM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
Faulty analogy, for though many different things may all count equally as fruit, there are no grounds for thinking that many different and incompatible conceptions of 'jhāna' all equally count as the jhāna of the Buddha's teaching.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:05 AM
Title: Re: AN Commentary (Mp) on AN 4.28: 7 Contemplations, 18 Great Insights, 38 Meditation Objects
Content:
The seven anupassanā are another name for the first seven of the eighteen mahāvipassanā. The eighteen mahāvipassanā (translated as "principal insights") can be found here:

https://tipitakamyanmar2.blogspot.com/2012/01/chapter-xx.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 10:44 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
N.B., This thread is about euthanasia, not meat-eating and vegetarianism.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 9:26 PM
Title: Re: Constant Jhana?
Content:
In my estimation it's a serious flaw that the translation fails to preserve the connection between the kāmo on the first line and the kāmā on the second. Furthermore, there is really no excuse for it: had the Buddha wished to say 'things' he had over a dozen words at his disposal.

How badly botched? Well, obviously not as badly as if, say, Thomas Byrom had done it. But botched nonetheless.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 8:51 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
I don't see the differences as morally relevant.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 7:35 PM
Title: Re: Shouldn't abyāpāda·saṅkappa cover avihiṃsā·saṅkappa?
Content:
Bhante,

As far as I know, the scope of vihiṃsā —like the scope of its opposite, avihiṃsā/karuṇā— is limited to actions directed at others. Have you ever met with any evidence suggesting otherwise in the texts?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 6:56 PM
Title: Re: Jhana definition by Ajahn Brahm
Content:
If the ajahn's got an opinion on what authentic jhāna is and regards rival conceptions of jhāna as mistaken, on what grounds do you think he should hold back from saying so in the public arena?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 6:40 PM
Title: Re: Constant Jhana?
Content:
It's not the English Ñāṇamoli but the Yugoslavian one. The translation he is citing isn't his own but one of Ñāṇavīra's botch-jobs.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 6:24 PM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
This is no exception, for the same reason as in the frog example.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 9:30 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
I think the heat that’s typically generated when this matter comes up for discussion comes in large part from partisans on both sides trying to defend stronger positions than the Pali texts will reasonably support and failing to properly distinguish intention and motive. And so we see Buddhist critics of euthanasia denying the very possibility of a kusala motive and Buddhist defenders of euthanasia falling into the Mahayana-like error of treating a motive that is merely mitigatory as if it were exonerative.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 2:08 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
I don't think so. They share the two features which Dave, if I understand him right, claims will make the seeming killing an actual non-killing: both entail the same inevitable outcome, differing only in the anticipated time before the inevitable happens, and both entail acting upon a being who is suffering or will (inevitably) suffer, the two beings differing only in the degree of immediacy and palpability of their suffering.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 1:33 AM
Title: Re: non-visual sign?
Content:
Here:

http://www.4shared.com/file/TDUsiK0R/vism.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2015 1:19 AM
Title: Re: Is animal euthenasia 'humane'?
Content:
Suppose someone replaced "car" with "birth" and went on to argue that one should feel free to kill any living being one pleases, for by so doing one is merely expediting the inevitable. Would you agree with them? If not, how would your argument differ from theirs?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 20, 2015 8:06 PM
Title: Re: Two sutta references sought
Content:
It's the two Dhammavihārī Suttas, A. iii. 86-89. ATI seems to have only the first:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.073.than.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 18, 2015 6:38 AM
Title: Re: Monastic life and remorse?
Content:
So it is just a difference of degree?

I think in the Abhidhamma these would probably be treated as two terms for the same thing, namely, the mental factor of kukkucca, variously translated as regret, remorse, or worry. In the Vinaya this mental factor is usually called vippaṭisāra, "remorse". It is always deemed to be unwholesome and can only arise with hate-rooted consciousnesses. On the other hand, the fact that it is unpleasant to experience means that it sometimes prompt a person to want to reform himself by giving up whatever kind of conduct gave rise to it — a case of what the Abhidhamma calls "the unwholesome acting as a condition for the wholesome".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:50 PM
Title: Re: Royalty in the Buddha's and Rahula's life?
Content:
The texts don't say that the Bodhisatta was more often born into a royal family than into a family of lower estate, nor even that he was more often born as a human than as, say, an animal. That many Jātakas happen to be about his former lives as a king or a prince probably reflects the fact that what kings and princes get up to tends to make for more memorable stories.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:35 PM
Title: Re: Who's sutta pitaka translation do you favor the most?
Content:
My overall favourite is that phenomenal pioneer Thomas Rhys Davids.



I love Dialogues of the Buddha, his rendering of the Dīgha Nikāya, over which the more recent one by Maurice Walshe is scarcely an improvement at all.

https://archive.org/details/dialoguesofbuddh01davi
https://archive.org/details/dialoguesofbuddh02davi
https://archive.org/details/dialoguesofbuddh03davi

And his Vinaya Piṭaka translation with (Hermann Oldenberg) is inferior to the later one by I.B. Horner only on account of its incompleteness. In its accuracy it is rather better than hers.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 15, 2015 9:28 PM
Title: Re: The results of kamma can be avoided?
Content:
Yes, some.

http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/English-Texts/Why-the-Buddha-Suffered/index.htm

(Apadāna 39.10 and its Commentary. Translated by Ven Ānandajoti)

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Canonical Verses
1. Austerities
2. Slander
3. Slander
4. Slander
5. Pierced by a Rock
6. Pierced by a Splinter
7. The Elephant Nāḷāgiri
8. Cut with a Knife
9. A Headache
10. Eating Barley
11. Backache
12. Dysentry


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 15, 2015 9:44 AM
Title: Re: Buddhism and raising children, how?
Content:
If the Bodhisatta had not gone forth, then it’s likely that he and Yasodharā would have raised Rāhula in the way that military families of the officer class have throughout history raised their sons, which is to say they would have had very little to do with it. This is based on the recognition that since parents are naturally disposed to spoil and lavish affection upon their children, too much contact with them will make a boy soft. And so as a suckling Rāhula would have been entrusted to wet-nurses, in early infancy to governesses, and in later infancy and adolescence to tutors in the military and political arts.

Now if you wish to do as the Bodhisatta might have done, but are not military yourself, then I believe https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/1999/apr/28/familyandrelationships.features102 describes a fair civilian approximation of a good kshatriya upbringing (though as a Buddhist you might want to leave out the God stuff and the fox-hunting).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 15, 2015 8:40 AM
Title: Re: Who is the Buddha in Three refuges?
Content:
As far as I know, the Paramatthajotikā file that I uploaded earlier is the most comprehensive Theravadin treatment of the refuges and refuge-going.

http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?p=341942#p320225


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 15, 2015 8:32 AM
Title: Re: Mantras
Content:
In any meditation-related sutta that instructs one to think such-and-such, that such-and-such is the parikamma. For example, in this translation of the http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/khp/khp.9.budd.html, the parikamma for mettabhāvanā is everything from the line "May all be well and secure..." up to the lines "Let none wish others harm / In resentment or in hate."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 15, 2015 8:12 AM
Title: Re: Mantras
Content:
In the Thai way of pronouncing it the B is like a P and the D and DH are both like T's: poot-toe.

I remember as a layman back in the early 80's, this Thai pronunciation of 'buddho' caused some problems for Athena, my Greek-Cypriot girlfriend, when she accompanied me on a weekend retreat at Chithurst Forest Monastery. This was at the time when Ajahn Sumedho was still the abbot there, but the retreat was led by his vice-abbot, the late Ajahn Ānando. The ajahn began by instructing us to mentally recite buddho while mindfully breathing: 'bud' on the in-breath and 'dho' on the out-breath. He demonstrated the method by pronouncing the syllables the Thai way: "poot-toe ... poot-toe ... poot-toe..." This resulted in a bout of giggling on the part of Athena that was so uncontrollable she finally had to leave the room. The problem, as I later learned, was that "poot-toe" sounds so much like the Greek vulgarism https://glosbe.com/el/en/%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%84%CF%83%CE%B1.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 15, 2015 7:47 AM
Title: Re: Mantras
Content:
The locus classicus would be the Concentration section of the Visuddhimagga. Most of the forty samatha meditation subjects come accompanied by preparatory words or phrases that are traditionally recited by one who undertakes the practice. In the case of Recollection of the Buddha it would be the words for the Buddha's nine special qualities. In the case of recollection of death it would be "maraṇaṃ maraṇaṃ" ("death, death") or "maraṇaṃ bhavissati, jīvitindriyaṃ upacchijjissati" ("death will come to me, the life-faculty will be cut off"). In the case of the earth kasiṇa, "paṭhavī, paṭhavī" ("earth, earth"). Although in Asia one finds that most meditators will use the Pali words when doing these practices, this isn't actually required (as it would be in the case of a mantra practice) and indeed it would arguably be better to use one's native tongue, to ensure that one's focus really is upon the word's referent rather than upon the mere sound.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 15, 2015 7:34 AM
Title: Re: Mantras
Content:
No.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 13, 2015 1:47 PM
Title: Re: Wrong conducts in regard to sense pleasures?
Content:
It wouldn't mean that it was fine. It would only mean that it doesn't violate the third precept and it doesn't create the kind of evil kamma that's created by performing the third akusala kammapatha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 13, 2015 1:28 PM
Title: Re: Theravada and Zen differences?
Content:
But what does Reginald Ray mean by the part in bold?

That it's "inappropriate" because it misrepresents the Tibetan view (i.e. no Tibetans ever intended "Hinayana" to refer to any particular Buddhist school)?

Or by "inappropriate" is Ray (a fashionably liberal follower of Tibetan Buddhism) simply voicing a personal preference that Mahayana Buddhists should make a break with the Mahayana's traditional polemical stance and start using some politer term to refer to non-Mahayana schools?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:29 AM
Title: Re: Wrong conducts in regard to sense pleasures?
Content:
MN. 13 is irrelevant to the third precept. The third precept / third kusala kammapatha is concerned solely with sexual restraint. Restraint regarding sense-pleasures in general is part of mental-development (bhāvanā), not precept-keeping/moral habit (sīla).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 13, 2015 9:41 AM
Title: Re: Who is the Buddha in Three refuges?
Content:
I'm a little mystified as to Nyanaponika's source. The ṭīkā to the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta doesn't contain any passage like this, nor does it read like anything that any ṭīkā author would say. I mean a clunky phrase like sharing in the shortcomings attached to any human institution is very modern-sounding and it's hard to imagine any Pali commentator ever using it.

Overall it reads more like the sort of thing Nyanaponika himself was wont to say when indulging in one of his German romanticist flights of fancy. Perhaps the venerable was just giving an impressionistic summary of the thoughts that came into his mind after reading the said ṭīkā.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 13, 2015 7:05 AM
Title: Re: can immaterial goods be stolen?
Content:
Two articles of interest. In the first Ven. Varado offers his views on copyright and Vinaya; in the second he discusses them with the venerables Aggacitta and Kumāra.

http://sasanarakkha.org/articles/2007/04/copyright-infringement-and-vinaya.html

http://sasanarakkha.org/articles/2007/04/dialogue-on-copyright-infringement-and.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 13, 2015 6:31 AM
Title: Re: Economies of Merit
Content:
The transfer of substance idea — wherein one mentally resolves to give away a portion of one's merit to petas, so that it is the petas rather than oneself who enjoy its vipāka — is from the Milindapañha, not the Suttas. Like merit-transference in the Mahayana, it appears to deviate from the classical Buddhist "ownership of kamma" (kammasakatā) doctrine.

On the other hand, the idea of performing some deed of merit and then inviting "petas" (it's uncertain here whether the term means hungry ghosts, one's departed relatives, or hungry ghosts who happen to be one's departed relatives) to come and rejoice in it and thereby gain merit and relief from their sufferings, is from the Tirokuḍḍa Sutta. Here there is no deviation from classical kamma doctrine, for nothing of one's own kamma is given away; rather, one simply provides the petas with an opportunity to do something meritorious themselves.

https://suttacentral.net/en/kp7

By the time of Buddhaghosa the Milindapañha's "transfer of substance" idea seems to have been quietly shelved in all the Theravadin scholastic literature, while the Tirokuḍḍa Sutta's view is upheld as the orthodox one. In Asian folk Buddhist practice, on the other hand, merit transference generally entails a melding of the more optimistic features of each of the two conceptions, effectively allowing people to have the best of both worlds.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 12, 2015 9:46 AM
Title: Re: Mantras
Content:
The ajahn is probably saying 'mantra' because he's talking to an audience who won't know the correct term: parikamma, "preparatory word". A preparatory word is different from a mantra, because the meditator's focus (if she is doing the parikamma practice properly) is upon an idea rather than some audible or mentally imagined sound.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 11, 2015 6:02 PM
Title: Re: Teacher claims to receive teachings from Brahma god
Content:
Here's the one for the Karaṇīyametta Sutta



Ñāṇavīra wrote in one of his letters about those whose approach to the Dhamma involved "tidy-chart-making". But Dr. Ranatunga seems to be an example of a decidedly untidy chart-maker.  

Nonetheless, I've downloaded his talk on the Metta Sutta and will be listening to it tomorrow, if only in the hope of making sense of his chart.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 11, 2015 5:39 PM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
No. If you're standing up, the only way you could cause offence with your feet would be by raising one foot at least ninety degrees so that its sole was pointing at the person you intended to insult. Then to make your contempt unambiguous you would jiggle your foot back and forth. In the slum districts of Bangkok you'll sometimes see drunken Thai men doing this when they're squaring up for a fight. It's similar to English football hooligans tapping the bottom of their chins and saying, "Come on then, if you think you're hard enough!" Only it's more aggressive than that, because once somebody has pointed the soles of his feet at a Thai man, he will feel that he can't back down from a fight without serious loss of face.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 11, 2015 3:53 PM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
Right.

If you sat with your knees drawn up, feet flat on the floor and toes pointing forward toward the speaker, it would be considered an ungainly posture but probably no one would say anything. But if you then stretched your legs out so that your soles of your feet were pointing forward, then it's likely that Thais would start chuntering among themselves and someone might request you to sit properly.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 11, 2015 9:01 AM
Title: Re: Monastic life and remorse?
Content:
How does guilt differ from remorse?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:08 PM
Title: Re: A.A.B...
Content:
It’s not very likely as your query comes about three decades too late. In many western Buddhist circles (and especially British ones) up to the early 1980’s you wouldn’t have had any trouble finding someone with whom to have an informed discussion about Bailey or Besant or Blavatsky or even https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hermione_and_Her_Little_Group_of_Serious_Thinkers/How_the_Swami_Happened_to_Have_Seven_Wives. 

That was a time when the Buddhist scene in Britain (and to some extent in Canada, Australia and New Zealand) was still heavily under the influence of the Theosophy-centric Buddhist popularizer Christmas Humphreys. But then in 1983 Humphreys passed away and to all intents and purposes theosophicised Buddhism died with him. I suppose we just weren’t ethereal enough for it.

It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.
— Louis MacNeice


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 10, 2015 8:51 AM
Title: Re: A.A.B...
Content:
Indeed. I can scarcely imagine how I'd have managed without that copy of Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle (in a special large-print edition for the visually impaired) that served me for two years as a sloping desk-book.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 9, 2015 10:13 PM
Title: Re: Recommended Sutta Nipata book?
Content:
Ven. Ānandajoti has produced a very fine translation of the Suttanipāta's Parāyanavagga:

http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Texts-and-Translations/Parayanavagga/index.htm


For the other four vaggas see K.R. Norman's Group of Discourses, but make sure it's the second (revised) edition published in 2001, not the earlier one entitled The Rhinoceros Horn.

http://store.pariyatti.org/Group-of-Discourses-Sutta-Nipata_p_2285.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 9, 2015 9:45 PM
Title: Re: A.A.B...
Content:
I never read any of the Alice Bailey books but I do recall once having an encounter with them. 

I was sixteen and had just left home and moved into a rented bedsit in Nottingham. It happened that the previous tenant had left behind his large Alice Bailey collection. After a quick perusal I determined there was nothing in them to interest me, and so I put them away into storage in case their owner should come back to claim them. Later, however, it happened, that I did discover a use for one of the books in the collection. It was the very same use that a century earlier Samuel Butler had found for John Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians of Various Denominations, as whimsically described by him in http://www.authorama.com/essays-on-life-art-and-science-2.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 9, 2015 9:13 PM
Title: Re: Relationship between 1st to 4th jhana and immaterial state
Content:
It's nice to see the Theravada position being presented for once in the Theravada Meditation Forum.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 11:41 PM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
It would be better if Ven. Gavesako answers as my information about this is not up-to-date. At WPN my understanding is that the policy changes from one abbot to the next. I believe cushions are in common use in Ajahn Chah wats in the west but I haven't seen it in Thailand yet.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 10:49 PM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
A session — as I'm using the word here — is simply the time it takes for a posture to become so unbearable that you feel obliged to change it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 8:41 PM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
In some wats the monks are allowed to stand up and do walking meditation if they want. In others they have to sit all night but those who find this difficult will alternate different sitting postures; e.g., one session in the Burmese posture followed by a session in the phap-phiap ("polite posture") with the left leg behind, followed by phap-phiap with the right leg behind; or a session in the half-lotus with the left foot on the right thigh followed by a session with the right foot on the left thigh.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 7:34 PM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
In sitting meditation all three of those are used in Thailand, though with Burmese and half-lotus being the more common.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 7:22 PM
Title: Re: Hi from Italy
Content:
Welcome to Dhamma Wheel,


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 3:56 PM
Title: Re: Nivarana - the Box of Desires
Content:
I'm afraid I don't know what's available in Sri Lanka. A good one in Thailand is Alezandra Russell’s Chiang Mai-based Urban Light Foundation: “... a grassroots organization dedicated to rebuilding, restoring and empowering the lives of boys who are victims of trafficking &amp; exploitation.”

http://www.urban-light.org

https://www.facebook.com/bethelightUL

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 Jun 8, 2015 3:25 PM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
The foot-pointing that Allan Pease is talking about differs in two respects from that being discussed in this thread. Firstly, he is talking about what people do unconsciously and not about deliberately assumed postures. Secondly, by "pointing" he is referring to the directing of the toes of one's feet, not the soles.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 3:09 PM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
No, it can be either leg. In fact many monks who at first can only do it one way will train themselves so that they can do it both ways. This then allows them to shift from one side to another from time to time when they have to sit through some very long talk or ceremony.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 11:49 AM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 6:07 AM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
The people sitting behind you don't count. It's keeping your feet out of sight of what's in front of you — the King, a Buddha statue, a Dhamma teacher, etc. — that makes the posture "polite".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 5:52 AM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
Very unlikely, unless you assumed a positively impolite posture, such as sitting with your legs stretched out in front and the soles of your feet pointing in the direction of the Buddha statue or the speaker.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 5:35 AM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
He has both legs folded back, which is how women do it. Thai males might sit this way in the presence of the king or (in the case of schoolboys) on Honouring Teachers Day. But in Thai temples, the polite posture for men usually looks like this:



nang phab-phiab.jpg (80.93 KiB) Viewed 4318 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 8, 2015 3:59 AM
Title: Re: Which posture should ordained monks sit in?
Content:
It varies. The typical pattern regarding the enforcement of what I've described above would be:

Ajahn Chah's wats in Thailand: very strict. If you can't conform, then you're not welcome.

Dhammayutt forest wats in Thailand and Ajahn Chah's wats in the West: some leeway given to monks with physical handicaps.

Thai town and village wats, Mahanikaya forest wats other than Ajahn Chah's: no insistence upon sitting in these ways (though it is preferred).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 7:07 PM
Title: Re: Nivarana - the Box of Desires
Content:
By giving to the child himself one probably won't accomplish anything more than the short-term benefit of saving him from getting a beating that day from his master. For the long-term benefit it's a better idea to donate to one of the rescue foundations that will take these children off the street and provide them with an education and vocational training.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 7:01 PM
Title: Re: Happy birthday, Modus Ponens!
Content:
Happy birthday!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 6:59 PM
Title: Re: 16 Stages of insight?
Content:
The cutting off of the fetters occurs at ñāṇa #14, the path moment. In the case of the sakadāgāmin, anāgāmin and arahant the author of the Paṭisambhidāmagga names the fetters concerned, but in the case of the sotāpanna he inexplicbly omits to do so (though he does do so later when discussing knowledge of deliverance).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 4:43 PM
Title: Re: Ananda reprimanded from Buddhist Council
Content:
The charges were arguably minor, since Ānanda hadn't acted with any ill intent, but none of them was false.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 4:09 PM
Title: Re: 16 Stages of insight?
Content:
A person who has reached the noble path and fruition for the first time.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 3:43 PM
Title: Re: Nivarana - the Box of Desires
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 10:39 AM
Title: Re: Theravada and Zen differences?
Content:
The Tibetans’ historical view was not that Hinayana=Theravada. Historically most Tibetans (excepting those living in close proximity to Burma and in the habit of trading there) had no consciousness that the Theravada even existed. The more scholarly Tibetan monks, in the course of studying shastras and chronicles, would no doubt have occasionally come across mention of an obscure Indian Hinayana school which went by the name “Vibhajyavāda”. But this Vibhajyavāda would probably have been of only scant interest to them. After all, the only reason it got into the Tibetan history books was because of its members’ obduracy in denying that there was an intermediate state between death and rebirth. The notion that there might be several Asian countries inhabited by tens of millions of these “Vibhajyavādins” would never have crossed the Tibetans’ minds. After the Chinese invasion when refugees began fleeing the country, many were quite astonished to make this discovery.

So what’s this “Hinayana=Theravada” all about? It’s simply a new-fangled convention that has arisen in the last decade or two among the Tibetans in exile (or at least the more cosmopolitan of them) and their English-language translators. Many of these people have taken to using the name “Theravada” in place of “Hinayana” in an effort to be diplomatic in the ecumenical sphere. Diplomacy should not, however, blind us to the wholly ahistorical character of this equation.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 7:06 AM
Title: Re: Theravada and Zen differences?
Content:
No, it doesn't. As already stated, apart from the handful of "Mahāsūtras" the Tibetan texts do not include anything from the Pali Canon. At one point in Tibetan history, some eminence (Longchenpa, if I remember right) made the decision that the Āgama/Nikāya sutras of early Buddhism would not be translated into Tibetan. And so in Tibetan monasteries, the study of what they call Hinayana was always via treatises outlining the scholastic systems of the Vaibhasika and Sautrantika schools. These treatises contain quotations from the Āgama sūtras of the Sarvastivāda school and possibly other early schools. These isolated fragments of sutras, usually quoted for some polemical purpose by Vasubandhu, Kamalasila, etc., were historically the Tibetans' sole means of exposure to early Buddhist teaching.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 4:36 AM
Title: Re: Theravada and Zen differences?
Content:
Not really. The Dalai Lama is alluding not specifically to the Pali canon but to similar teachings preserved by pre-Mahayana schools in general:
After the Buddha’s passing, a record of what he said was maintained as an oral tradition. Those who heard the teachings would periodically meet with others for communal recitations of what they had heard and memorized. In due course, these recitations from memory were written down, laying the basis for all subsequent Buddhist literature. The Pāli Canon is one of the earliest of these written records and the only complete early version that has survived intact. Within the Pāli Canon, the texts known as the Nikāyas have the special value of being a single cohesive collection of the Buddha’s teachings in his own words. These teachings cover a wide range of topics; they deal not only with renunciation and liberation, but also with the proper relations between husbands and wives, the management of the household, and the way countries should be governed. They explain the path of spiritual development—from generosity and ethics, through mind training and the realization of wisdom, all the way up to the attainment of liberation.
(from the foreward to In the Buddha's Words)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 7, 2015 4:21 AM
Title: Re: Theravada and Zen differences?
Content:
Few, if any, Tibetans would have known anything about the Pali canon. Traditionally a Tibetan's knowledge of pre-Mahayana Buddhist texts would come from quotations of passages from them in works like Vasubandhu's auto-commentary to his Abhidharmakosa. Unlike the Chinese Canon, the Tibetan one does not contain any of the Nikāyas/Āgamas. The only Pali texts translated into Tibetan were the so-called Mahāsūtras — a small collection of discourses whose names all begin with Mahā-, such as the Mahāsuññatāsutta. But even these seem to have been used primarily as parittas rather than teaching sources. (See Peter Skilling's article Zombies and Half-Zombies: Mahāsūtras and Other Protective Measures, Journal of the Pali Text Society, Vol. XXIX, 2007).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 6, 2015 3:36 PM
Title: Re: Possibility of Stream Entry
Content:
Nine stages are from the Suttas, and the other seven (marked below with an asterisk) from the Atthakathās. 

1. Nāmarūpapariccheda — defining nāma and rūpa *
2. Paccayapariggaha — discerning conditionality *
3. Sammasana — comprehending the three characteristics
4. Udayabbaya — rise and fall
5. Bhaṅga — dissolution
6. Bhaya * — fear
7. Ādīnava — danger
8. Nibbidā — disenchantment *
9. Muñcitukamyatā — desire for deliverance *
10. Paṭisaṅkhā — reflection *
11. Saṅkhārupekkhā — equanimity regarding formations
12. Anuloma — conformity *
13. Gotrabhū — change of lineage
14. Magga — path
15. Phala — fruition
16. Paccavekkhaṇa — reviewing


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 6, 2015 2:47 PM
Title: Re: Translation
Content:
Ayaṃ kāyo anicco dukkho anattā.

or:

Idaṃ rūpaṃ aniccaṃ dukkhaṃ anattā.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 6, 2015 2:25 PM
Title: Re: It Needs Saying Buddhism is not a philosophy, science, psychotherapy, or culture. It is a religion. David Brazier
Content:
Or "Chicken Little" or "Henny-Penny" or the timid hare of the Duddubha Jātaka — for those of you from other parts of the world.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type2033.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 6, 2015 2:19 PM
Title: Re: It Needs Saying Buddhism is not a philosophy, science, psychotherapy, or culture. It is a religion. David Brazier
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 6, 2015 4:47 AM
Title: Re: Happy birthday venerable Dhammanando!
Content:
Thanks everyone.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 5, 2015 6:54 AM
Title: Re: Possibility of Stream Entry
Content:
There are accounts of bhikkhus who attained the noble paths and fruitions while on almsround, just as the food was being ladled into their bowls. On such an occasion, if the volition to give arose in the donor at the same time as the monk’s attainment of the path, then the almsfood was given to a path-attainer. If the volition arose in or after the next moment, then the gift was to a fruition-attainer.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 4, 2015 4:27 PM
Title: Re: Protesters call on Dalai Lama to end 'persecution of Shugden Buddhists'
Content:
It has to do with one of the NKT’s most oft-iterated demands over the years: that the Dalai Lama should meet Kelsang Gyatso in a public debate on the question of what sort of a creature Dorje Shugden is (i.e., an evil spirit or a Dharma-protecting wisdom Buddha). He refuses to do this and the reasons given by his supporters are basically the same as those given by Richard Dawkins for refusing to debate the evangelist Ray Comfort.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 3, 2015 10:02 PM
Title: Re: Did Buddha Teach Mantra Meditation?
Content:
You're probably thinking of the Huṃhuṅka Sutta, Ud. 3.

But the brahmin's problem is that he's a prideful jerk and not that he recites mantras. Indeed it's not even certain that he does recite mantras — this is just one opinion on what huṃhuṃ might mean.

Masefield's translation:


 ./download/file.php?id=2611
(100.76 KiB) Downloaded 77 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 3, 2015 6:18 PM
Title: Re: Why did Seniya wait four years for going forth?
Content:
The same narrative occurs also in the aftermath of the conversions of Kassapa the Naked Ascetic (DN.i.176; SN.ii.21), and the four wanderers: Subhadda (DN.ii.152), Vacchagotta (MN.i.494), Māgandiya (MN.i.512), and Sabhiya (Sn.102).

The shared features, it seems, is that all of these men held exceptionally stupid wrong views prior to their conversion, yet all became arahants shortly afterwards.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 3, 2015 6:09 AM
Title: Re: Thanissaro has not read the Abhidhamma??
Content:
I would prefer to say that the Buddha did, in a manner of speaking, provide his own systematization of his teaching, but that this was largely suggestive and couched in the form of statements of the Dhamma in brief (e.g. the elephant’s footprint simile) whereas the commentators’ systematization is explicit and expounded in detail.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 2, 2015 7:48 PM
Title: Re: Hi from poland
Content:
Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 1, 2015 5:32 PM
Title: Re: Thanissaro has not read the Abhidhamma??
Content:
I would imagine the ajahn means that he hasn't read the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, which for a Thai-trained forest monk wouldn't really be at all surprising. In Thailand even most Abhidhamma scholars haven't read all of the third Basket. For example, the most widely followed Abhidhamma syllabus in Thailand, though requiring six and a half years of study, only covers five of the seven books of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, omitting the Puggalapaññatti and Kathāvatthu.

In the Thai forest tradition, the reading of a typical Thai monk who's been ordained for ten rains is likely to consist of the Nak Tham textbooks (compiled by a Thai prince over a century ago and imparting a rudimentary knowledge of Dhamma, Vinaya, Buddhist history, Thai Buddhist ceremonies, and essay/sermon composition), and books of Dhamma talks by forest ajahns. He is unlikely to have read a single book of the Tipiṭaka.

As for a typical western monk in this tradition, by the time he gets to ten rains he will probably have read the Vinaya Piṭaka, two or three Nikāyas from the Sutta Piṭaka, the Visuddhimagga, a couple of hundred novels, and a selection of the currently fashionable non-Theravadin spiritual books (which ones varying from one decade to the next: it used to be pop Zen and Carlos Castaneda; then it was Nisargadatta and Frithjof Schuon; the last I heard it was Dzogchen and Harry Potter).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 31, 2015 8:29 PM
Title: Re: Hi (again)
Content:
No soporto Twitter ni Instagram. Yo utilizo Facebook principalmente para estar en contacto con familiares y amigos más que para el Dhamma. Algunas veces brindo consejo por Skype.

There! And you don't even have to translate it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 31, 2015 8:48 AM
Title: Re: The obligatory Dhamma themed movie thread
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 30, 2015 5:19 PM
Title: Re: Hello, what is this?
Content:
Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.

 

I think your query is one that would best be put to a Buddhist teacher in the real world who has spent some time getting to know you. Online diagnoses and meditation advice aren't very reliable.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 30, 2015 4:46 PM
Title: Re: Upasakajanalankara
Content:
Ven. Pesala's link to the Pali text is now dead. Here's a new one:

http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/2_pali/6_suanco/upasak_u.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 30, 2015 11:03 AM
Title: Re: Possibility of Stream Entry
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 30, 2015 1:52 AM
Title: Re: Possibility of Stream Entry
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 30, 2015 1:31 AM
Title: Re: Antidotes/Practices for Restlessness-Worry
Content:
There's some good advice in the section on the hindrances in Buddhaghosa's commentary to the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html#agitation


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 30, 2015 12:57 AM
Title: Re: Eyes downcast...
Content:
I think you may have an inaccurate idea of what's being described here. The Buddha isn't walking with his head at a 90 degree angle like a tortoise. His head is just slightly tilted forward and his eyes are focussed on the ground a plough's length in front.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 30, 2015 12:38 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Though you're entitled to your opinion, let me draw your attention to the fact that it is actually a male attitude and foible that is being mocked, not a female one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 11:50 PM
Title: Re: Monk that had sexual intercourse?
Content:
Some Chinese Vinaya scholars take the phrase "without having declared his weakness" as indicating that if a monk did declare in advance that he was too akratic to follow the rule properly, then he would be absolved if he went and broke it and was then later remorseful about it.

Theravadin Vinaya scholars disagree, for they understand the two phrases "without having renounced the training" and "without having declared his weakness" as being synonyms, both of which mean "without having disrobed".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 10:10 PM
Title: Re: Possibility of Stream Entry
Content:
I don't doubt that there are still stream-enterers. 

As for modern claims to the effect that the Theravada went through a prolonged dark age where nobody ever attained anything or even believed that you could attain anything, I'm inclined to be sceptical about them. Were this really the case, then we should expect the Maitreya devotional cults that sprang up from time to time in Theravadin countries to have proven just as popular and durable as the devotional cults of mappō-preoccupied Mahayanists. As it is, the Theravadin Maitreya cults were more or less damp squibs. In contrast with Mahayanism's cults of Amitabha or Kuan Yin or of the Lotus Sutra, Theravadin Maitreya cults were ephemeral affairs, seldom lasting for more than half a century, never gaining mass appeal (not even when the cult had royal sponsorship, and not even when it was the king himself who was claiming to be Maitreya, as happened once in Burma and twice in Siam), and never spreading beyond the borders of the country where they began. What this points to is a state of affairs where Theravada Buddhists had not generally fallen into despair about the Buddha's teaching's capacity for delivering the goods.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 8:29 PM
Title: Re: Greetings.
Content:
Welcome.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 6:57 PM
Title: Re: Possibility of Stream Entry
Content:
That buddhahood is the outcome of many kalpas of developing the ten perfections comes from the Jātaka, Cariyāpiṭaka and Buddhavaṃsa, and their commentaries.

That arahantship and paccekabuddhahood also require such a preparation (though not for as many kalpas as full buddhahood) comes from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apad%C4%81na and its commentary.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 6:47 PM
Title: Re: If it is okay?
Content:
Does your friend live in Nepal too? If so, and if he's in or near Kathmandu, I suggest he might get in touch with my old friend and teacher Bhikshu Jnanapurnik, a Burmese-trained Nepali monk and abbot of the Vishwa Shanti Vihara.

http://www.geocities.jp/viswa_shanti_vihar/index.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 5:51 PM
Title: Re: A Review of Ven. Ñānavīra's "Notes on Dhamma"
Content:
Hi SDC,

It’s so many years since I read Paramattha Sacca that I don’t now recall whether Ñāṇavīra’s reading of the sutta is one that depends on his cack-handed translation of it or one that holds good in spite of his translation. So perhaps it’s better if I defer any comment until you’ve posted the next sections.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 12:08 PM
Title: Re: SN 6.15: Parinibbana Sutta — Total Unbinding
Content:
No.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 12:07 PM
Title: Re: SN 6.15: Parinibbana Sutta — Total Unbinding
Content:
What do you mean "WE", white man?  

Here in the north of Thailand —where I believe you too are living— I am constantly hearing about living monks and mae chees who supposedly possess this or that supernormal power. And of the powers mentioned, cetopariyañāṇa / mind-reading seems to be the commonest. Whether there's any truth to these rumours is of course another story. Personally I just don't feel interested enough to go and pay any of these alleged magical yogis a visit to check them out, but you could always do so if you wanted. Though if you did it might be a good idea to take someone like James Randi with you. If they're anything like the charlatan sadhus of India, they'll probably have an impressive repertoire of conjuring tricks that won't be easy to see through if you're not in the business.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 29, 2015 2:48 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
I haven't time now, but another day I'll post the passages relevant to it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 10:08 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
A fastidious concern with accuracy. If someone asks about what the Buddha taught on a matter of right living, I wish to present what he taught, as well as this can possibly be construed. I am not interested in any trendy modern conceits as to what he ought to have taught.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 9:53 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
So what? The moral variegation among human beings is as strong an inductive case as one could wish for against the silly notion that all of us in our hearts know what's right.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 8:53 PM
Title: Re: SN 6.15: Parinibbana Sutta — Total Unbinding
Content:
Ven. Ānanda is narrating, but Ven. Anuruddha, a mind-reading adept, is giving him the information about the Buddha's mind states.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 8:34 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Not just pre-BC, but throughout its history Buddhism has flourished in societies where polygyny (and in Tibet polyandry) was tolerated and commonly practised. In some Buddhist countries this remains the case. In Thailand, for example, a form of de facto polygyny is still very common among the urban middle-class.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 8:05 PM
Title: Re: When Aj Chah Don't Want to Talk
Content:
It's a story told by Paul Breiter (ex-Bhikkhu Varapañño). You'll find it in the book of recollections by Ajahn Chah's western disciples and perhaps also in Breiter's own book of memoirs, whose title I've forgotten.


http://forestsanghapublications.org/assets/book/Recollections_of_Ajahn_Chah_-_Various_Authors.pdf


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 7:53 PM
Title: Re: Translation of a sentence from English to Pali
Content:
It should be asse. The horses are the "direct object" — the entity directly acted upon by the verb, rather than just indirectly affected by it. That being so, the accusative ending is required.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 5:55 PM
Title: Re: The order of words
Content:
The word order is fine, but:

sahāyakena saha


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 5:13 PM
Title: Re: Marek Sullivan on Sam Harris
Content:
No problem. Dealing with my critics in the "Prostitution and Third Precept" thread I've become so thick-skinned that I didn't even notice that your post might be confrontational.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 5:09 PM
Title: Re: Marek Sullivan on Sam Harris
Content:
Although Gethin is expounding the commentarial Abhidhamma point of view, I believe all of the key moral points that he makes can be sourced in the Suttas and Vinaya.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 4:34 PM
Title: Re: If it is okay?
Content:
The question doesn't appear to make any sense. Is "Theravada meditation" a typo for "Zen meditation" ? 

If it is, and if your friend doesn't like doing it, then why doesn't he just stop?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 4:25 PM
Title: Re: When to use Saddhiṃ/saha?
Content:
The sentence would be grammatically sound, but it would not have the same meaning. It would no longer mean that the farmer was using the saw as a tool, but that the saw had come alive — like the broom in The Sorceror's Apprentice — and was itself engaged in sawing.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 10:55 AM
Title: Re: A Review of Ven. Ñānavīra's "Notes on Dhamma"
Content:
Bad translation.

"By whom" correctly translates kena, but the three occurences of kuvaṃ mean "where", not "who."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 28, 2015 12:43 AM
Title: Re: Marek Sullivan on Sam Harris
Content:
Well, maybe. To tell the truth, I only skimmed through the political stuff at the beginning of the article. It was the middle and the end — the critique of Harris via Gethin's casuistry — that mostly interested me.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 11:30 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Sorry, it's actually the Uttarā-upāsikāvatthu — the story that accompanies verse 223. The other reference is the story of the prostitute but not of the lady who hired her.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 11:12 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 10:39 PM
Title: Re: Ven. Sāriputta's antidotes to sloth-torpor/dullness-drowsiness
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 9:20 PM
Title: Marek Sullivan on Sam Harris
Content:
All Good Intentions: But does Sam Harris have what it takes to be Buddhist?

by Marek Sullivan

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2015/05/all-good-intentions-but-does-sam-harris-have-what-it-takes-to-be-buddhist.html
Marek is a PhD candidate in Theology at the University of Oxford (Balliol) with a research background in Buddhist philosophy and ethics, particularly Buddhist environmentalism. He has a Master’s in Oriental Studies (also from Oxford), and an BA in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Bristol. While maintaining a strong interest in Buddhist thought, he has recently shifted his focus to the contemporary phenomenon of “New Atheism,” and ways in which it may distort its object of derision — religion — for ideological purposes.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 6:43 PM
Title: Re: Who is the Buddha in Three refuges?
Content:
It's an excellent article by Nyanaponika, but I think you've misunderstood the terms lokiya and lokuttara. These don't apply to the refuges but rather to the act of going for refuge. 

The mundane going for refuge is when a worldling makes his faith and discipleship known, whether by recitation or prostration or asking a Buddhist teacher for a meditation subject. The supramundane refuge-going is a term for the attainment of the noble fruitions, starting with stream-entry. See pages 3-6 of your link.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 4:29 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 4:12 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Since some Buddhists love going with prostitutes and do so with no moral qualms whatever, while other Buddhists (mainly American ones, it seems) gag at the very thought of it, clearly we don’t have any kind of universal moral law engraved on our hearts. Your suggestion to the contrary seems as incongruous in a Buddhist context as Lyndon's Christian manqué attempt to sacralize sex and the third precept.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 12:32 PM
Title: Re: Ven. Sāriputta's antidotes to sloth-torpor/dullness-drowsiness
Content:
TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

* Pacalāyamāno nisinno hoti. Just below, Mp glosses the Buddha’s question, “Pacalāyasi no?” with “Niddāyasi nu” (“Are you falling asleep?”). Mp: “While depending on the village for alms, Moggallāna had been practicing meditation in the grove. For seven days he had energetically practiced walking meditation and the effort fatigued him. Thus he was dozing off [in the seat] at the end of the walkway.”

** The following exchange is also at MN 37.2–3, I 251–52, but with Sakka as the inquirer. Mp explains the passage thus: “Nothing (lit., not all things) is worth holding to (sabbe dhammā nālaṃ abhinivesāya): here, ‘all things’ (sabbe dhammā) are the five aggregates, the twelve sense bases, and the eighteen elements. These are not worth holding to by way of craving and views. Why not? Because they do not exist in the way they are held to. They are held to be permanent, pleasurable, and self, but they turn out to be impermanent, suffering, and non-self. Therefore they are not worth holding to. One directly knows them by the full understanding of the known (ñātapariññāya abhijānāti) as impermanent, suffering, and non-self. One fully understands them in the same way by the full understanding of scrutinization (tīraṇapariññāya parijānāti).” The “all things” in my translation from Mp relates to the “nothing” of the sutta, since the Pāli phrase of the sutta is a negation of sabbe dhammā (“not all things”). On the three kinds of full understanding (pariññā), see Vism 606,18–607,23, Ppn 20.3–6.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 12:24 PM
Title: Re: Ven. Sāriputta's antidotes to sloth-torpor/dullness-drowsiness
Content:
It was actually the Buddha advising a sleepy Moggallāna.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an07/an07.058.than.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 11:36 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
There isn't any contradiction at all between Bhikkhu Bodhi's quoted words and mine.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 9:02 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
The amount of moral variation to be found within each of these classes makes a meaningful comparison impossible.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 7:14 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
No sex is in the spirit of Dhamma.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 7:09 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
A specious argument unless you would apply the same to, say, garbage-collecting (on the grounds that its workers are exposed to nasty odours), nursing (it's stressful), assembly-line work (it exposes employees to stultifying monotony), farming (hundreds killed every years by over-turned tractors), and any and every other occupation that has some accompanying hazard or unpleasantness.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 7:00 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
I think your "not only" is misplaced. In the case of saparidaṇḍā women (i.e., those whose use entails punishment) it is because hiring them for sex breaks the law of the land that it transgresses the third precept.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 27, 2015 2:06 AM
Title: Re: Venerable who teaches mindfulness of postures
Content:
Perhaps Achan Maha Bunchu, a teacher of Achan Naeb's method.

http://dhammagarden.jimdo.com/the-residents/


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 26, 2015 11:52 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Of course it doesn't. But with rape being primarily an act of violence rather than a sensual enjoyment, it is under the first precept (in its extended application), rather than the third, that it would be proscribed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 26, 2015 11:46 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
If you think this statement amounts to "advocacy", then you must be using the word in some sense that's unfamiliar to me.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 26, 2015 5:58 PM
Title: Re: A Talk by U Tejaniya at the Wembley Vihāra London
Content:
Thanks for the notice, bhante.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 26, 2015 5:13 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
The scope of the third precept in its kāmesu micchācārā form is sexual intercourse with other human beings. As such it's not concerned with either simple masturbation or with more elaborate forms of masturbation involving the use of corpses, sheep, inflatable dolls, the gaps in a Venetian blind or the holes drilled in heated-up water melons. It's not that these things are positively permitted under the third precept, but that the precept has nothing to do with them.

That being so, Mr Man's questions are as senseless and irrelevant as if he had asked whether the third precept allows one to park on double yellow lines or to take part in dwarf-throwing contests.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 26, 2015 3:04 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
I think my response to your question about homosexuality in the https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=22572&start=40#p324408 can be applied mutatis mutandis to your latest questions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 26, 2015 12:51 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Or he might define the third precept as forbidding homosexual acts or masturbation or having sex in the same room as a Buddha statue without first covering the statue’s head with a piece of cloth. It will depend on where he comes from, but in all cases what he will be telling you is not the Buddha’s teaching but merely how sexual morality is traditionally conceived in his culture.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 26, 2015 6:51 AM
Title: Re: Joke!!!
Content:
A guided meditation from the Daleks

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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 25, 2015 11:08 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Any Buddhist scholar who's versed in the Pali texts will confirm what I've said, including the writer at Buddhanet whom you've linked to, though without apparently understanding what he's saying.

In popular Buddhist preaching, of course, it's not a point that's much stressed, for when the subject of prostitution comes up in a typical sermon, the emphasis will usually be upon its being a species of womanizing and therefore something that's liable to be deleterious to wealth and domestic felicity.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 25, 2015 10:59 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Prostitutes are not included in any of the lists of persons with whom sex would be a violation of the third precept. Therefore sex with them does not violate the third precept, unless the woman also happens to be in one of the categories which are prohibited (e.g., a married woman who is engaging in prostitution). 

If a Buddhist isn't breaking the third precept then his sex-life isn't at odds with the sammā-kammanta of the eightfold path.

For further discussion of the matter, see the https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=22572 thread.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 25, 2015 10:22 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
You still haven’t properly defined your terms. Perhaps the best course is for me to offer a catechetical summary of my views and you can decide for yourself into which of your semantically murky pigeonholes you wish to place me...


Q. Is sex with a prostitute akusala?
A. Yes, but only in the sense that all sex is akusala.

Q. Is sex with a prostitute a violation of the third precept?
A. No.

Q. Do the Pali texts offer any Buddhist grounds for objecting to prostitution?
A. Yes. It is a species of womanizing (itthidhutta) and all womanizing is treated as imprudent insofar as it tends to result in loss of wealth.

Q. Do the prostitution-related evils mentioned by several posters in this thread amount to a Buddhist objection to prostitution?
A. No. Since analogous evils can readily be found in sexual relationships of a kind that these posters would not judge morally blameworthy, their objections are specious.

Q. Should prostitution be outlawed?
A. No. Consenting adults should be free to enter into whatever contractual relationship they like regarding the enjoyment of each other’s bodies, including paid-for sex. The role of the state here, as in any other contractual relationship, should not go beyond that of preventing coercion, fraud or violence.


Now it seems to me that my answers to the first four questions ought not to be a matter of argument for any Buddhists whose moral outlook is grounded in the Pali texts. As for my answer to the fifth, this is just my personal opinion and I readily concede that some Buddhists may in good conscience hold to a non-libertarian position.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 25, 2015 10:20 AM
Title: Re: The 3 Conceits
Content:
I think the flag that the Niddesa author disapproves of is a metaphorical one. As to whether Buddhism should be represented by that famous flag designed by Col. Olcott, or by some other flag, or by no flag at all, for me this is a matter of indifference.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 25, 2015 1:10 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
What do you mean by “anti-prostitution” ?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 25, 2015 12:42 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
I stated that the two acts were essentially similar in their ephemerality and casualness, which is to say, my comparison was confined to the factors of duration and significance (or momentousness).

Now as for the “fun” factor, my omission of this was not because I consider this difference to be a slight one. But nor do I agree with you that it’s a huge one. As I see it, the difference in the two cases is simply an incommensurable one. The female swingers enjoying a one-night stand and the sex-workers servicing their clients obtain two entirely different kinds of “fun” that cannot really be compared. The swingers’ fun is that of bodily pleasure. The sex-workers’ (setting aside those of them who get aroused by having sex with strangers) is the pleasure that they get from having exchanged that which they valued less (their time) for that which they valued more (their client’s money). Their “fun”, in other words, consists in the mental satisfaction generated by contemplation of a successfully concluded free-market transaction that they deem to have been favourable to their interests.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 24, 2015 10:44 AM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi and Buddhist leaders convene at White House
Content:
Do you mean to suggest that the way of classifying the Buddha's teachings in terms of three kinds of benefit might be unsound if it were known to have been devised by a commentator fitting this description?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 24, 2015 8:03 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Possibly, though the problem with this theory is that the sort of Buddhists who get apoplectic, or at least voice misgivings, when they hear me expressing a generally accepting view of prostitution are in most cases socially liberal enough that they don’t have any problem with people going into singles bars looking for a one-night stand. Now in the traditional Christian view, a one-night stand would be classed under “the sin of fornication” no less than prostitution would. Yet in its casualness and ephemerality a one-night stand is essentially the same as sex with a prostitute, the former being differentiated solely by the absence of payment and the fact that the woman is seldom subject to any economic duress.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 24, 2015 1:16 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Your observations don't contradict the part of my post that you quoted. Nor would they contradict the part that you didn't quote ("Ceteris paribus, having sex with a prostitute is no more unskilful than having sex with one’s wife") unless one disregarded the ceteris paribus ("other things being equal") qualification.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 23, 2015 9:54 PM
Title: Re: Bikkhu Bodhi and Buddhist leaders convene at White House
Content:
This is the thread in which Ven. Bodhi's letter to Ben was published, but it isn't the thread that he refers to in his letter. The latter, "New Bhikkhu Bodhi Interview", is here:

https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=9670


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 23, 2015 7:10 AM
Title: Re: Breach of the no stealing precept?
Content:
Or perhaps the veggie thief saw that they were spec-taters — potatoes with their eyes peeled.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 23, 2015 3:55 AM
Title: Re: Breach of the no stealing precept?
Content:
There's not enough data to give an answer — only you can know whether you picked up the vegetables with thieving intent.

Out of curiosity, why did your acquaintance throw them on the floor?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 22, 2015 9:31 PM
Title: Re: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Content:
Olēka — the awareness of how few days are memorable.


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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 22, 2015 9:08 PM
Title: Re: Which Monk was this....?
Content:
I think there've been quite a few Theravadin monks who started out with either Zen training or just an interest in Zen, but if his name was mentioned here then it would most likely have been Ajahn Sumedho. All the others who come to mind have disrobed now: Patrick Kearney, Paul Breiter, Patrick Lanaghan, etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 22, 2015 12:29 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
There is no kind of sex that is entirely free of unskill, for all sex involves lust and reinforces the tendency to lust. Observance of the third precept sets a limit on the degree of unskill. By observing it one ensures that one’s sex life is not disruptive of family life (one’s own or others’) or social harmony.

As for prostitution, I really don’t understand why so many western Buddhists have this idée fixe about there being something inordinately evil in a man’s paying a woman to have sex with him. Ceteris paribus, having sex with a prostitute is no more unskilful than having sex with one’s wife. In fact in some respects it might even be less unskilful. For example there’s far less deceit and hypocrisy involved in it. Unlike sex with one’s wife, after sex with a prostitute a man can just get up, take a shower and then go read a book or meditate or something. He doesn’t have to waste an hour lying in bed reluctantly feigning post-coital affection.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 22, 2015 9:08 AM
Title: Re: A Review of Ven. Ñānavīra's "Notes on Dhamma"
Content:
Even though rūpakkhandha is one of the things that the puthujjana may take as self?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 22, 2015 6:49 AM
Title: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Content:
http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/

John Koenig's wonderful neologisms, including...
occhiolism
n. the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.

nodus tollens
n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.

dead reckoning
n. to find yourself bothered by someone’s death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 22, 2015 6:00 AM
Title: Re: A Review of Ven. Ñānavīra's "Notes on Dhamma"
Content:
Not that I can see.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 21, 2015 7:56 PM
Title: Re: A Review of Ven. Ñānavīra's "Notes on Dhamma"
Content:
That's true with regard to the parts of the Tipiṭaka treated as authoritative by Ñāṇavīra and his followers. But elsewhere one will meet with it: once in the Paṭisambhidāmagga, several times in the Milindapañha and numerous times in the Kathāvatthu.

Pañcakkhandhe saṅkhatato passanto anulomikaṃ khantiṃ paṭilabhati. Pañcannaṃ khandhānaṃ nirodho asaṅkhataṃ nibbānanti passanto sammattaniyāmaṃ okkamati.
(Paṭisam. ii. 240-1)

“Seeing the five aggregates as composed, he obtains acquiescence in conformity. Seeing how the cessation of the five aggregates is nibbāna, which is uncomposed, he enters into the certainty of rightness.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 21, 2015 3:05 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
Hi Steve,

As best I can tell, what you’re saying doesn’t dissent from what I said. My point, to put it another way, was simply that the third precept taken in the wholly renunciate form, abrahmacariyā veramaṇī, is a higher good, while that taken in the ameliorative form, kāmesu micchācārā veramaṇī, is a lower good. The observance of the former cuts off all kammas that provide fuel or reinforcement to sexual desire. The observance of the latter cuts off grossly harmful sexual kammas that lead to remorse in this life and bad destinations in future lives.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 21, 2015 9:28 AM
Title: Re: The 3 Conceits
Content:
These are certainly included, but māna is a lot broader than just these.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 20, 2015 12:46 PM
Title: Re: Walking out of a burning house
Content:
Because the touch of fire on one's skin is evil.

Then the needle-haired yakkha Sūciloma went up to the Blessed One and pressed his body against him. Then the Blessed One drew away from him.

Then the yakkha Sūciloma said to the Blessed One: “You are afraid of me, ascetic.”

“I am not afraid of you, sir, nevertheless your touch is evil (te sapphasso pāpako).”
(Sūciloma Sutta. K.R. Norman tr.)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 20, 2015 10:39 AM
Title: Re: Ordination questions
Content:
Nobody is likely to insist that you learn Thai, but it would be very inadvisable not to make the effort. When you're living as a monk in Thailand, any time a stranger approaches wanting to engage you in conversation, he will almost never address you in English (as he probably would with foreign non-monks), but will simply take it as a given that since you're a monk you must know Thai. I know of a very small number of long-term foreign monks in Thailand who've never bothered to learn the language at all, but they're all rather grumpy fellows who seem to have a very conflict-ridden relationship with the locals.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 20, 2015 9:08 AM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
I think you’ve effectively answered your own question here. The five precepts are not the sīla of a brahmacari renunciate, but rather of a householder furnished with the five strands of sense-pleasure. As such they are not really concerned with subtle levels. They’re concerned with ensuring that a householder’s unskilful states of mind don’t find expression in grossly unskilful actions of body or speech.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 19, 2015 11:37 PM
Title: Re: Aphids ruining my kale
Content:
Aside from the precept issue, several studies have shown that introducing bishy-barnabies (as ladybirds are called in Norfolk) into one's garden won't actually help much, in large part because they're so awfully picky about which aphids they eat.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150506-the-truth-about-ladybirds

These ladybirds lay their eggs on leaves close to an aphid colony, but they have to be smart about it. Aphids are parthenogenetic, capable of birthing clones without the hassle of sex. This means that an aphid colony can grow extremely fast and may suddenly crash, with a few winged aphids flying off to pastures new.

To be sure that her larvae will enjoy a plentiful diet of aphids, a female ladybird must lay her eggs when the aphid colony is in its early stages. She achieves this by assessing several cues, including the density of the aphids, the honeydew the aphids produce, and the volatile chemicals released by an aphid-infested plant.

"They can also pick up one another's footprint chemicals," says Roy. There are at least 40 different components – mostly alkanes – that larvae leave in their tracks. If a female ladybird gets a whiff of them, she'll usually go somewhere else to lay her eggs.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 19, 2015 10:11 PM
Title: Re: Ordination questions
Content:
Yes, I should think so. You'll learn the rudiments of Vinaya and in the event that you find the Forest Sangha's heavily communal style to be quite insufferable, at least the experience will have resulted in an increase in self-knowledge, which in turn will ensure that your subsequent plans will be on a surer footing.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 19, 2015 8:28 PM
Title: Re: Ordination questions
Content:
The usual entrance into eremitical monasticism, whether sylvan or troglodytic, is to ordain into one of the forest traditions of Thailand or Sri Lanka (Myanmar isn’t a realistic option at present, because of the lack of freedom of movement), and then spend five to ten years with your teacher (or some other teacher approved by him). During this time you might occasionally go on thudong trips with a more experienced monk and thereby learn the woodcraft and other skills that you'll need for living an uncompromisingly homeless life. If this is what you wish to do, the first step would be to travel out to Asia and look for a forest monastery that appeals to you.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 19, 2015 5:48 PM
Title: Re: Sexual misconduct and prostitute
Content:
No, it's sexual misconduct only if the man is already married or if the prostitute already has an appointment with another customer, in which case she falls into the "betrothed" category.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 19, 2015 5:15 PM
Title: Re: A Review of Ven. Ñānavīra's "Notes on Dhamma"
Content:
In the Udāna's second Bodhi Sutta (Ud. 2) the cessation formula is in fact called "paṭiccasamuppādaṃ paṭilomaṃ". No such term is applied to DO presented in reverse in the Nagara Sutta (SN. 12.65). Is there some other place where DO in reverse is called "paṭiccasamuppādaṃ paṭilomaṃ" ?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 19, 2015 3:55 PM
Title: Re: Ordination questions
Content:
I recall some years ago there was an American lay yogi who believed himself to be an ariyan disciple, in possession of all of the jhānas and an impressive complement of supernormal powers. As few people were taking him very seriously as a lay teacher, the man decided he would ordain as a monk and thereby gain himself some more credibility. And so with this in mind he wrote a letter in which he described all his many accomplishments and offered himself as a candidate for ordination. Not being particularly choosy about where he went, he posted a copy of this letter to every Buddhist monastery in the USA and every Yahoo Buddhist e-mail list. The result? Just a thick wad of rejection letters. Not a single monastery even invited him to come for an interview.

With this in mind, I strongly advise that you don't make any mention of your alleged jhānas until you're on very familiar terms with the members of the community where you propose to ordain. In their rejection of the above-mentioned yogi, the monasteries in the USA were simply playing it safe, knowing that most people nowadays who publicly boast of their high attainments are either mentally diseased or are basing their claims upon some grossly inaccurate understanding of the nature of these attainments.

As for how your meditative experience will affect your ordination and training (assuming that some monastery accepts you) this is rather difficult to predict. If you are used to spending a lot of time in intensive samatha-bhāvanā and hope to go on doing the same, then you might find life in a British monastery (especially a Forest Sangha one) highly frustrating, for they are not set up with this sort of thing in mind. They'll probably be far more interested in any skills you may have in the fields of landscape gardening, plumbing, bricklaying spot-welding, etc. than in your aptitude for yogic ascesis. On the other hand, if you're willing to take on the training with an open and flexible mind, then you may get on just fine. One never really knows who'll make it and who won't.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 19, 2015 3:22 PM
Title: Re: The 3 Conceits
Content:
The Niddesa of the Khuddaka Nikāya arranges the mental factor of conceit (māna) into ten classificatory schemes, in ascending order from the onefold conceit to the tenfold conceit. Thus:

The onefold conceit is the mind’s state of being puffed up.

The twofold conceit is conceit consisting in praise of oneself and disparagement of others.

The threefold conceit is the conceit “I am superior,” the conceit “I am equal,” and the conceit “I am inferior.”

The fourfold conceit is conceit generated by gains, generated by fame, generated by praise, and generated by pleasure.

The fivefold conceit is: the conceit generated [by the thought] “I am one who obtains pleasing visual forms,” ... “I am one who obtains pleasing sounds,” ... “I am one who obtains pleasing odours,” ... “I am one who obtains pleasing tastes,” ... “I am one who obtains pleasing tactables.”

The sixfold conceit is the conceit generated by the effective functioning of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.

The sevenfold conceit is: conceit (māna), excessive conceit (atimāna), inordinate conceit (mānātimāna), self-disrespect conceit (omāna), over-estimating conceit (adhimāna), the ‘I am’ conceit (asmimāna), and false conceit (micchāmāna).

The eightfold conceit is conceit generated by gains, self-disrespect conceit generated by losses, conceit generated by fame, self-disrespect conceit generated by ill repute, conceit generated by praise, self-disrespect conceit generated by blame, conceit generated by pleasure, and self-disrespect conceit generated by pain.

The ninefold conceit is: (1) the conceit of a superior person who thinks “I am superior,” (2) the conceit of a superior person who thinks “I am equal,” (3) the conceit of a superior person who thinks “I am inferior,” (4) the conceit of an equal person who thinks “I am superior,” (5) the conceit of an equal person who thinks “I am equal,” (6) the conceit of an equal person who thinks “I am inferior,” (7) the conceit of an inferior person who thinks “I am superior,” (8) the conceit of an inferior person who thinks “I am equal,” (9) the conceit of an inferior person who thinks “I am inferior.” 

The tenfold conceit is conceit generated in a person on account of his birth, or clan, or family, or physical beauty, or wealth, or education, or occupation, or artistry, or knowledge, or learning, or eloquence, or whatever else may be a basis for conceit.

That which is of this type: conceit, being conceited, the state of being conceited, being puffed up, haughtiness, (flying a) flag, assumption, the mind’s longing [to wave] a banner. This is called “conceit”.

— Mahāniddesa (Nidd. i. 80)


You will find more detailed definitions of most of the above terms in the account of conceit in the Book of Analysis. See attached file. If there is still anything unclear feel free to ask.


 ./download/file.php?id=2581
(303.13 KiB) Downloaded 162 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 19, 2015 7:05 AM
Title: Re: The 3 Conceits
Content:
The conceiving by māna, though always akusala, is not always faulty in the sense of being false. As Dave mentioned, māna is presented in a ninefold scheme (in the Niddesa and the Abhidhamma's Vibhanga). This comprises the threefold scheme multiplied by three according to whether you are in fact superior, inferior or equal to the person with whom you are comparing yourself. So although all the conceits are akusala inasmuch as they all arise with attachment-rooted consciousnesses, three involve a correct perception of things ("I am better than he" — on the part of one who is better; "I am equal to him" — on the part of one who is equal; "I am inferior to him" — on the part of one who is inferior), while the other six are grossly delusional ("I am better than he" — on the part of one who is actually equal or inferior, etc.).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 17, 2015 1:30 PM
Title: Re: The World's Religions on Evolution and Environment
Content:
Mostly fairly predictable, I think. The only features that surprised me a little are that the Catholics aren't further to the right on evolution and that the Jehovah's Witnesses should be so freakishly different from everyone else.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 17, 2015 1:19 PM
Title: The World's Religions on Evolution and Environment
Content:
Evolution, the Environment, and Religion

by Josh Rosenau




http://ncse.com/blog/2015/05/evolution-environment-religion-0016359


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 17, 2015 12:25 PM
Title: Re: Hardliner tries to reform Thailand’s Buddhist monks behaving badly
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 15, 2015 11:31 AM
Title: Re: Something Amusing
Content:
Probably not. See, for example, the Ariyapariyesana Sutta’s account of Gotama’s time training with Āḷāra Kālāma. At that point Gotama was “still but an unawakened bodhisatta,” and as such had no dhamma of his own, yet after his mastery of Āḷāra’s oral teachings we find him already using the word samādhi, along with the names of the other five faculties:
“I reflected: ‘it is not Āḷāra Kālāma alone who has saddhā, viriya, sati, samādhi, and paññā. I too have saddhā, viriya, sati, samādhi, and paññā. Suppose I endeavour to realise the Dhamma that Āḷāra Kālāma declares he enters upon and abides in by realising for himself with direct knowledge?’”
That being so, it is more likely that Gotama either learned the word samādhi from Āḷāra Kālāma or that it was a term in fairly general use among the different communities of samaṇas.

As for Ven. Vimalaramsi’s much-iterated claim that the Buddha did invent the word samādhi, this is based on nothing more than his inaccurate reading of Th. Rhys Davids preface to his translation of the Subha Sutta. RD does not in fact state that the Buddha created the word samādhi, but merely that the word isn’t found in any Indian text before the Piṭakas. Such an absence is hardly surprising, for the Indian texts that predate the Piṭakas consist of collections of hymns, sacrificial manuals, and guides to fortune-telling, geomancy and casting spells. One wouldn’t expect to find many words relating to bhāvanā in such texts.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 15, 2015 7:00 AM
Title: Re: watching rise and fall
Content:
In MN 36 it is done in the expectation that it might directly bring about awakening, which is to say, it is done with wrong view. In MN 20 it is done with the more modest aim of temporarily suppressing the hindrances, and even so, only as a last resort when all else has failed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 14, 2015 9:04 AM
Title: Re: Sutta - Best Attitude to Have When Giving
Content:
Perhaps the Dāna Sutta.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an07/an07.049.than.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 13, 2015 11:03 PM
Title: Re: Something Amusing
Content:
This wouldn't be a bad paraphrase of the words of one of the speakers in the Kassaka Sutta. The speaker, unfortunately, is not the Buddha, but Māra appearing in the form of a chownah.

https://suttacentral.net/en/sn4.19


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 13, 2015 9:49 PM
Title: Re: What would like be like for an arhat?
Content:
In English it will probably be found in the commentary to the Mūlapariyāyasutta, unless Bhikkhu Bodhi decided to omit it from his translation. It's also repeated in the Sāratthappakāsinī's commentary to the Nakulapitusutta and in the Saddhammappajjotikā's commentary to the canonical niddesa on the Mogharājasutta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 13, 2015 11:18 AM
Title: Re: The conceit to end conceit
Content:
There are some good thoughts on unselfishness http://www.nanavira.org/letters/post-sotapatti/1962/51-l-14-6-june-1962, though I doubt your friend will like them.

.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 12, 2015 10:44 AM
Title: Re: Dependent Origination as Process (or not).
Content:
There are the Therīgāthā verses of Ambapālī, wherein an arahantī graphically describes her own ageing.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/thig/thig.13.01.than.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 11, 2015 9:04 AM
Title: Re: What is the Meaning of Sankhāra?
Content:
The similes first appear in the Lekha Sutta (AN. i. 283) and the Puggalapaññatti (Pugg. 32), but here they are used to describe the persistence of anger in three kinds of persons. I don't know when they first came to be applied to kammas.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.130.than.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 10, 2015 2:16 PM
Title: Re: Question about pleasure/pain in 8 worldly conditions
Content:
Yes. I think it will be clearer if you read the whole of chapter 1, and then the "Compendium of Feeling" in chapter 3 and the account of sense-door processes in chapter 4.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 10, 2015 11:47 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
I don't think I need take any greater care than I already do. Should any readers be so ignorant as to mistake a militant liberal secularist (and friend of Richard Dawkins) like Pat Condell for a far-right racist, or to suppose that Islam is some kind of racial affiliation, then frankly I don't care a toss whether they understand my words rightly or not. I'm not writing for dimwits like these.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 10, 2015 10:36 AM
Title: Re: Happy birthday, Ben!
Content:
Yes, there are photos of it awake too, but I preferred this dormient devil.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 10, 2015 9:29 AM
Title: Re: Happy birthday, Ben!
Content:
Happy birthday!




devil.jpg (170.08 KiB) Viewed 2189 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 10, 2015 9:17 AM
Title: Re: Question about pleasure/pain in 8 worldly conditions
Content:
The feelings present in the five-sense-door processes would be the same but there would be differences in the ensuing mind-door processes. For example, a sotāpanna wouldn't experience the somanassa and upekkhā feelings that arise with the greed-rooted cittas accompanied by wrong view. An anāgāmin and an arahant would not experience domanassa vedanā (mental unpleasant feeling), for this can only arise with hate-rooted cittas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 10, 2015 9:01 AM
Title: Re: A Christian Buddha
Content:
An article of related interest — Jorge Luis Borges' lecture on Buddhism.

http://www.southerncrossreview.org/48/borges-buddhism.htm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 10, 2015 7:13 AM
Title: Re: Wandering Buddhist Renunciants
Content:
Yes, samaṇa is the Pali form of the Sanskrit śramaṇa. It's usually translated as 'recluse' or 'ascetic'.

Brahmacārī literally means 'brahma-farer', with brahma in this context being glossed as seṭṭha, meaning 'excellent' or 'sublime'. Taken narrowly it just means anybody who's undertaken to refrain from sex (e.g., Vin.iii.133: brahmacārin ti methunadhammā paṭivirataṃ). Taken more broadly it means one practising Buddhist ascesis in its entirety.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 9, 2015 10:42 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
This is a wholly gratuitous slight that does you little credit. As an expat of three decades’ standing, my entire adult life has been spent living among races other than my own. During this time I’ve never entertained the notion that any of the said races — Thais, Burmese, Karens, Indians, Nepalese, Icelanders, Russians and Kazakhs — might be inferior to Englishmen, nor have I ever written anything to this effect.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 8, 2015 10:50 PM
Title: Re: Question about pleasure/pain in 8 worldly conditions
Content:
But pleasures and pains don't arise through all six sense-bases. Only one kind of feeling —upekkhā-vedanā— arises with eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness and tongue-consciousness.

As for the kinds of feeling that can arise with non-sensory consciousnesses, many of these are feelings that one "does", so to speak, and not merely feelings that one undergoes. As such they don't share in the essentially passive character of the rest of the eight worldly dhammas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 8, 2015 3:20 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
Pakistan-style tribal bloc-voting in Birmingham! Thank you multiculturalism.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 8, 2015 2:40 PM
Title: Re: Question about pleasure/pain in 8 worldly conditions
Content:
The commentator Upasena defines sukha and dukkha in this context as just pleasurable and painful bodily feelings. No specification is made as to whether the feelings are sāmisa or nirāmisa.

Reference: Nidd-a. i. 245 (the Saddhammappajjotikā's commentary to the Niddesa's exposition of the Paramaṭṭhaka Sutta).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 8, 2015 2:20 PM
Title: Re: Looking for two suttas(?)
Content:
See the suttas referred to in the Visuddhimagga's description of the balancing of the five faculties in the section entitled The Ten Kinds of Skill in Absorption.
45. 2. Maintaining balanced faculties is equalizing the [five] faculties of faith and the rest. For if his faith faculty is strong and the others weak, then the energy faculty cannot perform its function of exerting, the mindfulness faculty its function of establishing, the concentration faculty its function of not distracting, and the understanding faculty its function of seeing. So in that case the faith faculty should be modified either by reviewing the individual essences of the states [concerned, that is, the objects of attention] or by not giving [them] attention in the way in which the faith faculty became too strong. And this is illustrated by the story of the Elder Vakkali (S III 119).

46.Then if the energy faculty is too strong, the faith faculty cannot perform its function of resolving, nor can the rest of the faculties perform their several functions. So in that case the energy faculty should be modified by developing tranquillity, and so on. And this should be illustrated by the story of the Elder Soṇa (Vin I 179–85; A III 374–76). So too with the rest; for it should be understood that when anyone of them is too strong the others cannot perform their several functions.

47. However, what is particularly recommended is balancing faith with understanding, and concentration with energy. For one strong in faith and weak in understanding has confidence uncritically and groundlessly. One strong in understanding and weak in faith errs on the side of cunning and is as hard to cure as one sick of a disease caused by medicine. With the balancing of the two a man has confidence only when there are grounds for it.
Then idleness overpowers one strong in concentration and weak in energy, since concentration favours idleness. Agitation overpowers one strong in energy and weak in concentration, since energy favours agitation. But concentration coupled with energy cannot lapse into idleness, and energy coupled with concentration cannot lapse into agitation. So these two should be balanced; for absorption comes with the balancing of the two.

48. Again, [concentration and faith should be balanced]. One working on concentration needs strong faith, since it is with such faith and confidence that he reaches absorption. Then there is [balancing of] concentration and understanding. One working on concentration needs strong unification, since that is how he reaches absorption; and one working on insight needs strong understanding, since that is how he reaches penetration of characteristics; but with the balancing of the two he reaches absorption as well.

49. Strong mindfulness, however, is needed in all instances; for mindfulness protects the mind from lapsing into agitation through faith, energy and understanding, which favour agitation, and from lapsing into idleness through concentration, which favours idleness. So it is as desirable in all instances as a seasoning of salt in all sauces, as a prime minister in all the king’s business. Hence it is said [in the commentaries (D-a 788, M-a I 292, etc)]: “And mindfulness has been called universal by the Blessed One. For what reason? Because the mind has mindfulness as its refuge, and mindfulness is manifested as protection, and there is no exertion and restraint of the mind without mindfulness.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 8, 2015 1:57 PM
Title: Re: Wandering Buddhist Renunciants
Content:
"Anagārika" is the most widely used term. Those who call themselves so may be observing either the 8 or the 10 precepts.

Others in use are "brahmacārī" (this is what Anagarika Munindra originally called himself), "yogāvacara" (the standard term for a full-time meditator in the Pali commentaries), and "yogī". Others that might be used, though I've never heard of anybody doing so, are pabbajita ("one gone forth") and samaṇa.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 7, 2015 11:08 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
A nice video explaining it all to foreigners.


http://cdn.theguardian.tv/webM/2015/05/06/150605ElectionExplainer_synd_768k_vp8.webm


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 7, 2015 7:40 PM
Title: Re: The State Of Asian Buddhism
Content:
But it has changed. Now every monastery has at least one Tipitaka case with a full Tipitaka in it. The problem now is a rather different one, namely, that the contents are so little read.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 6, 2015 10:38 PM
Title: Re: Having difficulty with metta practice
Content:
One arouses a wish for it because it's what all beings wish for themselves. And the fact that the yogi wishes for the same for himself permits him to empathize with their wish for it, and based upon that, to arouse a wish that they may obtain the happiness that they wish for.

None of this entails entertaining any particular opinion on whether or not beings deserve happiness. In the brahmavihāras, as I understand them, the only place where a yogi needs to make any judgments of this sort is when developing muditā, where the texts caution him that it is only the righteous successes of others that are the proper objects of his rejoicing.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 6, 2015 1:48 PM
Title: Re: giving to beggars
Content:
I agree with the meditation teacher. It is when people give directly to the homeless person that they know for sure that their gift is actually helping. If they give to a charity organization it may be used for little else than paying the executive-level salaries of the charity's administrators. But when they give directly to a homeless person then they know that he will either use their gift for his stated purpose or else he'll blow it all on booze or drugs. In the former case they will have fed a hungry man; in the latter, they will have saved the man from needing to resort to petty crime to obtain his fix.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 6, 2015 8:44 AM
Title: Re: Having difficulty with metta practice
Content:
Why do you say that?

I am aware that New Age teachers who give guided meditations incorporating a bastardized form of mettabhāvanā are wont to say such things. When asked why happiness is universally deserved they will typically make appeal to some aspect of the monism that underlies New Age thought. But on what specifically Buddhist premise can it be asserted that everyone deserves to be happy?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 5, 2015 3:31 PM
Title: Re: Dependent Origination as Process (or not).
Content:
Certainly there can. Indeed most cognitions of impermanence fall well short of what the Suttas call anicca-saññā, which we know (e.g., from AN.iv.395 and from the statement in several suttas that: The perception of impermanence should be developed to eradicate the conceit ‘I am’) to be a fairly advanced insight attainment and not just any old perception of impermanence.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 4, 2015 5:52 PM
Title: Re: Muslims and Meditation Centers in Myanmar
Content:
Yes, in the southern Thai provinces of Yala, Pattani and Nakhorn Sri Thammarat — strongholds of both militant Islamic and political separatist movements. As Pilgrim suggested, it's a security issue. The meditation centre staff need to be forewarned and ready to phone the police in the event of any suspicious-looking people coming to enquire after the meditator, lest they turn out to be militant Muslims intent on either snuffing their apostate brother or bombing the centre for facilitating his apostasy.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 4, 2015 4:55 PM
Title: Re: Rupa
Content:
I think "expressly" rather than "especially" would convey the meaning better, but otherwise it's an accurate statement of the Abhidhamma's treatment of derivative rūpa.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 3, 2015 3:22 AM
Title: Re: Vesak
Content:
In some years Vesak is on the same date in all Theravada countries, but in others it will be on such-and-such date in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, but then a month later in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. I should imagine this is because of the intercalary month being inserted in different years in different countries.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 1, 2015 7:34 PM
Title: Re: What are the hurdles hindering Dhamma propagation in the US?
Content:
Your fellow Aussie, John Safran, once paid a visit to Utah, where he engaged in Mormon-style door-knocking, preaching Darwinism and atheism to the residents of Salt Lake City. It wasn't much appreciated. 


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 May 1, 2015 3:12 PM
Title: Re: e-reader for meditation books
Content:
When reading ebooks with endnotes on my laptop I make two copies of the book and open both of them — one at the page that I'm presently reading and the other at the current note. Isn't it possible to do this with kindle?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 28, 2015 7:52 PM
Title: Re: Strange search results for Nanavira
Content:
If you go to the cached page you'll see that it's drenched in adware links advertising Viagra and suchlike. See text in bold:
The aim of this web site is to make more widely available the writings of the late Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera which, though of purchase cialis next day delivery extraordinary quality and cialis tablets sale issues depth, do not—for different reasons—attract any of the established Buddhist publishers. It is presented as a dhammadāna (gift of Dhamma) and with a deep sense of gratitude by individuals whose lives were significantly affected by an encounter with these writings, in the hope that others, too, might appreciate the right-view guidance which is offered therein. It cannot be expected that this material, which poses a clear challenge to the mainstream version of Buddhism, will gain any great popularity among the it's great! high quality levitra majority of Buddhists—Eastern or Western—but at least it can suggest an alternative approach to the Buddha's original Teaching, and perhaps serve as a useful eye-opener for those seeking an understanding of its more fundamental principles. It can also communicate the attitude of newsletter generic viagra canadian pharmacies earnestness towards Dhamma practice, which is regarded not merely as a matter of choice but rather an existential necessity. For without this basic attitude, the practice of Buddhist meditation will remain in the worldly sphere and will never be able tonolvadex without prescription bear the fruits of noble insight leading to liberation from the 'world'.


But if you go to the present page it's free of it all. So I guess the Google snapshot is from a day when the junk hadn't yet been cleared.

And if you search for "purchase cialis next day delivery" you'll find it's on thousands of sites. The reason you got only one link is because the words "though of" belong to the Ñāṇavīra site, not the adware.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 28, 2015 2:47 PM
Title: Re: What Dhamma Book are you reading right now?
Content:
To See the Truth

by Ajahn Pramote Pamojjo

http://www.dhamma.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/To-See-the-Truth.pdf


Unusual to find a monk who identifies with the Ajahn Mun forest tradition yet grounds his meditation instructions in Abhidhammic momentarism:

"The first [aspect of watching the mind] is to avoid intending to know in advance. We just need to know the feelings that temporarily arise in the mind after they do. Let the feeling occur naturally first and then know that it has. If anger arises, know that it has. If greed arises, then know that it has. If the mind has wandered off, know that this has happened. Why must we know after the fact? This is because many of the feelings that arise are defilements of mind. Only one mind arises at a time, so a defiled mind cannot arise at the same time as a non-defiled mind. For example, anger cannot exist in the mind at the same moment that the mindfulness notices the anger. The defiled angry mind drops off and is replaced by a non-defiled mind – the one that is mindful of what just happened.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 28, 2015 9:16 AM
Title: Re: Devahood & Humanhood
Content:
Except in the unique case of a Bodhisatta (of whom it is said that Tusita is always the abode of his penultimate life), rebirth in the Tusita heaven, like rebirth in any sensual heaven, has no special significance. It's simply where some beings end up if they've performed the right kind of meritorious kammas. When their lifespan as Tusita devas is exhausted then they pass away and go to some other destination — a good one if they are ariyans, usually a bad one if they are non-ariyans, and always a bad one if they are non-ariyans with wrong view.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:50 AM
Title: Re: Devahood & Humanhood
Content:
You seem to be thinking about rebirth more in the manner of a Theosophist than a Buddhist. Buddhist saṃsāra is not evolutionary, has no telos, but is simply pointless. Every rebirth is a dead end.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:57 AM
Title: Re: When a western monk is sick in Thailand...
Content:
We are treated exactly the same as Thai monks.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 26, 2015 6:40 PM
Title: Re: Question about Mahasi tradition
Content:
You too.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:45 AM
Title: Re: watching porn can be adultery?
Content:
Apology accepted, and thanks for clarifying your intention.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:41 AM
Title: Re: watching porn can be adultery?
Content:
It seems to me that your conception of the the brahmacariyā is informed primarily (and almost wholly) by Hindu notions, and only secondarily (and almost incidentally) by the Buddha’s teaching. In the latter the mind is what it's all about and the yogic preoccupation with physiological matters is almost wholly absent.

Take menstruation, for example. In contrast with Hindu Yoga texts (and even more so with Jewish and Islamic ones) where there are reams and reams of prescriptions and discussions about purity taboos, the appropriate sequestering of a menstruating female, and the ritual ablutions and suchlike that she has to perform to regain her purity, in the Vinaya Piṭaka the Buddha takes no more than two paragraphs to deal with the matter. The first is an allowance for menstruating bhikkhunis to make use of a sanitary cloth; the second is a specification as to the cloth's size. That’s all he found it necessary to say on the subject.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 26, 2015 8:20 AM
Title: Re: watching porn can be adultery?
Content:
That old age is sub-optimal for the development of insight finds some support in the Anguttara Nikāya, which has several suttas about the drawbacks of old men becoming monks.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 26, 2015 7:30 AM
Title: Re: watching porn can be adultery?
Content:
Buddhaghosa was of the opinion that the age of 40-50 is the optimal decade of a person's life for developing insight. Sad to say, in my case that means I have only another 41 days to go before I exit my forties and enter the Kali Yuga of my life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 26, 2015 7:07 AM
Title: Re: Question about Mahasi tradition
Content:
From conversations with the late Dr. Rewata Dhamma I understand that Mahasi Sayadaw was on cordial terms with both U Ba Khin and Sri Goenka, but this is the first I've heard about a supposed teacher-pupil relationship between them. But probably Ven. Pesala would know better than I.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 3:24 PM
Title: Re: DN 31: Sīgālovāda Sutta - Malevolence, Meaninglessnes
Content:
Anatthatā.

Thomas Rhys Davids and Maurice Walshe both translate it as "doing harm". These translations, together with that of Rev. Nārada and Nyanaponika's German one ("Schaden anzustiften froh"), all follow the commentary in taking attha (a word with many meanings) to mean "welfare", and so anattha here means "non-welfare" or "harm".

John Kelly and his colleagues have opted to take attha in the sense of "meaning", which leads them to a translation that's not really very meaningful at all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:38 PM
Title: Re: Kamma and the ending of Kamma
Content:
In a nutshell, Aronson rejects the notion popularized by Melford Spiro and Winston King of there being a complete disjuncture between Buddhism as a path of merit-accumulation leading to good rebirths and Buddhism as a path of renunciation leading to Nibbāna.

I've split the file into 3 for those with slow connections.


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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 12:09 PM
Title: Re: Global Warming: Recent Data
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:50 AM
Title: Re: Kamma and the ending of Kamma
Content:
.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/index.php?s=karmic+nirvanic

.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:18 AM
Title: Re: Ruth Denison, RIP
Content:
Robert Beatty's youtube channel has videos of the memorial service for Ruth on March 21st.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwKROYpJjk5QrHs_bHWkbVQ/videos


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 8:31 AM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
In those monasteries that make provision for nuns, they will normally have either their own building or their own section of the monastery with individual chalets. It's quite rare to find monks and nuns sleeping in the same building, though it happens in some places.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 7:47 AM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
The Thais are very hospitable to foreign monks, even Mahayana ones. I've never heard of anyone being turned away. As to how long you'd be allowed to stay, typically it would be like this:

Dhammayuttika Nikaya wats: as long as you like outside the vassa. If you want to stay for vassa then you'd need to re-ordain as a Dhammayutt.

Mahanikaya wats — mainstream: as long as you like, subject to availability of accommodation. You wouldn't be required to re-ordain unless you were a Mahayana monk and wanted to stay for the vassa.

Mahanikaya wats — non-mainstream: very variable. Long-term residence will be dependent on the visiting monk's willingness to get with the program in some way or another. For example, at Wat Dhammakaya and at vipassanā centres they'll expect you to take up their particular meditation method; at some study monasteries you'll be obliged to enroll in a course; at Ajahn Chah wats they'll expect you to take up their manner of Vinaya observance, quirky way of wearing the lower robe, etc. If you're not willing to adapt then you'll only be granted residence for a short period — perhaps no more than the three nights that the law requires.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 7:23 AM
Title: Re: Right Speech and Sarcasm
Content:
Yes, like when the Buddha is dealing with brahmins who are so bloated with caste-conceit as to be unteachable. He uses sarcasm to get them off their high horses and then he teaches them Dhamma.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 7:11 AM
Title: Re: Right Speech and Sarcasm
Content:
I think that in practice sarcasm —the use of irony to mock someone— is more often than not wrong speech, but needn't always be:
“Venerable sir, I have such confidence in the Blessed One that I believe there has not been nor ever will be nor exists at present another ascetic or brahmin more knowledgeable than the Blessed One with respect to enlightenment.”

“Lofty indeed is this bellowing utterance of yours, Sāriputta, you have roared a definitive, categorical lion’s roar: ‘Venerable sir, I have such confidence in the Blessed One that I believe there has not been nor ever will be nor exists at present another ascetic or brahmin more knowledgeable than the Blessed One with respect to enlightenment.’ Have you now, Sāriputta, encompassed with your mind the minds of all the Arahants, the Perfectly Enlightened Ones, arisen in the past and known thus: ‘Those Blessed Ones were of such virtue, or of such qualities, or of such wisdom, or of such dwellings, or of such liberation’?”
(Nālandā Sutta, tr. Bodhi)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:28 AM
Title: Re: Duration of sasana and interval between Buddhas?
Content:
If he believes in this, then it's more than likely that he will be the sort of Buddhist who accepts the Buddhist world-view in its totality. And so the perspective from which he is looking at things will be one in which striving ardently is really the only worthwhile thing to do, no matter whether the fruit of that striving will be obtained in the present life or the next life or not for another billion lives.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:30 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
I can't think of any advantages. The main disadvantage is that for many of the club members the charismatic teacher will end up becoming more important than the Buddha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:05 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
I would say that there is: (1) a sense in which the two lineages are not distinct, (2) a sense in which they are distinct, and (3) a sense in which it is a moot point whether they are distinct or not distinct.

To expand on this...

1. Assuming that the Buddha founded only one bhikkhu-sangha (and everybody except the Tibetans does assume this) and that both the Theravada and the Dhammaguttikas are descended in an unbroken lineage from that original bhikkhusangha, then obviously they are not distinct — the two lineages proceed from a common origin.

On the other hand...

2. Given that monastics in the two lineages have lived for many centuries in (more or less) geographical isolation from each other; given that even when living in close proximity to each other there is no record of their ever getting together to carry out joint sanghakammas (nor even discussing the possibility of doing so); given that one lineage has retained mainstream Indian Buddhist teachings while the other has embraced Mahayanism; given that one lineage has retained the same Vinaya throughout while the other has liberally modified it to suit East Asian conditions, etc. etc., the lineages as living traditions are distinct in the sense of having far more differences than points in common.

And finally...

3. The sense in which it is a point of dispute whether the two lineages are distinct or not distinct arises in connection with the subject of this thread.

On the one hand there are liberal bhikkhus who favour the revival of the bhikkhuni-sangha and believe that this can be done (and in recent years has been done) by cooperating with Dhammaguttika bhikshunis. On the other hand there are conservative bhikkhus who believe either that the bhikkhuni-sangha cannot be revived at all, or, that it cannot be revived in this particular way (though they would be amenable to bhikkhuni ordinations that were carried out by the Theravada bhikkhu-sangha alone).

In defence of their position, conservative bhikkhus will take their stand on the Theravada’s official history of early Buddhist sectarianism as given in the Dīpavaṃsa and later repeated in the Katthāvatthu Atthakathā. According to this all of the non-Theravadin schools are schismatical. The Theravada is compared to a tree, and the other schools to thorns sprouting on the tree. Regarding the Dhammaguttikas, the official history says that the Mahisāsakas and the Vajjiputtakas broke away from the Theravada in the second century after the Parinibbana, and later the Sabbatthivādins and Dhammaguttikas broke away from the Mahisāsakas. That being so, the doubly schismatical pedigree of the Dhammaguttikas makes them unfit people to carry out sanghakammas with.

In reply, those bhikkhus who support cooperation with Dhammaguttika bhikshunis will justify their position by rejecting the Theravada’s official history and championing an alternative one. This alternative one is derived from academic scholarship based on a study of the surviving chronicles of all the Buddhist schools, but without privileging any particular one of them, archaeological evidence, etc. In the revisionist history, the origin of separate schools is treated as a more or less benign development that is unlikely to have involved schism in the strict Vinaya sense. And so according to this view, Theravadin cooperation with Dhammaguttikas in ordinations or other sanghakammas would not constitute any sort of infraction and the outcomes would be lawful and valid.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 4:52 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
The Dharmaguptaka does not exist any more as a Buddhist doctrinal school. It exists only as a monastic ordination lineage whose ordained members espouse Mahayana doctrines and engage in Mahayana practices.

Now if it were the case that the Dharmaguptaka school still held to Dharmaguptaka doctrines, then its difference from the Theravada would be very slight indeed. If memory serves me right, the doctrinal disagreements between the two schools were few in number and confined to relatively minor and arcane matters, such as the question of whether it's more meritorious to give a gift to a Buddha or to the bhikkhusangha. However, since the Dharmaguptaka is now wholly in the hands of Mahayana Buddhists, it differs very drastically from the Theravada.

Edit:

Similar considerations apply also to the Mulasarvastivada lineage of Tibet, though with the difference that even before this lineage had been taken over by the Mahayanists its doctrinal differences with the Theravada were a lot more momentous than those of the Dharmaguptaka with the Theravada.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 4:37 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
Because of the various English words for an association of persons, it was "club" that struck me as being the second best. The best would probably be sodality, but I decided not to use it as some non-native speakers of English might be unfamiliar with it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 3:58 PM
Title: Re: My guardian angel contacted me and my fiance
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 3:50 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
No, at least not emically.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 3:48 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
Yes, inasmuch as the separatedness of the Theravada is basically rooted in the Vinaya's prescriptions for handling disputes and for ostracizing any bhikkhu or groups of bhikkhus which are incorrigible in view or recalcitrant in conduct.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 1:02 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Brahm on why he was excommunicated
Content:
You haven't given the full link.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 23, 2015 8:52 AM
Title: Re: Dependent Origination as Process (or not).
Content:
He was aware of it and alluded to it in his second letter to Irene Quittner, but clearly didn't accept it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 22, 2015 11:18 AM
Title: Re: Jail time for selling unripe fruit.
Content:
It's about misrepresentation of what you're selling. A prison sentence is the maximum possible penalty for breaking the law that prohibits this. In practice, however, it's very unlikely that anyone would actually be sent to prison for selling unripe durians unless they were doing it systematically and on a large scale, or if they were doing it with durians for export (and thereby damaging the good name of Thai durian-growers). In less serious cases an on-the-spot fine would be the usual penalty.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 22, 2015 11:01 AM
Title: Re: A list of Theravada teachers that teach a true self?
Content:
What I referred to as "relatively orthodox strains of Theravada Buddhism" are also yogic traditions, but without the anti-pariyatti prejudice that's conspicuous in much of the forest tradition, and therefore characterized by a much greater concern for right view.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 22, 2015 7:25 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
Since you wished to know how *I* would understand if a person is wise, it goes without saying that it would be I who decides.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 22, 2015 1:26 AM
Title: Re: Jail time for selling unripe fruit.
Content:
No, they have to ripen on the tree. If it's unripe it means it was blown down by the wind. I believe in Malaysia they have some recipes for unripe durian, but the Thais either throw them away or try to sell them to non-connoisseurs.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 22, 2015 12:48 AM
Title: Re: Jail time for selling unripe fruit.
Content:
They're a very expensive fruit. Buying one and later discovering it to be unripe is like buying a diamond and discovering it to be glass.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 22, 2015 12:02 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
In general it's not a judgment that I would bother to make, for since at the present time I'm neither looking for a teacher nor taking on students, it's a matter of indifference to me whether anyone I meet is wise or not. If, however, it were not a matter of indifference, then I would gauge a person's wisdom by the questions she asks, by the sort of things that she values, and by how dispassionate and equanimous she is in the face of worldly vicissitudes.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 21, 2015 4:12 PM
Title: Re: A Review of Ven. Ñānavīra's "Notes on Dhamma"
Content:
Just a link for anyone who may be wondering what the waxing syllables principle is all about...

https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/analayo/encyclopedia-entries/waxing.pdf


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 21, 2015 1:57 PM
Title: Re: Sutta search
Content:
The Saḷāyatanavibhaṅga Sutta, MN. 137.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 21, 2015 7:43 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
I already stated in my earlier post that it cannot be inferred from someone's occupation whether he is the sort of person ("one with but little dust in his eyes") for whom the Dhamma is intended.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 21, 2015 6:41 AM
Title: Re: When a western monk is sick in Thailand...
Content:
A western monk is sure to have an easy time if:

• He has health insurance, or...
• He uses money and has plenty of it, or...
• He is part of some outfit like the Ajahn Chah tradition which has an abundance of wealthy lay supporters, or...
• He has a personal lay supporter of unlimited means who has offered to pay for any medical expenses he may incur. (Usually he would need to have been a monk for many years before anyone made an offer like this).

If he is not in any of these categories then his choice is between the Sangha Hospital in Bangkok and the country's state hospitals.

In the Sangha Hospital everything is free for monks. Unfortunately the place is seriously underfunded and though it maintains a very fine ICU and a passable dentistry department, nearly everything else there is substandard. A monk would be ill-advised to go there except for the most routine treatments.

As for the state hospitals, these are generally good in the larger cities but the small town hospitals are best avoided. At present most, though not all, maladies are treated free of charge for monks.

The kind of monk who might have difficulties is one who needs to take some expensive medication on a permanent basis. Hospitals prescribe medicines free of charge for monks only if they are very cheap, like Paracetamol or the commoner antibiotics, or are needed to keep the monk alive. Anything in between (e.g. expensive psychiatric medication) would probably have to be paid for and there's no guarantee that your monastery will be willing to do so.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 20, 2015 3:14 PM
Title: Re: The Dhamma eye: "whatever aising-dhamma cessation-dhamma"
Content:
Samaṇa Sutta (AN. ii. 238)

“Bhikkhus, ‘only here is there an ascetic, a second ascetic, a third ascetic, and a fourth ascetic. The other sects are empty of ascetics.’ It is in such a way that you should rightly roar your lion’s roar.

(1) “And what, bhikkhus, is the first ascetic? Here, with the utter destruction of three fetters, a bhikkhu is a stream-enterer, no longer subject to [rebirth in] the lower world, fixed in destiny, heading for enlightenment. This is the first ascetic.

(2) “And what is the second ascetic? Here, with the utter destruction of three fetters and with the diminishing of greed, hatred, and delusion, a bhikkhu is a once-returner who, after coming back to this world only one more time, will make an end of suffering. This is the second ascetic.

(3) “And what is the third ascetic? Here, with the utter destruction of the five lower fetters, a bhikkhu is of spontaneous birth, due to attain final nibbāna there without returning from that world. This is the third ascetic.

(4) “And what is the fourth ascetic? Here, with the destruction of the taints, a bhikkhu has realized for himself with direct knowledge, in this very life, the taintless liberation of mind, liberation by wisdom, and having entered upon it, he dwells in it. This is the fourth ascetic.

“Bhikkhus, ‘only here is there an ascetic, a second ascetic, a third ascetic, and a fourth ascetic. The other sects are empty of ascetics.’ It is in such a way that you should rightly roar your lion’s roar.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 20, 2015 11:54 AM
Title: Re: Jail time for selling unripe fruit.
Content:
The law cited in the article dates from the 1950s and seems to be a Thai equivalent of what in Britain would be the Misrepresentation of Goods Act of 1967. The underlying logic is that since no customer would knowingly buy an underripe durian (for unlike an unripe banana, an unripe durian is absolutely useless), every customer's default assumption will be that any durian offered for sale will be ripe; therefore anybody offering a durian for sale is assumed under the law to be claiming (even if only tacitly and by implication) that the fruit in question is a ripe one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 19, 2015 11:31 PM
Title: Re: Why is Tibetan Buddhism more popular than Theravada in the west?
Content:
I would suggest two further factors besides those already mentioned:

Lobsang Rampa’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Eye_%28book%29 (for the English-speaking world).

The Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi’s 1960 classic, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_Tibet (for the Buddhists of Southern Europe).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 19, 2015 6:21 PM
Title: Re: Two Versions of Abhidhamma
Content:
The seven books of the Sarvastivada Abhidharma still survive. It's just that they are very little studied. When Tibetan Buddhists study the Sarvastivada Abhidharma they do so using compendiums and commentaries composed in a later period than the Sarvastivada Abhidharma Piṭaka. Similarly, in the Theravada the Abhidhamma is traditionally taught starting with a late compendium, Anuruddha's Abhidhammatthasangaha. The Abhidhamma Piṭaka is studied only later.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 19, 2015 5:45 PM
Title: Re: Jail time for selling unripe fruit.
Content:
Preferring merit to money, the vet already gives injections free of charge to any animals that I bring to her. But as she has never offered to come to the monastery to do it, if I asked her I would feel it necessary to make arrangements for her to reimbursed. But given that a trip up to the mountain where I live would take her away from her surgery for almost a whole day, I suspect the fees would be rather more than our lay committee would be willing to pay.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 19, 2015 3:50 PM
Title: Re: Jail time for selling unripe fruit.
Content:
In parts of Thailand too. On the Chiang Mai to Phrao bus there is now a sign prohibiting pets, durians and strong-smelling fish. Of course they're not as serious about enforcing it as the Singaporeans are. Whenever I take the temple cats and dogs for their injections, the bus conductress just turns a blind eye.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 19, 2015 2:46 PM
Title: Free Guide to Myanmar
Content:
The Golden Path - A Myanmar Guide for Dhamma Seekers

by Joah McGee.

Description

The Golden Path, or Shwe Lan Ga Lay, is a unique guide for Dhamma seekers who wish to develop in paṭipatti (practice) and pariyatti (theory) while in Myanmar, as well as to gain an appreciation of Burmese Buddhist and monastic life. Helpful logistical information is supplemented with yogi anecdotes, historical background, scholarly research, authentic local voices, Burmese proverbs, original artwork, inspiring photographs, and wisdom from some of the country's foremost monks, nuns, and meditation teachers.

Part 1: Planning and Logistics consists of four chapters: "Planning Your Trip," "Health", "You've Landed," and "Food." Future editions will include detailed information covering hundreds of important monasteries, pagodas, and other sites throughout the Golden Land, as well as comprehensive discussion on proper behavior and customs while visiting these Burmese monastic sites, along with other cultural information.

This PDF (70MB) is printable to help facilitate those traveling. It can also be read on any eBook reader which can display PDF files, and on computers.

http://store.pariyatti.org/The-Golden-Path--PDF-eBook_p_4810.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:27 PM
Title: Re: The suffix "pi": jātipi, jarāpi, vyādhipi...
Content:
Well, neither statement is really a translation of anything that the Buddha is reported as saying. Each one is no more than a proposed paraphrase.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:49 PM
Title: Re: Dana, sila, bhavana - sutta reference?
Content:
They are classed under the name of puññakiriyavatthu, "bases for meritorious action". There are three sources: the Dīgha Nikāya's Saṅgīti Sutta, which merely lists them, and then the two Puññakiriyavatthu Suttas, one from the Anguttara Nikāya and the other from the Itivuttaka.

https://suttacentral.net/en/an8.36

https://suttacentral.net/en/it60
This was said by the Lord…

“Bhikkhus, there are these three grounds for making merit. What three? The ground for making merit consisting in giving, the ground for making merit consisting in virtue, and the ground for making merit consisting in mind-development. These are the three.”

One should train in deeds of merit
That yield long-lasting happiness:
Generosity, a balanced life,
Developing a loving mind.
By cultivating these three things,
Deeds yielding happiness,
The wise person is reborn in bliss
In an untroubled happy world.

(Iti. 60. Ireland tr.)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:29 PM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
A “failed leftist revolution” in Britain?!? It must have been so dainty and ethereal a revolution that it passed by completely unnoticed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:12 AM
Title: Re: U.K General Election
Content:
Interesting developments in Pakistan...

Christians in Pakistan pray for Nigel Farage and Ukip to win general election

Pastor Francis Bashir says Ukip are the only party that stand up for Christians and the Commonwealth

JACK SIMPSON Thursday 16 April 2015


The growth in popularity of Ukip in the last few years has been massive.

But now it appears the party’s appeal spreads far further than first thought - and well beyond the UK’s borders.

A bizarre new video shows a congregation of Pakistani Christians praying for Nigel Farage and Ukip in a bid to help them gain victory in the general election.

In the footage, members of Lahore’s Royal Disciple Church are seen chanting, “We love you Sir Nigel Farage”, as they pray towards a large poster of the party’s leader above the caption, “God made you successful….Our prayers is with you to all members of UKIP (sic).” 

And according to the church’s leader, the support is not down to any points-based immigration system or call for an in-out referendum.

Instead, Pastor Francis Bashir says he is putting his support behind Ukip because it stands up for Christians and the Commonwealth.

Pakistan’s Christian community of 2.5 million has been the target of increased persecution in recent times, with the number of attacks against it's members increasing in regularity.

Last month saw at least 14 people die and dozens more injured in twin bombings at two churches in Lahore. Other similar attacks have left Pakistani Christians fearing for their safety.

According to Bashir, he was first made aware of Ukip when someone on Facebook asked him to pray for the party and was impressed by Farage’s pledge to stand up for Judeo-Christian values.

Bashir got his son to call Farage and said that after the leader personally answered the call, the “love in the church’s hearts for him increased.”

Since then, Bashir has covered the church in Ukip’s purple colours and conducts regular services in which churchgoers are asked to pray for Farage.

Responding to the support, Mr Farage said he was “very touched by the prayers”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/christians-in-pakistan-pray-for-nigel-farage-and-ukip-to-win-general-election--video-10180885.html


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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:26 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
And?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 17, 2015 9:28 PM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
Apparajakkhajātika, "having but little dust in one's eyes", is defined in the commentaries as having an eye of understanding that is relatively unshrouded by attachment, aversion and delusion. Whether a person fits this description cannot be known from his occupation. 

On the other hand, that a person does not fit this description can be known, inter alia, from his persistence in asking stupid questions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 17, 2015 8:45 PM
Title: Nivarana - the Box of Desires
Content:
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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:54 PM
Title: Re: Problem with AN 5:57
Content:
Yes, I get two and half thousand hits, including the Wikipedia entry for the sutta.

I checked with the PTS and Royal Siamese editions of the Tipiṭaka (the latter is the edition from which Thanissaro usually translates), to see if he is just repeating an earlier error. The Thais, however, give its name as Ṭhānasutta, just like the Sinhalese. In the PTS edition it is not given any name in the body of the text, but the Uddāna (summary of suttas) at the end of the Nīvaraṇavagga reads:
Āvaraṇaṃ rāsi aṅgāni samayaṃ ca mātuputtikā
Upajjhāṭṭhānā kumārā Licchavī apare duve ti.
My best guess is that the word "upajjhāṭṭhānā" has been taken by Thanissaro to be the name of a single sutta. However, every non-PTS edition gives it as two words: upajjhā + ṭhānā, each of them a key word in sutta 56 and sutta 57 respectively. There's no other construal that will make the numbers add up. Thus:

1. āvaraṇaṃ = Āvaraṇasutta
2. rāsi = Akusalarāsisutta
3. aṅgāni = Padhāniyaṅgasutta
4. samayaṃ = Samayasutta
5. mātuputtikā = Mātāputtasutta
6. upajjhā = Upajjhāyasutta
7. ṭhānā = Abhiṇhapaccavekkhitabbaṭhānasutta
8. kumārā licchavī = Licchavikumārakasutta

apare duve ("another two") =

9. Paṭhamavuḍḍhapabbajitasutta
10. Dutiyavuḍḍhapabbajitasutta


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 17, 2015 4:50 PM
Title: Re: NYC schools will start observing Muslim holidays next year
Content:
I beg to differ — it has everything to do with Islam.
"After years of advocating by New York City's Muslim community, Muslim public school students will finally and thankfully no longer be penalized for observing their religious holidays," said Zead Ramadan, a board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Among culturally alien minority groups in western countries, who but the Muslims would be so arrogant and immodest as to go issuing these sort of demands? And who but the Muslims could do so in the full assurance that the authorities would cravenly and spinelessly cave in to their demands? If Hindus, Sikhs or Buddhists demanded that their religious holidays be acknowledged, they wouldn’t be given the time of day.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 17, 2015 4:28 PM
Title: Re: Problem with AN 5:57
Content:
It's earliest recorded name, still used in the Sinhalese Tipiṭaka, is just Ṭhānasutta. In the Burmese Fifth Council Tipiṭaka this is expanded to Abhiṇhapaccavekkhitabbaṭhānasutta. Upajjhaṭhānasutta is a mistake by Ven. Thanissaro. This is actually one form of the name of the preceding sutta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 17, 2015 6:34 AM
Title: Re: One Buddha < a few Buddhas?
Content:
I enquired of a friend who used to be a Tibetan-ordained monk but is now a secular Buddhist. Apparently if you do the practices that BuddhaFollower believes in, when you look in a mirror you won't see your body as it is, but will instead see an hallucination of a body that is gradually acquiring the 32 marks, starting with the uṣniṣa on the crown of the head.




mirror1.jpg (204.87 KiB) Viewed 1603 times


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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 16, 2015 3:51 PM
Title: Re: What does "sa" in "saññā" mean?
Content:
I think Gombrich's "apperception" is the most accurate rendering, with de la Vallée Poussin's "la notion" coming a close second.

APPERCEPTION

3. a.3.a Psychol. The action or fact of becoming conscious by subsequent reflection of a perception already experienced; any act or process by which the mind unites and assimilates a particular idea (esp. one newly presented) to a larger set or mass of ideas (already possessed), so as to comprehend it as part of the whole: see quots. 

1876 J. Sully in Mind Jan. 36 The entrance of a presentation into the internal field of view is termed a Perception; its entrance into the point of view an Apperception.

1887 J. Dewey Psychol. 89 Apperception is the relating activity which combines the various sensuous elements presented to the mind at one time into a whole, and which unites these wholes, recurring at successive times, into a continuous mental life, thereby making psychical life intelligent.

1893 C. De Garmo et al. tr. Lange's Apperception (1896) 28 Apperception is the subsumption of a notion, usually newly given and more or less individual, under a predicate which is more complete‥and‥usually older and more familiar. Apperception does not always follow perception immediately, for years sometimes intervene between the learning of a fact and its comprehension.

1923 H. G. Baynes tr. Jung's Psychol. Types xi. 524 Apperception is a psychic process by which a new content is articulated to similar already-existing contents in such a way as to be understood, apprehended, or clear.
(Oxford English Dictionary)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:32 AM
Title: Re: Question for those who have traveled internationally on a personal retreat
Content:
It's fine if you're willing to pay whatever it takes to make your trip as hassle-free as possible. On the other hand, if minimal costs are more important to you, then...

You'll save a lot on airfare if you buy a return ticket to Bangkok and then a return ticket from Bangkok to Yangon from one of the Sikh-owned bucket shops in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phahurat.

And you'll save a lot if you skip the health insurance. The odds are that you won't need hospital treatment, but even if you do, the odds are that your hospital bill will be less than what you've paid in insurance premiums, provided that you go to a state hospital.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 16, 2015 3:49 AM
Title: Re: When to use Saddhiṃ/saha?
Content:
It means that each of the two particles means "together". 

As with any two synonymous words, there will no doubt be idiomatic conventions governing when to use one and when the other, and when it's a matter of indifference which one is used. As far as I know, however, the usage of the two terms has never been thoroughly surveyed with a view to describing these conventions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 16, 2015 3:15 AM
Title: Re: When to use Saddhiṃ/saha?
Content:
Probably not. In the Vinaya Piṭaka both are defined as ekato, "together".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 15, 2015 10:11 PM
Title: Re: Is Mandrian useful in Southeast Asia / Theravada Countries?
Content:
Thai, Burmese or Sinhala, depending on which country's Buddhism most appeals to you.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 15, 2015 3:36 PM
Title: Pseudo-Pilgrims by Ven. Ananda Maitreya
Content:
I was recently searching for a copy of Pseudo-Pilgrims, a parable that was often told by the late Sri Lankan monk Ven. Ananda Maitreya (Bhikkhu Bodhi’s preceptor). It was published in the Middle Way back in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s. Though I wasn’t able to find the original, I did come across a revised and expanded version of it under a different title. Here is a link to it...

http://buddhismnow.com/2011/10/28/forest-and-the-way-out-by-ananda-maitreya/


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 15, 2015 6:18 AM
Title: Re: The surprising downsides of being clever
Content:
A couple of recent articles from the Guardian and Washington Post...

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/31/finnish-teachers-special-train-teach

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/02/12/teach-for-finland-why-it-wont-happen/

It seems that in Finland only 1 in 10 of those who want to be school teachers are accepted for training, and those selected are not the most academically able[*] but rather the ones who are most passionate about wanting to teach.


[*] Though they can't be academically weak, for even to teach in a Finnish primary school you need a master's degree.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 7:32 PM
Title: Re: A Manual of the Excellent Man
Content:
Yes bhante, that would seem to be in line with the Anguttara Commentary's gloss on soceyya:
“Soceyyan” ti sīlavasena sucibhāvo.

“Purity” means a pure state with respect to moral habit.
(AA.ii.161)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:45 PM
Title: Re: Did the Buddha teach the paramis?
Content:
Thanks for the notice, bhante; I'll bear it in mind on future occasions. On this occasion I had just posted the first link that Google came up with.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:20 PM
Title: Re: the great Nibbana = annihilation, eternal, or something else thread
Content:
Yes.


Anusayasutta (SN.ii.252)
Apagatasutta (SN.ii.253)
Upatissasutta (SN.ii.275)
Rādhasutta (SN.iii.79-80)
Surādhasutta (SN.iii.80-1)
Puṇṇamasutta (SN.iii.100-104)
Rāhulasutta (SN.iii.135-6)
Dutiyarāhulasutta (SN.iii.136-7)
Kappasutta (SN.iii.169)
Dutiyakappasutta (SN.iii.169-70)
Vivekajasutta (SN.iii.235-6)
Avitakkasutta (SN.iii.236)
Pītisutta (SN.iii.236-7)
Upekkhāsutta (SN.iii.237)
Nirodhasamāpattisutta (SN.iii.238)
Upasena-āsīvisasutta (SN.iv.40-1)

Ānandasutta (AN.i.132-3)
Sāriputtasutta (AN.i.133-4)
Atammayasutta (AN.iii.444)
Dutiyasaññāsutta (AN.iv.46-53)

Tatiyanānātitthiyasutta (Ud. 70)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 11:27 AM
Title: Re: Did the Buddha teach the paramis?
Content:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel409.html

http://holybooks.lichtenbergpress.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/A-Manual-of-the-Excellent-Man.pdf


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 7:16 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
And so in this (which will be my last reply to you) I should like to commend for your attention Rune Johansson's book http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/The%20Psychology%20of%20Nirvana_Johansson_1969_OPT.pdf, a somewhat dated, but still valuable, survey of how the Pali Suttas describe arahants.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 7:08 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
And by the way, once again you haven't answered the question. Let me put it another way: from where have you obtained your conception of what an arahant is and how he would behave? It certainly doesn't seem that the Buddha's teaching is your source.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 6:57 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
Nonsense. It would not be persuasive to those for whom the Dhamma is intended ("beings with but little dust in their eyes"; "the wise"), but only to the sort of credulous dimwits who'll go running after any tuppenny ha'penny Hindu sadhu who knows a few conjuring tricks.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 6:46 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
The silly, fruitless and Eeyorish line of questioning that has been your stock-in-trade since joining this forum all seems to be premised on the notion that an arahant has something to prove — that he would feel it imperative to persuade people of his attainment and would stop at nothing to arouse faith in them. But why assume any such thing?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 6:35 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
Whether or not this would count as a stunt (i.e., an exhibition of supernormal power), it would (if it were done to convince people of his arahantship) amount to a declaration of his attainment to unordained people.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 5:55 AM
Title: Re: Why Ordain?
Content:
I'll have to let the North American members field this one as I've never visited any of the countries in the New World and am not in contact with any of the monks living there.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 5:41 AM
Title: Re: Open letter to the English Theravada Buddhist community
Content:
Your question was already answered in the first thread you started. You just didn't like the answer.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 14, 2015 5:20 AM
Title: Re: Which Sutta?
Content:
It's the same Tipiṭaka, but the online version doesn't give any page numbers. The downloadable version gives the page numbers for about half a dozen different versions of the Tipiṭaka.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 13, 2015 11:18 PM
Title: Re: Which Sutta?
Content:
In both English translations of the Dīgha (Maurice Walshe’s and Rhys Davids) the PTS romanised references are given in square brackets in the body of the text:



Rhys.png (287.27 KiB) Viewed 3569 times


In fact this is the practice with most PTS translations.

So that’s one way to find a reference.

A second way is by using the Chaṭṭhasaṅgīti Tipiṭaka CD.

A third way is by going to Access to Insight’s Dīgha Nikāya page:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/index.html

On this page the reference for the volume and starting page of each Sutta in the PTS romanised edition is given in curly brackets.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 13, 2015 9:17 PM
Title: Re: Which Sutta?
Content:
These are the volume and page numbers of the PTS romanized editions. 

D i.19 - Brahmajāla Sutta.
iii.31 - Pāṭika Sutta
49 - Udumbarika Sutta
213, 230, 270 sq. - Saṅgīti Sutta


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 13, 2015 8:04 PM
Title: Re: Why Ordain?
Content:
It turns out that the latter is more detailed than I remembered it as being. Here's the translation of Soma Thera:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html

The relevant section begins with the words:
Who is spoken of with the words "This one carries forth and carries back" must be known just through the means of the observance of carrying forth and carrying back (the subject of meditation from the beginning to the end of the journey to and from the village).
and ends with:
Amongst these four that form the set, he who carries forth and carries back the subject of meditation reaches the crest of the clear comprehension of resort.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:11 PM
Title: Re: Why Ordain?
Content:
The commentary to the Sāmaññaphala Sutta has the most detailed account of carrying the meditation subject. Then there are greatly abridged parallel passages in the Sammohavinodanī / Dispeller of Delusion and in the Papañcasūdanī’s commentary to the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. But in the Visuddhimagga it seems to be alluded to in only one paragraph:

“... in order to avoid the delay of foot washing, a pair of single-soled sandals and a walking stick are desirable. Then if the new concentration vanishes through some unsuitable encounter, he can put his sandals on, take his walking stick, and go back to the place to re-apprehend the sign there. When he returns he should seat himself comfortably and develop it by reiterated reaction to it and by striking at it with thought and applied thought.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:54 PM
Title: Re: Agamas divergence from Pali Canon, still practiced?
Content:
Yes to the former and no to the latter. There is the odd individual or two —like the Mahayana monk Thích Minh Châu and the Theravadin one Anālayo— who make it their business to study the Āgamas and whose outlook and practice are no doubt informed by them, but there isn't any living tradition based upon them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:28 PM
Title: Re: Why Ordain?
Content:
What is called "carrying the meditation subject" depends upon the maintenance of mindfulness throughout the day, but it's a little more specific than that. It is the manner of jhāna-oriented practice described in detail the https://www.amazon.com/Discourse-Fruits-Recluseship-Samannaphala-Commentaries/dp/9552400457, in which the yogāvacara intent on jhāna "carries" his meditation subject all day long, from the moment of waking up until the moment of going to sleep. "Carrying the meditation subject" means the uninterrupted application of his attention to it. In the event that the yogāvacara has to do some other duty that will require his full attention (and thus prevent the carrying of the meditation subject), he makes a formal resolve to lay the meditation subject down and then pick it up again when the task is completed. Ideally, however, he should try to live in the sort of place where there won't be anything that will require him to put the meditation subject down.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:40 AM
Title: Re: A list of Theravada teachers that teach a true self?
Content:
I don't think any of these would have described themselves as "Theravada teachers", but they are all prominent in arguing for an interpretation of anattā in the Pali suttas like that which you describe.

Theosophically influenced:
C.A.F. Rhys Davids
Christmas Humphreys
I.B. Horner

Guénonist:
Ananda Coomaraswamy

Vedantists:
K. Bhattacharya
S. Radhakrishnan
R.P. Chowdhury
J.G. Jennings

Idiosyncratic:
R. Zaehner
Joacquin Pérez-Remón

Mahayanist (votary of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra):
Tony Page


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:20 AM
Title: Re: Why Ordain?
Content:
Though it’s true that some monks choose to spend (or in some monasteries are required to spend) much of their time in construction work, this is not obligatory — you’re free to ordain in a monastery where the abbot isn’t obsessed with building things.

One reason for choosing monasticism is the sort of companionship available to you. As a householder, unless you have an independent source of income, you have to go out to work each day, which means that many hours of each day have to be spent in the company of people who are not kalyāṇamittas. As a monk, by being choosy with whom one associates, one can engineer it so that one enjoys either kalyāṇamittatā or solitude 24/7.

A second reason is that the practice of “carrying the meditation subject” (i.e. keeping it in mind throughout one’s waking hours — essential for jhānic deveopment) is only realistically possible for a monk or a householder who doesn’t need to work. But most householders do need to work.

A third reason (though one concerned more with the benefit of others than one’s own) is to participate in the stewardship of the Sāsanā in order to ensure its continuance.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 12, 2015 10:16 AM
Title: Re: New work on Paticcasamuppada by Ven. Ñāṇananda
Content:
No matter how you see things, in both canonical usage and commentarial definition, the terms āsavakkhaya and arahatta are straightforward synonyms.
Āsavakkhayan ti arahattaṃ.

"Extinction of the cankers" means arahantship.
(AA.iii.259)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 12, 2015 7:44 AM
Title: Re: New work on Paticcasamuppada by Ven. Ñāṇananda
Content:
Nonsense.

The verbs jānāti (to know) and janati, jāneti etc. (to produce) are from completely different roots (ñā and jan) and have nothing to do with each other.

Abhijānāti is by no means limited to iddhis, for although the first five abhiññās are mundane, the sixth is āsavakkhayañāṇa, i.e. an arahant's "knowledge of the extinction of the āsavas".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 11, 2015 8:39 PM
Title: Re: 16 Predictions of the Buddha
Content:
Yes, the Mahāsupina Jātaka.

https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=10807


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 11, 2015 10:51 AM
Title: Re: What Dhamma Book are you reading right now?
Content:
Toshiichi Endo, Buddha in Theravada Buddhism - a study of the concept of Buddha in the Pali commentaries


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 11, 2015 7:10 AM
Title: Re: The root of the question
Content:
That may, for all I know, be the the case with you, but that doesn't entitle you to assume that everyone's memory is as chronically deficient as your own.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 10, 2015 10:04 PM
Title: Re: The root of the question
Content:
Since you did not in your earlier post stipulate a recollection of all past events, it is irrelevant what particular past feelings I can recall. The fact that I can recall some of them is enough to persuade me that when you assert that a presently pure person is unable to recall past defiled states or that a presently defiled person is unable to recall past pure states, you are spouting nonsense.


