Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:13 pm
Title: Re: The Aṭṭhakavagga – Pali, with English Translation
Content:
Thank you Ven. Ñāṇasuci. I look forward to reading the translation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jun 02, 2012 8:04 am
Title: Re: John Peacock: Will the Real Buddha Please Stand Up?
Content:
The thesis that parts of the Suttanipāta and other verse sections of the canon are the oldest strata of discourse has been around for quite some time. The reasoning is that the language used in verse sections of the canon is generally more archaic, and that the Suttanipāta lacks systematic doctrinal formulation. This theory has also been called into question because (1) in most languages verse texts preserve more archaic language (e.g. such as English prose and poetry from the middle ages, etc.), therefore, this linguistic feature doesn't establish that the verse portions of the canon are more ancient than the prose portions; and (2) lack of systematic doctrinal formulation in these passages could be due to any number of factors, not just the historical development of the dhamma. (This latter point would also pertain to prose passages which lack systematic doctrinal formulation.)


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jun 02, 2012 4:30 am
Title: Re: New Book
Content:
Thanks. Should be a good read for anyone interested in such things.

Here's the Silkworm Books website page for the book: How Theravāda is Theravāda? Exploring Buddhist Identities.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Jun 01, 2012 4:53 am
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
Yes, pretty much.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Jun 01, 2012 4:42 am
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
How about the English term "bullshit" then?... Is there anything wrong with bullshit, as opposed to what flows from it (i.e. more bullshit)?


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Jun 01, 2012 4:39 am
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
Well, I don't think all Buddhist commentary is pragmatic and equally useful.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 31, 2012 11:57 pm
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
Trying to establish distinctions between appearances and reality gives rise to the mental proliferation of perceptions and notions (papañcasaññāsaṅkhā).


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 31, 2012 10:36 am
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
What seems most disconcerting to me is that there's no end to the labyrinth of such analysis. 

(A fine contemporary example of this kind of labyrinth has been compiled by David Chalmers and David Bourget here.)


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 31, 2012 8:00 am
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
I would suggest that there are no explicitly "paramattha terms" to be found in either the Suttapiṭaka or the Abhidhammapiṭaka (except for the one instance already mentioned, and one or two others in a late text in the KN). Moreover, both these collections can be read, understood, and appreciated without any recourse to "paramattha terms."


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 31, 2012 4:07 am
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
Well, the post-canonical "abhidhamma" commentaries do explicitly move more and more towards greater reification of ultimately real, invariable entities. This is never explicit nor implied in the suttas, nor even in the Abhidhammapiṭaka.* So reading the post-canonical "abhidhamma" commentaries as referring to substantive entities doesn't require interpretation, it's rather explicit.

The poor ol' Abhidhammapiṭaka is rarely allowed to speak for itself: Many people are wont to read latter commentarial elaborations into anything having to do with "abhidhamma," and many others dismiss everything having to do with "abhidhamma" as equivalent to these later commentarial accretions. A more precise and accurate understanding of doctrinal development will appreciate that there are more layers to the Abhidhamma than this.


* Except for one passage in the Kathāvatthu, but it was a controversy even in Buddhaghosa's time whether or not the Kathāvatthu rightly belonged in the Abhidhammapiṭaka. Moreover, based on text-critical analysis a number of modern scholars have come to the conclusion that the Kathāvatthu was still open to additions long after the rest of the canon was considered closed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed May 30, 2012 4:40 pm
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
Yes, away from path processes and towards substantive entities.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed May 30, 2012 10:05 am
Title: Re: The great Abhidhamma Pitaka authenticity debate
Content:
IMO it's a pity that this sort of language gets mistaken for the Abhidhamma. This type of conceptual realism does more to hinder a pragmatic appreciation of the Abhidhamma amongst newbies than all of the Abhidhamma critics combined.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed May 30, 2012 9:54 am
Title: Re: Samatha and Vipassana question
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Tue May 29, 2012 11:28 pm
Title: Re: Recommended reading
Content:
The link goes to a page on Scribd. I had no problem going to the page, and have never had any difficulties with the Scribd website.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue May 29, 2012 5:59 pm
Title: Re: Question about Theravada tradition
Content:
The Mahāyāna is a vehicle (yāna) encompassing many historical developments. The two Indian Mahāyāna commentarial traditions are the Madhyamaka and the Yogācāra.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon May 28, 2012 12:40 am
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
Yes, both saññā and ñāṇa are derived from the verb root - √ñā (to know). Cf. this post. The former term is more common in the suttas, e.g. aniccasaññā, anicca dukkhasaññā, dukkha anattasaññā, virāgasaññā, nirodhasaññā, paṭinissaggasaññā, etc.

IMO the Paṭisambhidāmagga Ñāṇakathā (which is the source for the insight-knowledges in the Vism.) was originally composed as a treatise explaining Theravāda doctrine and theory. Hence the use of the term "ñāṇa." It is more of a pedagogical treatise than a meditation manual. This was then later understood as a good working model for describing how to develop insight as a method, eventually giving rise to the Vism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon May 28, 2012 12:00 am
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
After the fruition of stream-entry if one wants to attain the next noble path s/he begins again with the insight knowledge of rise and fall and proceeds through to the knowledge of equanimity about fabrications, then again knowledge of change of lineage, attainment of the second noble path, etc.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 27, 2012 10:57 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
Well, there is no such thing as "in nibbāna." One has a cognition of nibbāna, i.e. a cognition of extinguishment. And cognitions always arise with concomitant mental factors (cetasikā). The Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha:
1. The First Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with initial application, sustained application, joy, happiness, and one-pointedness,
2. The Second Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with sustained application, joy, happiness, and one-pointedness,
3. The Third Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with joy, happiness, and one-pointedness,
4. The Fourth Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with happiness and one-pointedness,
5. The Fifth Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with equanimity and one-pointedness.

These are the five types of Sotāpatti Path-consciousness.

So are the Sakadāgāmī Path-consciousness, Anāgāmī Path-consciousness, and Arahatta Path-consciousness, making exactly twenty classes of consciousness. Similarly there are twenty classes of Fruit-consciousness. Thus there are forty types of supramundane consciousness.

This accords with the basic path sequence as outlined in the suttas as follows: dissatisfaction (dukkha) → faith (saddhā) → gladness (pāmojja) → joy (pīti) → tranquility (passaddhi) → pleasure (sukha) → meditative composure (samādhi) → gnosis &amp; vision of things as they are (yathābhūtañāṇadassana) → disenchantment (nibbidā) → dispassion (virāga) → liberation (vimutti) → gnosis of elimination (khayeñāṇa).

This developmental path sequence is found in SN 12.23 (S ii 29) Upanisa Sutta. This same developmental sequence, or significant portions of it, is also presented in Vin i 294, D i 73, D i 182, D i 207, D i 214, D i 232, D i 250, D iii 241, D iii 279, D iii 288, M i 37, M i 283, S iv 78, S iv 351-8, S v 156, S v 398, A i 243, A iii 21, A iii 285, A v 1-6, A v 312, A v 315, A v 317, A v 329, A v 333.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 27, 2012 10:26 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
Nibbāna is probably one of the most misunderstood terms in contemporary Buddhism. The noble paths and fruitions are always cognitions arising with concomitant mental factors. Attaining a noble path entails the arising of these supramundane saṅkhāras and the non-arising (anuppāda), non-continuance (appavatta), cessation (nirodha), and extinguishment (nibbāna) of fetters, mental outflows, and underlying tendencies which are terminated by that particular path. And attaining the fruition of that path entails the full extinguishment (parinibbāna) of those same fetters, etc. 

For example, when one attains the fruition of stream-entry then any saṅkhāras which would arise in the future for a worldling are completely terminated and cease forever. When one attains the fruition of a once-returner then any saṅkhāras which would arise in the future for a stream-entrant are completely terminated and cease forever. When one attains the fruition of a non-returner then any saṅkhāras which would arise in the future for a once-returner are completely terminated and cease forever. And finally, when one attains the arahant fruition then any saṅkhāras which would arise in the future for a non-returner are completely terminated and cease forever.

Why is this so? Because in each case the causes and conditions for future arising are eliminated with the fruition of each noble path. This is the whole point of conditioned arising (paṭiccasamuppāda) -- it occurs and ceases to occur due to specific conditionality (idappaccayatā). Phenomena arise according to specific conditionality:
When this is, that is.
From the arising of this comes the arising of that.

And phenomena cease according to specific conditionality:
When this isn’t, that isn’t.
From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 27, 2012 9:52 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
Sure, that's fine. However, when using terms such as "path moment" one is implicitly relying on the commentaries. There's no notion of a "path moment" in the suttas, and no one has ever seen a path "moment" (or any other kind of "moment" for that matter). It's a conceptual construct used to account for the realization of knowledge.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 27, 2012 9:44 pm
Title: Re: Buddhism often seems like a farce
Content:
The system of mutual reciprocity actually works exceptionally well. Everything that we know about Pāli Buddhism is thanks to the efforts of many largely anonymous monastics preserving the Tipiṭaka for the past 25 centuries.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 27, 2012 4:05 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
This is a mistaken understanding of the path. Supramundane path-consciousness is a supramundane jhāna which includes the presence of the jhāna factors. Visuddhimagga, Ch. 21:
According to governance by insight, the path arisen in a bare-insight worker, and the path arisen in one who possesses a jhāna attainment but who has not made the jhāna the basis for insight, and the path made to arise by comprehending unrelated fabrications after using the first jhāna as the basis for insight, are paths of the first jhāna only. In each case there are seven awakening factors, eight path factors, and five jhāna factors. For while their preliminary insight can be accompanied by happiness and it can be accompanied by equanimity, when their insight reaches the state of equanimity about fabrications at the time of emergence it is accompanied by happiness.

Ven. Ñāṇārāma, Seven Stages of Purification &amp; the Insight Knowledges:
At whatever moment he attains the supramundane path, that path-consciousness comes to be reckoned as a jhāna in itself, since it has some affinity with the factors proper to jhānas, such as the first jhāna. What are known as transcendental meditations in Buddhism are these supramundane levels of concentration within the reach of the pure insight meditator.

This is in keeping with the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, where supramundane jhāna includes the jhāna factors and the five faculties and various other saṅkhāras necessary for the presence of right view and the other components of the noble path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 27, 2012 3:38 pm
Title: Re: Happy Birthday Cittasanto!
Content:
Happy birthday!!!


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 27, 2012 10:10 am
Title: Re: Please congratulate Robertk - DW's new moderator!
Content:
Congrats Robert!


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 25, 2012 6:22 pm
Title: Re: A trip down memory lane - E-Sangha database remnants
Content:
FYI for anyone who doesn't follow the happenings on Dharma Wheel, Malcolm (Namdrol) has recently made an apology for some of the mistakes that occurred on e-Sangha (full post here):
We should be circumspect about criticizing others since that creates enemies in a concrete sense. I guess a large part of my present point of view has a lot to do with the sectarian arguments I have taken part in here on this board and E-sangha. Really, I feel very sad about that. We were all trying to do our best on E-Sangha -- but I myself, and we together, admins and mods, made many mistakes....

I feel sad for having allowed Theravada people think that I feel their practice is inferior. 

I am sorry about the whole Zen thing, the Jundo Cohen episode. I tried to handle that skillfully, but it was Indo-Tibetan sectarian bullshit on my part, even though my motive was to try and bring clarity about who was a monk and who was not....

There are probably many other things I should feel sad about in my online relations with others. But I can't remember everything I said. So, my blanket apology is-- If I said something upsetting to you that came from narrow-mindedness on my part, I am sorry". So I have made a lot of mistakes. I am sorry that I hurt anyone.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 25, 2012 4:16 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
It seems that many of the cases where monks and nuns are reporting these kinds of path difficulties in the Nikāyas, the problem is connected to a lack of samādhi.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 20, 2012 4:00 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
I think meditation teachings are more readily available today than at any time in the past. The challenge is to create the conditions for authentic communication and training. It seems to me that this requires adaptability and receptivity on the part of both the teacher and the student. It also requires understanding and honoring the teachings of the ancient ascetic Buddhist path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 20, 2012 10:14 am
Title: Re: Buddhism Fundamentalism?
Content:
Well said Manas. I think Buddhism has suffered enough schisms over the centuries, there's no need to keep repeating that cycle here.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 20, 2012 9:24 am
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
I think there may be a couple of other related issues here Ron. The first is the commonly encountered idea that insight meditation is somehow a "one size fits all" type of practice, suitable as the only truly Buddhist practice, etc., etc. The second, related to this, is the idea that vipassanā meditation and the vipassanā ñāṇa-s can, to varying degrees, be isolated from larger Buddhist framework of ethical training and meditation training. (I qualify this with the phrase "to varying degrees" because most teachers would likely maintain that some degree of appropriate ethical conduct is still required.)

But when we look to the classical training manuals such as the Visuddhimagga or the Śrāvakabhūmi, we find that they recommend assessing a student's personality and character traits, and selecting a meditation practice that's appropriate for that particular individual. Granted, the classification of temperaments given in these texts may seem a bit narrow or restrictive to our modern sensibilities, but the general principle still offers a more dynamic and comprehensive system for addressing the individual student than the "one size fits all" vipassanā meditation that is often encountered today.

Any thoughts?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun May 20, 2012 12:16 am
Title: Re: Buddhism Fundamentalism?
Content:
Indeed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat May 19, 2012 10:14 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
The insight stages can bring up all sorts of stuff. Which is why I think it's important to learn to differentiate between skillful and unskillful mental processes, even subtle ones. Again, there's a distinction to be made between cultivating liberating insight and cultivating hindrances.

Generally, my only concerns are:

(i) when people are encouraged by teachers and training centers to enter into practices that they aren't prepared for. I think it's prudent for many people to slow down the training process and engage in a more gradual, step-wise immersion into meditation practices.

(ii) when other conditions are created that will invariably give rise to painful experiences, motivated by the idea that this in itself will help generate insight into dukkha. I think this is a highly questionable approach, and probably isn't very effective.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat May 19, 2012 2:14 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
Translating nibbidā as "revulsion" is just as problematic as translating dukkha as "suffering." Neither carries the full range of meaning in the context of Buddhist insight. Moreover, if nibbidā isn't associated with joy or equanimity it's likely not very skillful or liberating. There's a distinction to be made between cultivating insight and cultivating hindrances.

The insight stages are advanced levels of practice with one very specific objective: to get outta Dodge and never come back. I suspect that most beginner and intermediate students aren't mentally or emotionally prepared for undertaking this sort of practice. 

And when this type of practice is complicated by a machismo attitude akin to relating to meditation as if it were some kind of extreme sport, then there's little wonder why many problems and difficulties arise. This does students a disservice.

It's likely far more appropriate, effective, and beneficial to offer the majority of laypersons instruction on the 6 recollections and/or the 4 brahmavihārā.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat May 19, 2012 1:48 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
And the elimination of fetters.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 18, 2012 11:33 pm
Title: Re: Buddhism Fundamentalism?
Content:
Well, the ariya stages are some of the least formulated and least explained aspects of the sutta strata of material, and probably the most open to interpretation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 18, 2012 11:02 pm
Title: Re: Buddhism Fundamentalism?
Content:
Yes, I think the basic message becomes clearer. Although it's the message transmitted through the texts. And that message is still subject to interpretation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 18, 2012 10:31 pm
Title: Re: Buddhism Fundamentalism?
Content:
All that we know of the Buddha and his teachings comes to us through the texts preserved by Buddhist traditions. There's no way of reaching beyond these texts and ascertaining with certainty what the Buddha actually said.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 18, 2012 3:20 pm
Title: Re: 5 pranas and their symbolic
Content:
I think there are Pāli medical texts, but I have no idea about the contents. There are a number of texts listed in Ven. Nyanatusita's Reference Table of Pāli Literature under Anthologies from the Suttantas and the Commentaries, Paritta, Cosmology, Medicine, and Lexicography.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 18, 2012 2:48 pm
Title: Re: Buddhism Fundamentalism?
Content:
Hi Dan &amp; all,

Just to add a couple of points:

(i) Conditionality (idappaccayatā), the complexity of the human condition considered in its totality, and the pragmatism of Buddhist soteriology, seem to me to pose serious challenges to the effectiveness of trying to maintain a rigid fundamentalism.

(ii) While conditionality, conditioned arising, and the four noble truths set the foundational structure of the dhammavinaya, the methods and modes of communication used to teach and practice this foundational structure are open to variation and adaptability as long as they accord with that foundational framework.

And one further tangential point:

(iii) There is ample material contained in the Pāli Tipiṭaka to support and validate the legitimacy of a bodhisattayāna. In fact, one could easily thread together passages from texts in the Khuddakanikāya to make proto-bodhisattayāna suttas. This method of threading together pericopes to create larger units of suttanta is already quite evident even in the earlier strata of materials contained in the first four Nikāyas.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 18, 2012 2:31 am
Title: Re: Secular view - The Future of Religion
Content:
As an aside: It's worth noting that the phrase "right view with effluents" is unique to MN 117 whereas the Madhyamāgama parallel (MĀ 189) to MN 117 only mentions right view defined as "There is what is given, what is offered...." It seems reasonable that MĀ 189 is the earlier version in this regard and MN 117 displays considerable revisions parallel to the Abhidhamma Vibhaṅga and Dhammasaṅgaṇī.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 17, 2012 4:22 pm
Title: Re: Why Meditate?
Content:
"Neither difficult nor easy...." -- Lingzhao (daughter of Layman &amp; Mrs. Pang)


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat May 12, 2012 6:01 am
Title: Re: How do we explain the experiences of Theists?
Content:
These types of experiences would generally be types of samādhis. A somewhat interesting paper on this subject is The Stages of Christian Mysticism and Buddhist Purification by Lance Cousins, which looks at the path structures of the Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Ávila and Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 10, 2012 8:33 am
Title: Re: It's that time of the year again... (Happy Birthday Ben!)
Content:
Happy birthday Ben!!!


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 10, 2012 8:31 am
Title: Re: Happy Birthday Bhante Yuttadhammo!
Content:
Happy birthday Bhante!


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed May 09, 2012 12:43 am
Title: Re: Jhāna According to the Pāḷi Nikāyas
Content:
The most recent versions are available on the Samādhikkhandha section of the Measureless Mind website.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon May 07, 2012 3:24 am
Title: Re: Hot Topics: Atheist Quotes
Content:
A quick thank you to the admin, moderators, and fellow members for taking the time to reflect on these sorts of issues.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon May 07, 2012 2:53 am
Title: Re: The most funny part of enlightenment is. It's not needed, af
Content:
Well said Dan.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 04, 2012 9:44 pm
Title: Re: Jhāna According to the Pāḷi Nikāyas
Content:
Well, the five sense faculties still function, but since the object-support of jhāna is a mental representation, it's accurate to say that the functioning consciousness is mental consciousness. As MN 38 Mahātaṇhāsankhaya Sutta informs us, "Consciousness is reckoned by the particular condition dependent upon which it arises."

Attending to a mental representation (nimitta) in jhāna doesn't require that all the five senses are totally shut down. There is a difference between attending to a mental representation via mental consciousness, and the formless attainments wherein the mind is totally isolated from the five sense faculties. In commentarial terms, attending exclusively to a cognitive representation already occurs at the stage of access samādhi. Thus, the engagement is exclusively that of the recognition of the counterpart representation via mental consciousness. The difference between access samādhi and and the first jhāna is the degree of stability of the jhāna factors. The difference between the first jhāna and the formless attainments is indicated in both the Vimuttimagga and the Visuddhimagga when they discuss the formless attainments and mention Aḷāra Kālāma not seeing or hearing the five-hundred carts passing by when abiding in a formless attainment.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 04, 2012 12:59 pm
Title: Re: Jhāna According to the Pāḷi Nikāyas
Content:
For anyone interested in the jhāna related pericopes found in the suttas, here is what the commentary on the Sāmaññaphala Sutta has to offer for the following passage pertaining to the first jhāna:
He drenches, steeps, fills, and permeates this very body with the joy and pleasure born of seclusion so that there is no part of his whole body that is not permeated by joy and pleasure born of seclusion.

The commentary explains:
This very body: this body born of action [i.e. born of kamma]. He drenches: he moistens, he extends joy and pleasure everywhere. Steeps: to flow all over. Fills: like filling a bellows with air. Permeates: to touch all over.

His whole body: in this monk's body, with all its parts, in the place where acquired [form] continuity occurs there is not even the smallest part consisting of skin, flesh, and blood that is not permeated with the pleasure of the first jhāna.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri May 04, 2012 1:29 am
Title: Re: Jhāna According to the Pāḷi Nikāyas
Content:
What about them Alex?


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 03, 2012 10:20 pm
Title: Re: Jhāna According to the Pāḷi Nikāyas
Content:
Lakkhaṇūpanijjhāna isn't limited to magga &amp; phala, it pertains to vipassanā as well. Saṃyuttanikāya Sāratthappakāsinī Sagāthāvagga Aṭṭhakathā 1.36 Saddhāsuttavaṇṇanā:
Tattha lakkhaṇūpanijjhānaṃ nāma vipassanāmaggaphalāni.

Therein, lakkhaṇūpanijjhāna is the name of insight, path, and fruit.

Vipassanā hi tīṇi lakkhaṇāni upanijjhāyatīti lakkhaṇūpanijjhānaṃ.

Insight meditates upon the three characteristics, therefore it is meditation on characteristics.

Maggo vipassanāya āgatakiccaṃ sādhetīti lakkhaṇūpanijjhānaṃ.

The path completes the task begun by insight, therefore it is meditation on characteristics.

Phalaṃ tathalakkhaṇaṃ nirodhasaccaṃ upanijjhāyatīti lakkhaṇūpanijjhānaṃ.

Fruition meditates on the characteristic of reality that is the truth of cessation, therefore it is meditation on characteristics.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 03, 2012 9:35 pm
Title: Re: Jhāna According to the Pāḷi Nikāyas
Content:
Jhāna which scrutinizes characteristics (lakkhaṇūpanijjhāna) and supramundane jhāna (lokuttarajjhāna) are still considered necessary.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 03, 2012 3:57 am
Title: Re: How did the Buddha reach Awakening?
Content:
Samādhi makes discernment (paññā) possible because it's through samādhi that phenomena become apparent. SN 35.97 Pamādavihārī Sutta:
If one abides with restraint over the mind faculty, the mind is not scattered among mental phenomena cognizable by the mind. If the mind is not scattered, gladness is born. When one is gladdened, joy is born. When the mind is uplifted by joy, the body becomes tranquil. With a tranquil body, one abides with pleasure. A pleasurable mind becomes concentrated. When the mind is concentrated, phenomena become apparent. Due to phenomena becoming apparent, one is designated as ‘one who abides diligently.’


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 03, 2012 3:05 am
Title: Re: How did the Buddha reach Awakening?
Content:
Yes. The teachings of the entire Tipiṭaka can be summarized in three points: (i) maintain appropriate ethical conduct (sīla); (ii) calm and compose the mind (samādhi); (iii) let go of attachment to even that through discernment (paññā).

Rinse and repeat as many times as is necessary.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu May 03, 2012 2:06 am
Title: Re: How did the Buddha reach Awakening?
Content:
Yes, and a pragmatic approach would be to survey all of the relevant sources and recognize the elements that they have in common, namely, the four jhānas &amp; knowledge of paṭiccasamuppāda (indicated in terms of the four noble truths in many cases). From this we can reasonably infer that these are essential elements, and either (i) the first two of the triple-knowledges, or (ii) the formless samāpattis &amp; nirodhasamāpatti are non-essential elements. Fortunately for all of us this has been what the Pāli tradition Theras have understood as well.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed May 02, 2012 11:38 pm
Title: Re: How did the Buddha reach Awakening?
Content:
The supramundane aspects of the paths and fruitions are really only systematically explained in the exegetical parts of the Tipiṭaka. Thus, it's prudent to look there to see how apparent aberrations in sutta accounts are resolved. The most relevant systematic canonical analyses can be found primarily in the Paṭisambhidāmagga, the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, and the Vibhaṅga, with the help of their commentaries. (Much of Part III of the Visuddhimagga is basically Buddhaghosa's commentary on the Paṭisambhidāmagga.)

In all of these sources it's clear that the four jhāna model is preferred (pretty much exclusively). Some scholars have suggested, with reference to both the extant Chinese translations of the Āgamas and the Vibhaṅga (which is considered an early exegesis), that the four jhāna model predates the nine samāpatti model, and that the latter may have been imported into the canon due to early Jain and other Samaṇa influences.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed May 02, 2012 4:34 am
Title: Re: Prayers for SATTVA
Content:
Yes, good news indeed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed May 02, 2012 4:29 am
Title: Re: Hot Topics: Atheist Quotes
Content:
Indeed. I find this inter-Buddhist orientation more useful.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue May 01, 2012 9:00 pm
Title: Re: Hot Topics: Atheist Quotes
Content:
Contrary to the New Atheists assertions that all religious beliefs are in some way equivalent to the beliefs of terrorist extremists, I don't try to draw an equivalency between the beliefs of atheistic materialism and, for example, the everpresent possibility of the mass annihilation of thousands of human beings from the detonation of a nuclear bomb, or any of the other horrors that Western science gave to our species in the 20th century.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue May 01, 2012 7:49 pm
Title: Re: Hot Topics: Atheist Quotes
Content:
Yeah, I thought it was a Buddhist board, not a New Atheism board. And I'm no shrinking violet -- I have no problem with hot topics. What I find most unhelpful is statements which are completely erroneous from a Buddhist perspective being asserted as somehow compatible with Buddhism. Atheistic materialism is a parasite which has successfully infected the Western imagination, and is now trying to infect Buddhism, primarily Pāli Buddhism, in the guise of myopic scientism. And if this weren't cause enough for concern, as Rowboat has already indicated, the views and expressions of the proponents of New Atheism are every bit as caustic and contemptuous as the views of the religious extremist which they are attempting to criticize.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue May 01, 2012 6:34 pm
Title: Re: Hot Topics: Atheist Quotes
Content:
There's nothing skillful about atheistic materialism. Moreover, a thread which is de facto dedicated to highlighting statements ridiculing the beliefs of all other world religions is unseemly at best.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue May 01, 2012 10:05 am
Title: Re: Hot Topics: Atheist Quotes
Content:
I will again voice my concerns regarding that Atheist Quotes thread (since there is no allowance for criticism in the thread itself): What is the value of this Atheist Quotes thread on a Buddhist discussion forum? Firstly, a thread in the Open Dhamma sub-forum that is forever closed to any open discussion is quite pointless. Secondly, the views of many modern atheists are antithetical to the Buddhadhamma and having a thread which is not open to free discussion of the issues involved could be seen by onlookers as lending tacit support to such antithetical views.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue May 01, 2012 6:58 am
Title: Re: Thoughts on Form and Consciousness in Dependent Origination
Content:
Of course it can, and it does. When one attains the fruition of stream-entry then any aggregates, sense spheres, and dhātus (consciousness, name &amp; form), etc. which would arise in the future for a worldling are completely terminated and cease forever. When one attains the fruition of a once-returner then any aggregates (consciousness, name &amp; form), etc. which would arise in the future for a stream-entrant are completely terminated and cease forever. When one attains the fruition of a non-returner then any aggregates (consciousness, name &amp; form), etc. which would arise in the future for a once-returner are completely terminated and cease forever. And finally, when one attains the arahant fruition then any aggregates which would arise in the future for a non-returner are completely terminated and cease forever.

Why is this so? Because in each case the causes and conditions for future arising are eliminated with the fruition of each noble path. This is the whole point of conditioned arising (paṭiccasamuppāda) -- it occurs and ceases to occur due to specific conditionality (idappaccayatā). Phenomena arise according to specific conditionality:
When this is, that is.
From the arising of this comes the arising of that.

And phenomena cease according to specific conditionality:
When this isn’t, that isn’t.
From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue May 01, 2012 6:35 am
Title: Re: What exactly is 'Unbinding'?
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Apr 30, 2012 7:00 pm
Title: Re: Cessation of perception and feeling and Nibbana
Content:
When one emerges from the cessation attainment the mind contacts either signlessness, undirectedness, or emptiness (just as with the contemplation of impermanence, etc.), and inclines towards nibbāna. MN 44:
"When a monk has emerged from the cessation of perception &amp; feeling, lady, how many contacts make contact?"

"When a monk has emerged from the cessation of perception &amp; feeling, friend Visakha, three contacts make contact: contact with emptiness, contact with the signless, &amp; contact with the undirected."

"When a monk has emerged from the cessation of perception &amp; feeling, lady, to what does his mind lean, to what does it tend, to what does it incline?"

"When a monk has emerged from the cessation of perception &amp; feeling, friend Visakha, his mind leans to seclusion, tends to seclusion, inclines to seclusion."

Visuddhimagga 23.50 comments as follows:
Towards what does the mind of one who has emerged tend? It tends towards nibbana. For this is said: 'When a bhikkhu has emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, friend Visakha, his consciousness inclines to seclusion, leans to seclusion, tends to seclusion' (M.i,302).


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Apr 30, 2012 6:07 pm
Title: Re: The Beautiful Golden Stupa of Kassapa Buddha
Content:
Thanks Yawares, for sharing!


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:07 am
Title: Re: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DHAMMAKID
Content:
Happy birthday!!!


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:05 am
Title: Re: my goals and ways of practice
Content:
An internet discussion forum isn't a very suitable medium for discussing the specific details of meditation practice MP. There's too many variables which can only be adequately addressed through face to face communication with somebody in the specific tradition of the practitioner.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:51 am
Title: Re: my goals and ways of practice
Content:
You really don't know what you're talking about. You might want to learn what the suttas and commentaries actually teach.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Apr 28, 2012 5:10 pm
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
I agree with Mike for the reasons already given. Some things -- like the Buddha's awakening -- aren't available for verification via direct perception. Also, for the Buddhist path to be optimally effective, it requires the development of both cognitive and affective qualities. Otherwise, practice is just a barren head trip with little power to transform one's life to the extent necessary for the radical process of Buddhist awakening.

Ven. Bodhi has some very insightful things to say on this subject. For example, in Going for Refuge &amp; Taking the Precepts he offers the following:
Like any other act of consciousness the going for refuge is a complex process made up of many factors. These factors can be classified by way of three basic faculties: intelligence, volition, and emotion....

The third aspect of going for refuge is the emotional. While going for refuge requires more than emotional fervour, it also cannot come to full fruition without the inspiring upward pull of the emotions. The emotions entering into the refuge act are principally three: confidence, reverence, and love. Confidence (pasada) is a feeling of serene trust in the protective power of the refuge-objects, based on a clear understanding of their qualities and functions. Confidence gives rise to reverence (garava), a sense of awe, esteem, and veneration born from a growing awareness of the sublime and lofty nature of the Triple Gem. Yet this reverence does not remain cool, formal, and aloof. As we experience the transforming effect of the Dhamma on our life, reverence awakens (pema). Love adds the element of warmth and vitality to the spiritual life. It kindles the flame of devotion, coming to expression in acts of dedicated service by which we seek to extend the protective and liberative capacity of the threefold refuge to others.

This skillful affect doesn't necessarily come easily. For some of us it's been informed by long nights sitting with the clouds of doubt and disquiet in silent retreat.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:31 am
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
Like I've said, I have faith in the three jewels. Devotion as well. So let me ask you: Do you think that's stupid?


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 27, 2012 11:07 pm
Title: Re: Thoughts on Form and Consciousness in Dependent Origination
Content:
Just to add a bit about how the reverse sequence of paṭiccasamuppāda occurs in terms of the four noble paths (stream-entry, etc.)....

When one attains the fruition of stream-entry then any aggregates (consciousness, name &amp; form), etc. which would arise in the future for a worldling (in connection with the first three fetters and related outflows) are completely terminated and cease.

For example, Nettippakaraṇa 4.42 quotes the verse from Ud 7.1 Paṭhamalakuṇḍakabhaddiya Sutta, and then explains how this verse pertains to a learner's liberation (sekhāvimutti), i.e. the first three fruition attainments, but specifically in terms of the fruition of stream entry:
Above, below, everywhere released, 
He does not see that “I am this.”
Thus liberated, he crosses the flood
Not crossed before, for no further renewal of existence.

[Learner’s liberation: Sekhāvimutti]

He does not see that “I am this.” This is the eradication of identity-view (sakkāyadiṭṭhi). That is the learner’s liberation (sekhāvimutti). That itself is the learner's five faculties. This is the way of entry by faculties.

Those same learner's five faculties are knowledge (vijjā). With the arising of knowledge [there is] the cessation of ignorance; with the cessation of ignorance, the cessation of volitional fabrications; thus the whole of dependent arising. This is the way of entry by the aspects of dependent arising.

That same knowledge is the discernment aggregate (paññākkhandha). This is the way of entry by aggregates.

That same knowledge is included in fabrications. These fabrications, [which in this case are] free from mental outflows and are not factors of existence, are comprised within the dhamma element (dhammadhātu). This is the way of entry by elements.

That dhamma element is included in the dhamma sphere (dhammāyatana), which [in this case] is free from mental outflows and not a factor of existence. This is the way of entry by spheres.

It is one liberated by means of the learner’s liberation and the non-learner’s liberation (sekkhāya ca vimuttiyā asekkhāya ca vimuttiyā) who crosses the flood not crossed before, for no further renewal of existence.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:52 pm
Title: Re: Thoughts on Form and Consciousness in Dependent Origination
Content:
I think the most straightforward way to look at the common forward sequence of paṭiccasamuppāda in the context of practice is to see that the link of feeling is where the path intersects with it. For example, MN 38 Mahātaṇhāsankhaya Sutta:
On seeing a form with the eye, he is not attached to it if it is pleasing, he is not averse to it if it is displeasing. He remains with mindfulness of the body present, with a measureless mind, and he discerns as it really is the liberation of mind and liberation through discernment where those worthless, unskillful qualities cease without remainder. 

On hearing a sound with the ear, he is not attached to it if it is pleasing, he is not averse to it if it is displeasing. He remains with mindfulness of the body present, with a measureless mind, and he discerns as it really is the liberation of mind and liberation through discernment where those worthless, unskillful qualities cease without remainder. 

On smelling an odor with the nose, he is not attached to it if it is pleasing, he is not averse to it if it is displeasing. He remains with mindfulness of the body present, with a measureless mind, and he discerns as it really is the liberation of mind and liberation through discernment where those worthless, unskillful qualities cease without remainder. 

On tasting a flavor with the tongue, he is not attached to it if it is pleasing, he is not averse to it if it is displeasing. He remains with mindfulness of the body present, with a measureless mind, and he discerns as it really is the liberation of mind and liberation through discernment where those worthless, unskillful qualities cease without remainder. 

On touching a tactual object with the body, he is not attached to it if it is pleasing, he is not averse to it if it is displeasing. He remains with mindfulness of the body present, with a measureless mind, and he discerns as it really is the liberation of mind and liberation through discernment where those worthless, unskillful qualities cease without remainder. 

On cognizing a phenomenon with the mind, he is not attached to it if it is pleasing, he is not averse to it if it is displeasing. He remains with mindfulness of the body present, with a measureless mind, and he discerns as it really is the liberation of mind and liberation through discernment where those worthless, unskillful qualities cease without remainder. 

Having thus abandoned favoring and opposing, whatever feeling he feels, whether pleasant, painful, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant, he does not delight in that feeling, welcome it, or remain attached to it. As he does not delight in that feeling, welcome it, or remain attached to it, delight in feelings ceases in him. With the cessation of delight, the cessation of clinging; with the cessation of clinging, the cessation of existence; with the cessation of existence, the cessation of birth; with the cessation of birth, aging and death, sorrow, grieving, pain, unhappiness, and despair cease. Such is the cessation of this entire heap of unsatisfactoriness.

Thus, the four applications of mindfulness and the rest of the path factors intersect with the link of feeling. In this way one develops sīla, samādhi, &amp; paññā through the applications of mindfulness and the other 33 requisites of awakening in order to attain the four noble paths, terminate the fetters, and ultimately bring the entire forward sequence of paṭiccasamuppāda to an end.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:33 am
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
Of course holding too tight is counterproductive. This truism also includes holding tightly to aversion towards faith and faith-based practices.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:12 am
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
I think there's already been quite a bit written about this topic by authors such as Ven. Bodhi. I recognize that it's something of a hot-button issue for some people Ben, and I'm not sure that there's much I can add except to suggest that there is a whole spectrum of reasonable, intelligent saddhā that doesn't resort to what is pejoratively referred to as "blind faith," but is still faith in something which is beyond the sphere of certain confirmation via our current perceptions. Primarily, faith requires believing in the awakening of the Buddha. SN 55.37:
"In what way, venerable sir, is a lay follower accomplished in faith?"

"Here, Mahānāma, a lay follower is a person of faith. He places faith in the enlightenment of the Tathāgata thus: 'The Blessed One is ... teacher of devas and humans, the Enlightened One, the Blessed One.' In that way a lay follower is accomplished in faith."

And faith in the Tathāgata is connected to hearing the dhamma; i.e. it's not something that we can confirm with our worldly perceptions. MN 112:
Friends, formerly when I lived the home life I was ignorant. Then the Tathāgata or his disciple taught me the Dhamma. On hearing the Dhamma I acquired faith in the Tathāgata.

Also, it's only with the attainment of stream-entry that one's faith becomes confirmed, unshakable confidence (aveccapassāda). Until this noble stage is attained, not only are we are going to have to deal with the fetter of doubt, we are going to have to continually seek refuge in an authority that is more reliable than our own deluded perceptions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 27, 2012 1:31 am
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
The suttas certainly affirm the development of faith. But it seems that you have a strong aversion to faith-based practice, believing such practice orientation is "stupid." Such a belief is not only inaccurate, it sounds intolerant to me.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:58 pm
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
Firstly, "Buddhism" is merely a designation that primarily refers to the Buddha, dhamma, and sangha. Without developing faith and going for refuge in these three jewels there is no connection with the noble eightfold path. SN 48. 44 Pubbakoṭṭhaka Sutta:
Good, good Sāriputta! Those by whom this has not been known, seen, understood, realized, and contacted with wisdom -- they would have to go by faith in others about this: that the faculty of faith ... the faculty of energy ... the faculty of mindfulness .. the faculty of concentration ... the faculty of wisdom, when developed and cultivated, has the deathless as its ground, the deathless as its destination, the deathless as its final goal.

Secondly, you said "'believing in Buddhism'is micha-ditthi (wrong view)." This statement not only denies all possibilities wherein one can meaningfully believe in Buddhism and have right view, it asserts that any such belief is necessarily not Buddhist, i.e. that belief somehow precludes one from being a Buddhist. This is simply mistaken.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:41 pm
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:42 pm
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
Yes, well, that's a common platitude, but it's probably worthwhile being intellectually honest and vigorous enough to look at just how much of our motivation at any given moment is influenced by belief. In the context of practice, first of all, one has be motivated to actually engage in the ethical and contemplative training and then choose to go for refuge in the three jewels instead of one's own delusional thoughts and emotions. Then one has to at the very least tacitly accept the premise that craving sensual pleasure, craving existence, and craving non-existence is the origin of suffering, in order to be willing to begin to abandon habitual actions, and so on. This is no small thing.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:31 pm
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
Not it isn't.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:28 pm
Title: Re: Rare human incarnation
Content:
The result of meritorious kamma. Seven billion is still a very small number if you consider all of the animals and insects living on this planet at any given time (not to mention the rest of the universe).


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Apr 22, 2012 4:17 pm
Title: Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world
Content:
I doubt that Sam Harris takes either the Pāli dhammavinaya or Zen Buddhism very seriously.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Apr 14, 2012 12:01 pm
Title: Re: Harvard professor describes the 1 particle.
Content:
It's not inconsistent or incompatible, but from the perspective of the Pāli dhammavinaya and Theravāda soteriology it's largely irrelevant. 

Basically, these kinds of ideas resonate better with the thought-world of East Asian Buddhism and Huayan philosophy.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 13, 2012 2:29 pm
Title: Re: Richard Dawkins v Cardinal Pell (panel debate)
Content:
Yeah, well, all I know is that evangelical fundamentalism wasn't a part of my experience, and was generally considered unseemly.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 13, 2012 1:36 pm
Title: Re: Richard Dawkins v Cardinal Pell (panel debate)
Content:
Again, this doesn't accord with my experiences of Christianity. I've attended Buddhist retreats with Catholic nuns participating and have also had rather lengthy discussions with Franciscan friars and Benedictine monks. All in all, well educated, insightful, and generally delightful people dedicated to meaningful self-inquiry and contemplation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Apr 07, 2012 2:45 am
Title: Re: Question on "Emptiness"
Content:
Buddhist insight is all about seeing what is not there. Also, if there were no such thing as yogic perception (yogipratyakṣa) then either (i) common persons would already be liberated, or (ii) liberation would not be possible through developing the noble eightfold path. As for your specific qualms, they've been fully addressed by everyone from Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla to Je Tsongkhapa to Ju Mipham and countless others in between.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 06, 2012 6:19 pm
Title: Re: Question on "Emptiness"
Content:
Not really. Buddhist insight is primarily a process of deconstruction. Eventually one will arrive at the bare absence of conceptual elaboration that these terms refer to, even if one doesn't know the specific terminology.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 06, 2012 6:18 pm
Title: Re: Question on "Emptiness"
Content:
More common in Yogācāra &amp; Madhyamaka treatises.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 06, 2012 1:03 pm
Title: Re: Question on "Emptiness"
Content:
Not so strange really -- just the absence of superimposition/reification (samāropa) via non-conceptual cognition (nirvikalpajñāna).


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 06, 2012 9:26 am
Title: Re: Observer citta and nibbana
Content:
This subject is too specialized and the distinctions too numerous to merit much discussion here on a Theravāda Forum. You might get a half-decent and informed discussion on the Dharma Wheel Forum. (Then again, you might not....)


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 06, 2012 9:17 am
Title: Re: According to the Nikayas ....
Content:
This is Masefield's own peculiar idea, and not widely accepted. It certainly doesn't accord with Theravāda tradition.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 06, 2012 9:12 am
Title: Re: Question on "Emptiness"
Content:
According to the Mahāyāna paths and stages model, the first direct perception of emptiness occurs when the bodhisattva attains the path of seeing. This generally corresponds to a disciple attaining the first noble path of stream entry in Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Apr 06, 2012 6:58 am
Title: Re: happy easter!
Content:
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); }phpBB .


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Apr 04, 2012 11:44 pm
Title: Re: Parinibbana as a goal?
Content:
I see no benefit whatsoever from lowering standards to a level that would be acceptable to you or anyone else.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Apr 04, 2012 11:01 pm
Title: Re: Parinibbana as a goal?
Content:
That was 2500 years ago when the Buddha was alive and teaching, along with a number of direct disciples who were arahants. Conditions are significantly different these days where erroneous interpretations of the dhammavinaya are common and ariya teachers extremely rare.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Apr 04, 2012 10:24 pm
Title: Re: Parinibbana as a goal?
Content:
From a Buddhist perspective the only way to realize the third noble truth is by properly engaging in the fourth noble truth -- the noble eightfold path -- which includes correctly understanding the foundational structure of all four noble truths.

There are a couple of points worth mentioning here. Firstly, trying to pick apart the foundational structure of the four noble truths in order to align the dhammavinaya with materialist assumptions is ill-informed at best. One ends up with terms like "nibbāna" floating around without any context as to what these terms actually refer to in Buddhist soteriology.

Secondly, arahants are about as rare in this world as daytime stars. Even attaining the first noble path of stream entry is extremely rare in this world, involving a very high level of dedication to Buddhist asceticism. If this weren't the case there would be little need for the Vinayapiṭaka. This doesn't mean that it's impossible for lay persons to attain stream entry, but it does mean that to do so involves creating the optimal conditions for extensive solitary practice. This is demanding enough with right view, let alone expending mental energy trying to deny or equivocate over any of the 62 wrong views.

I'm not saying that you're trying to do any of this, but it's worth considering things in context and perspective.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Apr 04, 2012 12:25 am
Title: Re: Parinibbana as a goal?
Content:
It's the happiness of knowing that fetters have been terminated and one will never again be born in a realm as a result of those specific fetters and underlying tendencies. For example, the Paṭisambhidāmagga informs us that the gnoses of full extinguishment (parinibbāna ñāṇa-s), known as the result of each path, are also called gnoses of the bliss of liberation (vimuttisukha ñāṇa-s):
With the stream-entry path, gnosis of the bliss of liberation arises due to the abandoning and cutting off of:

(1) identity view,
(2) doubt,
(3) mistaken adherence to rules and duty,
(4) the underlying tendency of view,
(5) the underlying tendency of doubt.

With the once-returner path, gnosis of the bliss of liberation arises due to the abandoning and cutting off of:

(6) the gross fetter of passion for sensual pleasure,
(7) the gross fetter of aversion,
(8) the gross underlying tendency of passion for sensual pleasure,
(9) the gross underlying tendency of aversion.

With the non-returner path, gnosis of the bliss of liberation arises due to the abandoning and cutting off of:

(10) the secondary fetter of passion for sensual pleasure,
(11) the secondary fetter of aversion,
(12) the secondary underlying tendency of passion for sensual pleasure,
(13) the secondary underlying tendency of aversion.

With the arahant path, gnosis of the bliss of liberation arises due to the abandoning and cutting off of:

(14) passion for form [existence],
(15) passion for formless [existence],
(16) conceit,
(17) restlessness,
(18) ignorance,
(19) the underlying tendency of conceit,
(20) the underlying tendency of passion for existence,
(21) the underlying tendency of ignorance.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Apr 03, 2012 8:51 pm
Title: Re: Parinibbana as a goal?
Content:
Well, it would be a pseudo-parinibbāna. If there's no problem (i.e. post-mortem saṃsāric continuum), then there's no need for a solution (i.e. saupādisesa nibbānadhātu: nibbāna component with fuel remaining &amp; anupādisesa nibbānadhātu: nibbāna component with no fuel remaining).


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:22 pm
Title: Re: Are there any consciousness or awareness in Nibbana?
Content:
Not a bad idea either. It's prudent to just study a bit at a time, and try to internalize the meaning in practice.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 31, 2012 10:34 pm
Title: Re: Bhikkhu Bodhi's sutta discourses on video now available
Content:
Good stuff.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 31, 2012 10:32 pm
Title: Re: The thought that stops......
Content:
Yes, one can either attend to the thought or attend to the volitional intention to think. By attending to the volitional intention, the thought may fall apart (so to speak), because it's deprived of its momentum and fuel.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:16 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
And on a related note, the Pāli Tipiṭaka is a remarkable canon -- from the beginning of the Vinayapiṭaka to the end of the Abhidhammapiṭaka.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:54 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Indeed. It is explicitly stated as such.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:30 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
A puthujjana can be any common worldling, non-Buddhist or Buddhist. And even among Buddhists one can be a blind worldling (andhaputhujjana) who doesn't know much of anything about the dhamma, or a good worldling (kalyāṇaputhujjana) who studies and practices the dhamma.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:57 pm
Title: Re: "The Deathless" (amata)
Content:
A living arahant who has realized the nibbāna component with fuel remaining (saupādisesa nibbānadhātu) still isn't entirely free from the appropriated aggregates of that life insofar as s/he still has a body. The Nettippakaraṇa:
Herein, the world is, at one time or another, somewhat free from to the unsatisfactoriness of pain (dukkhadukkhatā) as well as the unsatisfactoriness of change (vipariṇāmadukkhatā). Why is that? Because there are those in the world who have little sickness and are long-lived. But only the nibbāna component with no fuel remaining (anupādisesa nibbānadhātu) liberates from the unsatisfactoriness of fabrications (saṅkhāradukkhatā).


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:40 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
It's referring to the supramundane paths, not the mind of an arahant. If the supramundane paths were not without effluents then liberation would not be possible.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:32 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Yes, I've been referring to the noble eightfold path as pertaining to noble persons -- stream-entrants and above. The attainment of stream-entry is also called the level or stage of seeing (dassanabhūmi) and the higher paths are called the stage of cultivation (bhāvanābhūmi).


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:20 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
According to the classification system enumerated in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, etc., any occurrence of a skillful mind (kusala citta) will be associated with right view, but only the path and fruition minds are supramundane (lokuttara) with right view that is a factor of the path (maggaṅga) included in the path (maggapariyāpanna). Thus, while the wording is a bit different, the "right view with effluents" would correspond to any skillful mind of the sensual sphere (kāmāvacara), the form sphere (rūpāvacara), or the formless sphere (arūpāvacara), and the "right view without effluents" would correspond to the path and fruition cognitions which penetrate the four noble truths and take cessation as the object-support.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:10 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Right. According to the commentarial tradition the "noble right view, without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the path" occurs when one attains the noble path of stream-entry. This is why it's called noble (ariyā), without effluents (anāsavā), transcendent/supramundane (lokuttarā), and a factor of the path (maggaṅgā).


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:04 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
That description could agree with the traditional interpretation, depending on what he means by "stand[ing] on the threshold to stream-entry." Of course, Ṭhānissaro doesn't always go along with the commentarial tradition.

At any rate, the traditional version has it that the noble path moment of stream-entry is supramundane because one penetrates the four noble truths for the first time, and this results in the elimination of the first three fetters. The technical term for this is the "path moment," where, according to the Paṭisambhidāmagga, "Right view in the sense of seeing emerges from wrong view..." and so on for the other seven factors of the noble eightfold path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:34 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Yes, they're also called path attainers (maggalābhi). In a couple of commentaries there is also mention of the lesser stream-entrant (cūlasotāpanna) who is still on the level of a worldling (puthujjanabhūmi), in addition to those who are established on the path of stream-entrance (sotāpattimaggattha) and have attained the level of noble ones (ariyabhūmi).


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:50 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
This is the traditional understanding: The noble eightfold path arises for the first time at the moment of stream-entry.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:41 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Accepting what the texts say on the subject doesn't entail maintaining that "strongly holding rebirth-view is mandatory for progress in the Dhamma." I suggest you're misunderstanding my intentions as well as what I've said.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:36 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Well, I'm pretty much familiar with most alternate interpretations that have been put forward in the past 100 years, as well as the Indian, Tibetan, and East Asian varieties that have been developed over the past 2000 years. And of all these, I find that the Theravāda tradition has been uniquely able to retain and transmit the Dhamma and Bhikkhu Pāṭimokkha to the modern world. Of course, in the real-world this isn't perfect. But as a lineage it offers a pragmatic working model that I believe is still capable of delivering liberation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:25 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
I haven't seen any credible points raised against the traditional readings in this thread yet. What I see are some tacit epistemological assumptions and qualms rooted in metaphysical naturalism and physicalism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 7:07 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
It cannot deliver certainty about the particulars.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 6:32 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Text-critical analysis is speculative. The methodology of textual criticism is not able and will never be able to demonstrate what the historical Buddha actually taught.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 6:25 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Well, I can't speak for Ven. Bodhi or Alan Wallace, but from where I'm sitting it has nothing to do with fear or dogma. It has to do with accurately reading the texts. And in this regard the mainstream Buddhist understanding of the texts isn't mistaken, and therefore, isn't in need of correction.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:12 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
What I see is yet another novel and unsustainable re-interpretation of the Buddhadhamma on your part. Ven. Bodhi, Dhamma Without Rebirth:
[T]o downplay the doctrine of rebirth and explain the entire import of the Dhamma as the amelioration of mental suffering through enhanced self-awareness is to deprive the Dhamma of those wider perspectives from which it derives its full breadth and profundity. By doing so one seriously risks reducing it in the end to little more than a sophisticated ancient system of humanistic psychotherapy.

Alan Wallace, Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist:
To ignore the most compelling evidence of what the Buddha taught and to replace that by assertions that run counter to such evidence is indefensible. And when those secular, atheistic assertions just happen to correspond to the materialistic assumptions of modernity, it is simply ridiculous to attribute them to the historical Buddha.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:15 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Ven. Ṭhānissaro's Introduction pertaining to the absence of reference to the 4NT in this sutta is also relevant to the absence of reference to the triple knowledge.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:11 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
The passage from MN 60 Apaṇṇaka Sutta is consistent with the rest of the canon, including the knowledges comprising the Buddha's awakening:
1. the content of the Buddha's awakening
2. the first two of the three higher knowledges
3. the first five of the six higher gnoses

As well as the explicit passages regarding past lives found throughout the Anamataggasaṃyutta. And also the Khuddakanikāya Theragāthā &amp; Therīgāthā where many of the arahant monks and nuns state that they attained either the triple knowledge (tevijjā) or the six higher gnoses (chaḷabhiññā). This is further corroborated by SN 8.7 Pavāraṇā Sutta, which informs us that of 500 arahants present on that occasion, 60 had triple knowledge, 60 had the six higher gnoses, 60 were liberated both ways (ubhatobhāgavimuttā, meaning jhānas &amp; formless attainments), and the rest were liberated through discernment (paññāvimuttā). Therefore, there were many arahants who had direct knowledge of past lives and the passing away and reappearance of beings. DN 2 tells us that these knowledges are fruits of the contemplative life. Thus, the MN 60 statement that a person who says that "There is no next world" thereby makes himself an opponent to those arahants who know the next world is entirely consistent with the rest of the Pāli Tipiṭaka.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:43 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
And it is assumptions of materialistic atheism which feed the qualms and doubts found in Batchelor's Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist and other writings. For example, in his article No Future In A Parrot's Egg:
I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say.

And in Suspending Belief:
The idea that there will be something spiritual or subtle, some sort of consciousness that can escape the collapse of the body and brain, is not very credible in the modern scientific worldview.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:11 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
The canon is quite clear that there actually is a next world. I see no good reason for equivocating over this.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:02 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
They are sources of refuge.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:01 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Indeed. MN 58: "In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, but endearing &amp; agreeable to others, he does not say them."


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 6:45 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
The Pāli Tipiṭaka is the authority. The ancient Theras are also the authority.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:05 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
The wrong view in question is as follows:
There is no next world,... no spontaneously reborn beings; no brahmans or contemplatives who, faring rightly and practicing rightly, proclaim this world and the next after having directly known and realized it for themselves. A person is a composite of four primary elements. At death, the earth (in the body) returns to and merges with the (external) earth-substance. The fire returns to and merges with the external fire-substance. The liquid returns to and merges with the external liquid-substance. The wind returns to and merges with the external wind-substance. The sense-faculties scatter into space. Four men, with the bier as the fifth, carry the corpse. Its eulogies are sounded only as far as the charnel ground. The bones turn pigeon-colored. The offerings end in ashes. Generosity is taught by idiots. The words of those who speak of existence after death are false, empty chatter. With the break-up of the body, the wise and the foolish alike are annihilated, destroyed. They do not exist after death.

MN 60 Apaṇṇaka Sutta:
Because there actually is the next world, the view of one who thinks, 'There is no next world' is his wrong view. Because there actually is the next world, when he is resolved that 'There is no next world,' that is his wrong resolve. Because there actually is the next world, when he speaks the statement, 'There is no next world,' that is his wrong speech. Because there actually is the next world, when he is says that 'There is no next world,' he makes himself an opponent to those arahants who know the next world. Because there actually is the next world, when he persuades another that 'There is no next world,' that is persuasion in what is not true Dhamma.

Again, one cannot attain the noble path of stream-entry while maintaining a wrong view which contradicts the arahants who know the next world.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 4:33 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
And this is also a wrong view. Again, one cannot attain the path of stream-entry while maintaining a wrong view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 12:46 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
They are not necessarily the same.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 12:30 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
There are seven wrong views that are classified as doctrines of annihilationism (ucchedavāda). There are four wrong views that are classified as doctrines of endless equivocation (amarāvikkhepavāda). There is also the wrong view of nihilism (natthika-diṭṭhi), the wrong view of non-doing (akiriya-diṭṭhi), and the wrong view of non-causality (ahetu-diṭṭhi).


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:59 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Equivocation about the actuality of the next world is a wrong view. DN 1:
Herein, bhikkhus, a certain recluse or a brahmin is dull and stupid. Due to his dullness and stupidity, when he is questioned about this or that point, he resorts to evasive statements and to endless equivocation: 'If you ask me whether there is a world beyond — if I thought there is another world, I would declare that there is. But I do not take it thus, nor do I take it in that way, nor do I take it in some other way. I do not say that it is not, nor do I say that is neither this nor that.'

Similarly, when asked any of the following questions, he resorts to the same evasive statements and to endless equivocation: Is there no world beyond? Is it that there both is and is not a world beyond? Is it that there neither is nor is not a world beyond?

It's impossible to simultaneously hold a wrong view and right view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:28 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Food can be brought to the monastery and prepared by a kitchen steward, and so on. This is commonly done and doesn't violate the vinaya, nor does it impede the generation of merit on the part of the lay donors.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 26, 2012 12:41 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Human knowledge of the natural sciences has developed significantly in the last 400 years. Human knowledge of kamma, rebirth, and the noble eightfold path has not. Moreover, geology and cartography are not relevant disciplinary fields for understanding kamma, the recollection of past lives, the vision of the passing away and reappearance of sentient beings, and the noble eightfold path. Therefore, there is no need for buddhas or arahants to have developed detailed models and maps pertaining to these worldly disciplines.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 26, 2012 6:56 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
It's not the dhamma nor the vinaya which needs to change. It's the views of the people who go for refuge in the three jewels which need to change. This is what the path is all about. There is a developmental process. Otherwise, human beings would already be awake and there would be no need for a noble eightfold path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:37 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Buddhist ethics entail engaging in actions that are more specific than just being a moral person. The actions motivated by Buddhist ethics include the laity acting in a reciprocal relationship with the monastic sangha. This includes generating merit (puñña) by giving monastics material requisites, and even participating in Uposatha days, and so on. This reciprocity between laity and monastics is essential for the continuity of the dhammavinaya.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:36 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
You've read Batchelor. While he tries to be careful with his use of language, it's clear that assumptions of atheistic materialism underlies his Confessions and other related writings. For example, in his article Suspending Belief:
The idea that there will be something spiritual or subtle, some sort of consciousness that can escape the collapse of the body and brain, is not very credible in the modern scientific worldview.

And in No Future In A Parrot's Egg:
I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say.

And again:
As for the law of moral causation ('karma'): this is human justice dressed up as cosmic justice and then imputed to the impersonal workings of the natural world.

It's usually explicitly stated corresponding to the idea that "It's okay to be an atheist and a materialist and a Buddhist at the same time." Of course, this claim is a contradiction. If one is a materialist, then insofar as they consider themselves to be a Buddhist, they are a Buddhist who maintains a wrong view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:37 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
I previously replied to you here. As for why I chose to focus on this particular term, please see this reply.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:30 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Yes, and that's all good David. There are people trying to associate Buddhism with the view of atheistic materialism. IMO it's worthwhile acknowledging this trend and voicing and re-affirming the traditional view of the Pāli dhamma and Theravāda.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:18 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
If someone accepts the existence of devas and higher realms then they are not atheistic.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:16 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
I don't doubt that most of these individuals are decent people. That isn't an issue. I'm highly skeptical of these novel trends to jettison significant portions of the dhamma which aren't reducible to a neo-Lokāyata materialist worldview and epistemology.

In short, there is no Pāli dhamma teaching which denies the validity of rebirth. In fact, nowhere in the Vinayapiṭaka, the Suttapiṭaka, the Abhidhammapiṭaka, the Aṭṭhakathā, or the Tīkā is the validity of rebirth ever set aside as unimportant.

This notion of questioning rebirth, setting aside the teachings on rebirth, or denying that the Buddha taught rebirth is entirely a modern phenomenon occurring due to the influence of materialist views. This entire phenomenon is a dodgy enterprise -- a narcissistic urge to remake the samaṇa Gotama in one's own image.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 4:42 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Rebirth is quite literal. SN 15.10:
The heap of bones one person leaves behind 
With the passing of a single aeon 
Would form a heap as high as a mountain: 
So said the Great Sage. 
This is declared to be as massive 
As the tall Vepulla Mountain 
Standing north of Vulture’s Peak 
In the Magadhan mountain range.

SN 15.13:
This is the greater: the blood you have shed from having your heads cut off while transmigrating &amp; wandering this long, long time, not the water in the four great oceans.

The blood you have shed when, being cows, you had your cow-heads cut off: Long has this been greater than the water in the four great oceans.

The blood you have shed when, being water buffaloes, you had your water buffalo-heads cut off... when, being rams, you had your ram-heads cut off... when, being goats, you had your goat-heads cut off... when, being deer, you had your deer-heads cut off... when, being chickens, you had your chicken-heads cut off... when, being pigs, you had your pig-heads cut off: Long has this been greater than the water in the four great oceans.

The blood you have shed when, arrested as thieves plundering villages, you had your heads cut off... when, arrested as highway thieves, you had your heads cut off... when, arrested as adulterers, you had your heads cut off: Long has this been greater than the water in the four great oceans.

Why is that? From an inconceivable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating &amp; wandering on. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries — enough to become disenchanted with all fabrications, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released.

Thag 3.14:
While wandering on I went to hell;
went again &amp; again to the world of the hungry shades;
stayed countless times, long, in the pain of the animal womb;
enjoyed the human state;
went to heaven from time to time;
settled in the elements of form,
the elements of formlessness,
neither-perception, perception-less.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 4:05 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
There are gods and goddesses who have attained the noble path and are noble ones. Vimānavatthu 1.16:
Thus I am a goddess, knowing the undying, a disciple of the Tathagata, the Unrivalled One; a knower of Dhamma established in the first fruit, a stream-enterer. Henceforth there is no bad bourn for me.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 12:11 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
If you read the Khuddakanikāya Theragāthā &amp; Therīgāthā you'll notice that many of the arahant monks and nuns had attained either the triple knowledge (tevijjā) or the six higher gnoses (chaḷabhiññā). And SN 8.7 Pavāraṇā Sutta informs us that of 500 arahants present on that occasion, 60 had triple knowledge, 60 had the six higher gnoses, 60 were liberated both ways (ubhatobhāgavimuttā, meaning jhānas &amp; formless attainments), and the rest were liberated through discernment (paññāvimuttā). Therefore, there were many arahants who had direct knowledge of past lives and the passing away and reappearance of beings. These knowledges are fruits of the contemplative life. This is why MN 60 Apaṇṇaka Sutta states that when a person says that "There is no next world," he makes himself an opponent to those arahants who know the next world.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:22 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Indeed. Thank you Ven. Pesala. It seems that other related consequences can be dismissing the validity of merit (puñña), not participating in Uposatha days, and the kind of moral relativism which fails to appreciate the purpose and value of monastic ordination.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 9:47 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Caveat:  

Well, again Mike, I specifically chose this term for a reason. Part of the issue is this: If one is highly confident that they will attain the arahant path in this life, or, if one is highly confident that there is nothing after this life and death is the end (which, of course, means parinibbāna for everyone), then the issue of rebirth, higher and lower realms, etc., is not a significant aspect of the dhamma or right view. 

But if one isn't convinced of the certainty of either of these two endings, then, as you know, Theravāda Buddhism offers a complete worldview and practice, including generating merit (puñña), and practicing the perfections (pāramī), and so on, in order to attain a good rebirth as a human or god. And far from being an inferior, conciliatory version of the Buddhadhamma, it is a meaningful and valid right view which can inform all aspects of practice and life. This Theravāda Buddhist worldview is far removed from the mainstream atheism being touted by popular authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and even Stephen Batchelor and other Secular Buddhism folks.

This Theravāda Buddhism is most fully expressed in texts such as the Apadāna, Buddhavaṃsa, Cariyāpiṭaka, and the Vimānavatthu -- where deities describe their former meritorious deeds that resulted in their rebirth as deities in heavenly mansions. Again, this worldview isn't compatible with mainstream atheism, which dismisses all of this. Indeed, even some of the "sutta-only" Buddhists dismiss these teachings as "late additions to the canon" and therefore spurious or illegitimate. Well, I disagree.

Of course, numerous Buddhist authors -- both academics and teachers -- consider Buddhism to be atheistic in the narrow sense of the word, i.e. denying a Prime Mover creator God. But in the real-world this restrictive sense of the term "atheism" has been eclipsed by the inclusion of a myopic belief in scientific materialism, which is incompatible with Buddhist rebirth, and related teachings. Therefore, this pesky little word has significant connotations that are contrary to 2500 years of Pāli dhammavinaya and Theravāda Buddhism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 7:34 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Yes, well, I can assure you that this subject forces me to step outside of my comfort zone. It's an aspect of dhmma that I have always been quite happy to avoid discussing. But the dhammavinaya is much more than a few modern materialist and secular trends.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:56 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Well, there are a few related issues. The wrong view already quoted earlier in this thread includes atheism, materialism, and moral nihilism. Regarding atheism, Arvind Sharma, Buddhism and Atheism:
Because it posits the existence of devas, original Buddhism cannot be considered an atheistic religion in the broad sense.

Alfred Bloom, Buddhism and Atheism:
Buddhism is not, therefore, atheistic in the modern understanding which developed in the West as a reaction to theistic Christianity.

Michael Martin, Atheism and Religion:
To the extent then that atheism consists in the denial of the existence of god or gods Buddhism is not technically atheistic, since what it really questions is not the existence but the significance of god or gods.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 5:37 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Atheism isn't limited to rejection of a creator God or monotheistic deity, and so on.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:48 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Agreed. As I mentioned the other day on another thread, if someone has a sincere interest in Buddhism then I think they should be willing to keep an open mind on the question of rebirth, and at least accept that this is a significant teaching of the Buddhadhamma, even while they remain agnostic themselves.

On a related note, one of the trends that I've noticed over the years is that there is a certain significant subset of Westerners who are drawn to the Pāli dhamma and Theravāda who are more comfortable with the rational, analytical, and objective perspective than with the intuitive, holistic, subjective perspective. And it's sometimes the case that people who highly value rationalism are suspicious of the more visionary, subjective perspective. But I think both aspects are equally valuable and it's worthwhile -- even necessary -- to work towards integrating both. Awakening requires developing the optimal mental qualities for practice, both cognitive and affective, the rational and the visionary.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:21 pm
Title: Re: Happy Birthday Dmytro!
Content:
Happy birthday!!!


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:17 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
It doesn't matter what I believe.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:08 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Agreed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 1:23 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
It doesn't matter what I believe. However, I can assure you that I haven't developed samādhi to the rarefied level of jhāna mastery, which, of course, is necessary to induce iddhis. But at any rate, with proper context the activity that this passage is describing might not be quite as far out as it may seem to someone's modernist, materialist influenced sensibilities. Sue Hamilton, Identity and Experience: The Construction of the Human Being According to Early Buddhism:
Of all of these supernormal abilities, only one, the creation of the body, is specifically stated to be manomaya [mind-made]. But just as the mind-made body required that the bhikkhu, having achieved the stated meditative level, "apply and bend-down his mind" in order to create such a body, so in the description of every single one of the other abilities, it clearly states that first the bhikkhu has to apply and bend-down his mind. The difference seems to be that the body is created by the mind whereas the other supernormal abilities are activities of the mind: in the former case, the mind produces something; in the latter case the mind does something.

Still remarkable, yes. But not impossible.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:50 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Sure. Theravādins who have gone for refuge in the three jewels have a number of reliable sources for ascertaining valid knowledge:
1. the Pāli Tipiṭaka
2. the written &amp; verbal testimony of noble persons
3. inferential perception
4. direct perception

By using these reliable sources we can come to accept the validity of Buddhist teachings which are central to the Buddha's awakening and the knowledge of other awakened arahants as well, even though we don't have direct perception of these knowledges ourselves:
1. the content of the Buddha's awakening
2. the first two of the three higher knowledges
3. the first five of the six higher gnoses

Moreover, by correctly engaging in the noble eightfold path it is possible to personally realize these higher knowledges. But first, one has to abandon the limitations of accepting the false dhammas of atheistic and materialistic views.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:21 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Nāstika in this context means not believing in the authority of the Vedas.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:16 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
More relevant is the rebirth denial of atheists who claim to be "Buddhists." Stephen Batchelor, No Future in a Parrot's Egg:
I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:00 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Again, neither theism nor atheism is an accurate classification of Buddhism. Satischandra Chatterjee and Dhirendramohan Datta, An Introduction to Indian Philosophy:
In modern Indian languages, "āstika" and "nāstika" generally mean "theist" and "atheist", respectively. But in Sanskrit philosophical literature, "āstika" means "one who believes in the authority of the Vedas" or "one who believes in life after death". ("nāstika" means the opposite of these).... In the second sense, even the Jaina and Buddha schools are "āstika", as they believe in life after death. The six orthodox schools are "āstika", and the Cārvāka is "nāstika" in both the senses.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 24, 2012 4:34 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
This has already been explained to you multiple times.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:00 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Theism (including polytheism) generally includes the worship and propitiation of one or more gods. This is not a part of the Pāli dhamma or Theravāda Buddhism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:52 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Agreement and consensus isn't required or even desired.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:19 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
What does  mean? Are you tacitly implying that he didn't?


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:13 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Actually, it highlights a couple of points pertaining to the contemporary culture of real-world Western pop Buddhism, especially the type of pop Buddhism with leanings towards an inaccurate reading of the Pāli suttas, such as what is being peddled by Stephen Batchelor. As already mentioned:

(i) The term "Buddhist Atheism" is a contradiction in terms. The Buddha affirmed the existence of gods and higher realms. He was the teacher of gods and men. The Pāli canon contains many assertions regarding the existence of gods, higher realms, past lives, and rebirth in the next world. 

(ii) Contrary to the opinion of Stephen Batchelor, et al, the Buddha was neither an atheist, an apatheist, nor an agnostic.


Of course, the response on this forum was predictable.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:12 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Nonsense. Nowhere have I lumped Buddhism in with theism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:55 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
It most certainly is.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:49 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Again, the Buddha affirmed the existence of gods and higher realms. He was the teacher of gods and men. The Pāli canon contains many assertions regarding the existence of gods, higher realms, past lives, and rebirth in the next world. Contrary to the opinion of Stephen Batchelor, et al, the Buddha was neither an atheist, an apatheist, nor an agnostic.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:36 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
As already shown, this is an overly restrictive definition of the term.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:17 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Show me a definition of atheism that affirms the existence of gods and higher realms?


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:51 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Again, pointing out that atheism is incompatible with Buddhism doesn't entail equating Buddhism with any form of theism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:45 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
The term was chosen for a reason. Buddhism is not compatible with atheism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:40 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
This is a nonstarter. Pointing out that atheism is incompatible with Buddhism doesn't entail equating Buddhism with any form of theism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:38 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
This is a discussion of view, not a judgement of people.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:36 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:50 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
To be more clear: Atheism (in the broad sense of the term as already stated), moral nihilism, materialism, physicalism, and so on, are each an unskillful false dhamma. None of them are compatible with the Buddhadhamma.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:35 pm
Title: Re: Theism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Yes, of course. That doesn't make him an atheist.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:02 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Yes, of course. I'm not posting on an Atheist discussion forum, nor do I have any interest in doing so. This is a Theravāda Buddhism discussion forum. As such, discussion of what is right view and true dhamma and what is wrong view and false dhamma is both appropriate and relevant.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:55 pm
Title: Re: Theism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
As a Buddhist, Dharmakīrti was neither an atheist nor a materialist.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 1:51 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Yes, well, pseudo-Buddhist anti-intellectualism is unskillful as well.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 1:33 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Of course it isn't justified, that's not the point. The point is that perceptions matter when dealing with people of other religious and cultural traditions. Hence the need for skillfulness. There are a number of rules in the Vinaya which were created to placate public criticisms of monastics contravening local social and cultural standards.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 1:15 pm
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Sorry, my mistake.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:08 pm
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Indeed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 11:59 am
Title: Re: Batchelor's "Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist"
Content:
Maybe Ven. Huifeng has some time these days to comment upon these differences further?....

(There are a number of other informative replies in this thread as well.)


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:15 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Yes, well, discussion of an arahant's death doesn't pertain to the topic at hand. The views under discussion in this topic pertain the birth and death of non-arahants.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:10 am
Title: Re: Are there any consciousness or awareness in Nibbana?
Content:
I can't recall offhand what the Theravāda commentaries have to say on this (and I can't think of where to look in the commentaries for a discussion of it). Of the top of my head I would guess that the underlying continuum (bhavanga-sota &amp; bhavanga-citta) continues during deep, dreamless sleep, and that mental consciousness (manoviññāṇa) occurs when dreaming. However, there may be a more precise description of the mental processes during the dream state.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:57 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
The suttas are consistent in calling the above mentioned nihilist view a wrong view and untrue dhamma (asaddhamma). MN 60 Apaṇṇaka Sutta:
Now, householders, of those contemplatives &amp; brahmans who hold this doctrine, hold this view — 'There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed. There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no brahmans or contemplatives who, faring rightly and practicing rightly, proclaim this world and the next after having directly known and realized it for themselves' — it can be expected that, shunning these three skillful activities — good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct, good mental conduct — they will adopt &amp; practice these three unskillful activities: bad bodily conduct, bad verbal conduct, bad mental conduct. Why is that? Because those venerable contemplatives &amp; brahmans do not see, in unskillful activities, the drawbacks, the degradation, and the defilement; nor in skillful activities the rewards of renunciation, resembling cleansing.

Because there actually is the next world, the view of one who thinks, 'There is no next world' is his wrong view. Because there actually is the next world, when he is resolved that 'There is no next world,' that is his wrong resolve. Because there actually is the next world, when he speaks the statement, 'There is no next world,' that is his wrong speech. Because there actually is the next world, when he is says that 'There is no next world,' he makes himself an opponent to those arahants who know the next world. Because there actually is the next world, when he persuades another that 'There is no next world,' that is persuasion in what is not true Dhamma. And in that persuasion in what is not true Dhamma, he exalts himself and disparages others. Whatever good habituation he previously had is abandoned, while bad habituation is manifested. And this wrong view, wrong resolve, wrong speech, opposition to the arahants, persuasion in what is not true Dhamma, exaltation of self, &amp; disparagement of others: These many evil, unskillful activities come into play, in dependence on wrong view.

And in regarding the opposite view as right view and true dhamma (saddhamma):
Now, householders, of those contemplatives &amp; brahmans who hold this doctrine, hold this view — 'There is what is given, what is offered, what is sacrificed. There are fruits &amp; results of good &amp; bad actions. There is this world &amp; the next world. There is mother &amp; father. There are spontaneously reborn beings; there are brahmans &amp; contemplatives who, faring rightly &amp; practicing rightly, proclaim this world &amp; the next after having directly known &amp; realized it for themselves' — it can be expected that, shunning these three unskillful activities — bad bodily conduct, bad verbal conduct, bad mental conduct — they will adopt &amp; practice these three skillful activities: good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct, good mental conduct. Why is that? Because those venerable contemplatives &amp; brahmans see in unskillful activities the drawbacks, the degradation, and the defilement; and in skillful activities the rewards of renunciation, resembling cleansing.

Because there actually is the next world, the view of one who thinks, 'There is a next world' is his right view. Because there actually is the next world, when he is resolved that 'There is a next world,' that is his right resolve. Because there actually is the next world, when he speaks the statement, 'There is a next world,' that is his right speech. Because there actually is the next world, when he is says that 'There is a next world,' he doesn't make himself an opponent to those arahants who know the next world. Because there actually is the next world, when he persuades another that 'There is a next world,' that is persuasion in what is true Dhamma. And in that persuasion in what is true Dhamma, he doesn't exalt himself or disparage others. Whatever bad habituation he previously had is abandoned, while good habituation is manifested. And this right view, right resolve, right speech, non-opposition to the arahants, persuasion in what is true Dhamma, non-exaltation of self, &amp; non-disparagement of others: These many skillful activities come into play, in dependence on right view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:53 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Atheism is a parasite trying to infect the Pāli dhamma and Theravāda Buddhism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:45 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
An arahant isn't an atheist, nihilist or materialist. S/he isn't identified with the body in any way. Also, any view pertaining to the post-mortem existence or non-existence of an arahant is a fetter of view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:40 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
The view isn't limited to a denial of rebirth. As already indicated, it is inclusive of a denial of any type of gods, higher and lower realms, and entails a denial of post-mortem existence.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:07 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Here is a good example of the type of atheistic extremism that is being touted by many these days:



Equating religion with terrorism is fallacious.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:59 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Nonsense. Buddhism is not atheism, and shouldn't be associated with atheism. Rowe, William L. "Atheism". In Edward Craig. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
[A]n atheist, in the broader sense of the term, is someone who disbelieves in every form of deity, not just the God of traditional Western theology.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:53 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
It pertains to understanding the four noble truths.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:10 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
This quote is not advocating natthika-diṭṭhi.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:02 am
Title: Re: Are there any consciousness or awareness in Nibbana?
Content:
In unconscious states such as a faint or deep sleep there is no active consciousness occurring.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:31 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
I included the term atheism for a reason. In a contemporary context, it is the mainstream and widespread version of annihilationism. And while the term annihilationism may seem abstract or even quaint and archaic, atheism is well known.

One of the reasons that atheism is an unskillful view to maintain and express, is that it is divisive and dismissive of other religious views. Moreover, people who are members of other religions have very low opinions of atheists. For example, a University of British Columbia study found that religious people distrust atheists as much as rapists. Buddhism is not atheistic, and shouldn't be associated with atheism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:16 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
You've never heard of anyone who believes in this view:
The person is composed of the four great elements; when he dies, earth returns and goes back to the element of earth, water returns and goes back to the element of water, fire returns and goes back to the element of fire, wind returns and goes back to the element of wind, while the senses disappear into space.... Fools and wise alike are destroyed and perish at the breaking up of the body, they do not exist after death.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:12 am
Title: Re: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
Woops! Accidentally deleted this reply when editing.....


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 3:51 am
Title: Atheism is an Unskillful False Dhamma
Content:
The view of atheistic nihilism (natthika-diṭṭhi) is an unskillful view to maintain and express. Not only is it a denial of the right view of affirmation (atthika-diṭṭhi) which affirms rebirth and the next world, it is also an untrue dhamma (asaddhamma) that contradicts the arahants who know that there is a next world. The wrong view of nihilism is described in DN 2 Sāmaññaphala Sutta:
The person is composed of the four great elements; when he dies, earth returns and goes back to the element of earth, water returns and goes back to the element of water, fire returns and goes back to the element of fire, wind returns and goes back to the element of wind, while the senses disappear into space.... Fools and wise alike are destroyed and perish at the breaking up of the body, they do not exist after death.

The suttas inform us that this nihilistic wrong view leads to wrong intention, wrong speech, and opposition to noble ones. It can also result in trying to convince others to accept this false dhamma. Moreover, maintaining the view of atheistic nihilism is considered to be a type of clinging. Paul Fuller, The Notion of Diṭṭhi in Theravāda Buddhism:
Indeed the view of nihilism is sometimes used to explain attachment. For example, the Vibhaṇga considers four attachments (upādānas): ‘attachment to sensuality’, ‘attachment to view’, ‘attachment to precepts and vows’ and ‘attachment to the theory of self’ (kāmupādānaṃ, diṭṭhupādānaṃ, sīlabbatupādānaṃ, attavādupādānaṃ). The attachment of wrong view is explained, first, as the view of nihilism, then it is stated that all wrong views constitute attachment to view. All wrong views are a form of greed and attachment.

Some food for thought....


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 1:52 am
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
You're misunderstanding the passage in question. The Buddha does not deny rebirth.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:06 am
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
The setting aside of the ten undeclared questions doesn't pertain to the issue of the next world. Involvement with the former is a fetter of views, while the latter is a right view (sammādiṭṭhi) and a true dhamma (saddhamma), because there actually is a next world and this can be known by arahants with the appropriate higher knowledges. MN 60 Apaṇṇaka Sutta:
Because there actually is the next world, the view of one who thinks, 'There is a next world' is his right view. Because there actually is the next world, when he is resolved that 'There is a next world,' that is his right resolve. Because there actually is the next world, when he speaks the statement, 'There is a next world,' that is his right speech. Because there actually is the next world, when he is says that 'There is a next world,' he doesn't make himself an opponent to those arahants who know the next world. Because there actually is the next world, when he persuades another that 'There is a next world,' that is persuasion in what is true Dhamma. And in that persuasion in what is true Dhamma, he doesn't exalt himself or disparage others. Whatever bad habituation he previously had is abandoned, while good habituation is manifested. And this right view, right resolve, right speech, non-opposition to the arahants, persuasion in what is true Dhamma, non-exaltation of self, &amp; non-disparagement of others: These many skillful activities come into play, in dependence on right view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:20 pm
Title: Re: Demarkation Dispute
Content:
T'was meant as a joke....


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:51 pm
Title: Re: Demarkation Dispute
Content:
The name is already taken. Tibetan dzogchen is called the path of self-liberation (rang grol lam).


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 3:03 pm
Title: Re: Question on full awakening within seven births
Content:
It means that full awakening will occur in seven births or less. So yes, it could occur in one, two, three, etc., births, depending on the individual.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 2:56 pm
Title: Re: Are there any consciousness or awareness in Nibbana?
Content:
Here the term is "citta" but the meaning is the same as above. Each path consciousness and fruition consciousness are mental consciousnesses (manoviññāṇa). These path and fruition consciousnesses are considered supramundane.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:48 pm
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Sounds like a slogan for New Atheism....


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:20 am
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Yes, this situation can be improved, but there would be no ordained sangha without the support of the laity.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:09 am
Title: Re: Human re-births
Content:
Indeed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 6:44 am
Title: Re: Andrew Olendzki on Protestant Buddhism
Content:
Cittaviveka (Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, England). The bottom photo is Ven. Gavesako.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:39 am
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
On a practical, day to day level of Buddhist interactions, I wonder how the time-honored, indispensable relationship between the laity and the ordained sangha fits with this idea of secularism?



This is one of the most important aspects of contemporary Theravāda Buddhism: That people can still ordain and devote their entire life to the three jewels, and know that they will be supported by the lay community and have their material needs of food, clothing, and shelter met.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:23 am
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Sure, and no derision was intended or stated. Refuge involves more than going for refuge in part of a buddha and a little bit of dhamma, regardless of one's abilities, living situation, and practice commitments. In for a penny, in for a pound.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:00 am
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Dhamma? Maybe. But hardly the Buddhadhamma. I can understand why someone would want to appropriate a few of the ethical and meditative aspects of Buddhism, even though they dismiss kamma, as well as nibbāna as the fruition of the noble eightfold path, and the entire Pāli tradition. But what I fail to understand is why, when they clearly aren't interested in sincerely going for refuge in the three jewels, would they nevertheless want to identify themselves as Buddhist? The views of the "Secular Buddhists" that I've read are far more compatible with Cārvāka philosophy than with any Buddhist tradition that's ever existed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:33 pm
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Yes, of course.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:30 pm
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Nothing's shocking. But I'd suggest that you're misunderstanding Ṭhānissaro.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:25 pm
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
As you probably know, I don't dispute that there was expansion and redaction of the canon. But the claims of Knickelbine and Batchelor, et al, go much further than this. Where I see a canon that displays a remarkably high degree of internal consistency and integrated harmony -- a dhamma that is just as relevant today as it was 2000+ years ago -- Knickelbine sees dramatic doctrinal discrepancies and evidence of conflict and discord inserted by devotees who couldn't maintain an accurate transmission uncontaminated by worldly dhammas. This seems to me to be a highly cynical reading of the texts and amounts to belittling the entire received tradition.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:03 pm
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Yes, yes, according to Knickelbine, Secular Buddhism exists, in part, because "the metaphysics of ancient India cannot be embraced by an educated, intellectually honest person today." 

But back to the question: How precisely do the Buddhist teachings on rebirth violate common sense, scientific knowledge, and the core prinicples of anatta and conditioned arising? What precisely is inaccurate about the traditional view of the Buddha's teachings on rebirth?


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 7:51 pm
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Let's take a look at some of your claims. In your review you juxtapose what you call a "metaphysical Gotama" against a "pragmatic, phenomenalist Gotama." I assume that you're not suggesting that the Buddha suffered from a dissociative identity disorder. Yet you opine that the teachings of these two personalities are in conflict, indicating what you see as a "dramatic discrepancy" within the canonical discourses. You suggest that we should read the teachings of the former Gotama regarding past and future lives as merely comprising "metaphorical poetry." Is this not an assertion that either (i) the teachings of the "metaphysical Gotama" are based on an intentional strategy for teaching morality to people who weren't capable of understanding Gotama's true dhamma, or (ii) these teachings were never intended to be interpreted literally, or (iii) they were composed and inserted into the canon by devotees who were incapable of accurately retaining and transmitting Gotama's true dhamma?

And again, in Authenticity, Anxiety, and the Revision of the Pali Canon you see more conflict and discord. You propose that "significant portions of the Samyutta Nikaya appear to be propaganda, designed either to denigrate the leader of one faction or reinforce the authority of another." Is this not another charge that significant portions of this Nikāya were composed and inserted into the canon by deluded devotees who were more concerned with (and consumed by) unskillful worldly dhammas than with accurately retaining and transmitting Gotama's true dhamma?

And in The Goal of Practice you suggest that there is evidence throughout the canon of attempts to "reconcile Buddhist thought with Vedic soteriology." That is, the traditional formulation of the four noble truths wherein the noble eightfold path leads to the fruition of nibbāna is nothing short of "a metaphysical claim, one that tends to tame the subversive nature of Gotama's teachings and bring them back in line with the mainstream Vedantic doctrine that prevailed in the society of northern India in Gotama's era." Is this not another assertion that at some point after the Buddha's death the dhamma was reworked by devotees who were incapable of accurately retaining and transmitting Gotama's true dhamma?


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:10 pm
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Okay then, let's start here: What precisely is inaccurate about the traditional view of the Buddha's teachings on rebirth?


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:04 am
Title: Re: the great rebirth debate
Content:
Here's a critique of Ven. Ṭhānissaro's The Truth of Rebirth by Mark Knickelbine:

“The Truth of Rebirth” : A Review, Part I

“The Truth of Rebirth”: A Review, Part 2

“The Truth of Rebirth” : A Review, Part 3

Without giving a detailed critique of Knickelbine's review, I'll just say that I found his criticisms weak primarily due to the weakness of the "secular" hermeneutic founded on the premise that the historical Buddha was either an agnostic or materialist, and that all of the teachings on rebirth found in the Pāli canon are either (i) based on a strategy for teaching morality to people who weren't capable of understanding Gotama's true dhamma, or (ii) were never intended to be interpreted literally, or (iii) were composed by deluded Indians in the centuries after the Buddha's death who weren't capable of accurately retaining and transmitting Gotama's true dhamma.

Unfortunately, this premise is entirely speculative. The methodology of textual criticism is not able and will never be able to demonstrate what the historical Buddha actually taught. This is why a necessary distinction needs to be made between Original Buddhism and Early Buddhism. Original Buddhism refers to the actual oral teachings of the historical Gotama and his immediate disciples. Early Buddhism refers to the early formative pre-sectarian period of Indian Buddhism and the extant textual documents which claim to be records of the Buddha's teachings as remembered by his immediate disciples after his death.

And while we can infer some significant information about the early pre-sectarian period of Indian Buddhism with the help of text-critical analysis of the extant discourses, we will never be able to prove with any degree of certainty which of these doctrines and training rules actually originated with the Buddha himself. What is clearly evident, however, is that teachings pertaining to rebirth, higher and lower realms, and supernormal knowledges are found throughout the discourses and are thoroughly integrated into the thought-world of Early Buddhism. And prior to the modern age, informed as it is by empirical science and a materialist worldview, these teachings on rebirth, etc., were never questioned, denied, or dismissed by any Buddhist school or commentator.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:29 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Yes, the relevant sections of MN 60 Apaṇṇaka Sutta: A Safe Bet are quite remarkable, offering a clear step-by-step way forward for people who are not yet comfortable with accepting the whole of the dhammavinaya, especially those aspects of right view which are not easily verifiable via ordinary cognitions. This type of reflection can also help to build confidence in ascertaining valid knowledge of dhamma through inference.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:52 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Yes, this is the gist of AN 3.65 and MN 60, primarily for people who still haven't gone for refuge in the three jewels.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:43 am
Title: Re: Abhidhamma amata
Content:
Indeed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:52 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Indeed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:42 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Nibbāna as taught in the Pāli dhammavinaya is only meaningful in the context of the cessation of becoming (bhavanirodho nibbāna).


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:35 pm
Title: Re: Abhidhamma amata
Content:
FYI, the Abhidhammapiṭaka generally uses the term asaṅkhatā dhātu, and defines this term exactly as nibbāna and asaṅkhata are defined in the suttas. For example, the Abhidhamma Vibhaṅga 184:
What, there, is the not-fabricated component (asaṅkhatā dhātu)? The elimination of passion, the elimination of aggression, the elimination of delusion: this is called the not-fabricated component.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:23 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Yes, of course.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:21 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Your lack of understanding what I've been saying doesn't entail any contradictions on my part.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:12 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
I think a more useful line of questioning would be: Am I willing to engage aspects of the dhamma that are challenging, or do I habitually gravitate only towards teachings that are within my comfort zone?

Personally, I think it's a good idea to really use the dhamma, which includes reflecting on all aspects of the dhamma including those aspects which don't lend themselves to easy answers. The sources that I rely on include (i) the Pāli Tipiṭaka, (ii) the written &amp; verbal testimony of noble persons, (iii) inferential perception, (iv) direct perception.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:41 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
You're again misconstruing what I'm trying to indicate. As far as I'm concerned you're completely free to believe whatever you want to believe or remain agnostic or disbelieve. I've already explicitly said this now two or three times on this thread.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:35 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
As I already tried to indicate, it doesn't matter what I believe. I accept that rebirth is a significant aspect of the received tradition, including the Suttapiṭaka. And this is a Theravāda discussion forum, the Buddhadhamma is more important than my opinions or your opinions or anyone else's opinions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:33 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
But that isn't what MN 60 is saying.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:08 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
If you think that it's beneficial to practice an eightfold path with wrong view then go right ahead. MN 60:
Because there actually is the next world, the view of one who thinks, 'There is no next world' is his wrong view. Because there actually is the next world, when he is resolved that 'There is no next world,' that is his wrong resolve. Because there actually is the next world, when he speaks the statement, 'There is no next world,' that is his wrong speech. Because there actually is the next world, when he is says that 'There is no next world,' he makes himself an opponent to those arahants who know the next world. Because there actually is the next world, when he persuades another that 'There is no next world,' that is persuasion in what is not true Dhamma. And in that persuasion in what is not true Dhamma, he exalts himself and disparages others. Whatever good habituation he previously had is abandoned, while bad habituation is manifested. And this wrong view, wrong resolve, wrong speech, opposition to the arahants, persuasion in what is not true Dhamma, exaltation of self, &amp; disparagement of others: These many evil, unskillful activities come into play, in dependence on wrong view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:47 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Indeed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:46 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Rebirth is an aspect of DO as well. And FTR Lee, I'm hardly a "rebirth proselytizer" (I saw the other paragraph before you edited it out  ). I generally avoid rebirth debates; my own opinion on the subject is moderate. I accept that it is a significant aspect of the received tradition, including the Suttapiṭaka. And this is a Theravāda discussion forum, the Buddhadhamma is more important than my opinions or your opinions or anyone else's opinions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:49 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Ven. Bodhi, A Look at the Kalama Sutta:
[T]he discourse to the Kalamas offers an acid test for gaining confidence in the Dhamma as a viable doctrine of deliverance. We begin with an immediately verifiable teaching whose validity can be attested by anyone with the moral integrity to follow it through to its conclusions, namely, that the defilements cause harm and suffering both personal and social, that their removal brings peace and happiness, and that the practices taught by the Buddha are effective means for achieving their removal. By putting this teaching to a personal test, with only a provisional trust in the Buddha as one's collateral, one eventually arrives at a firmer, experientially grounded confidence in the liberating and purifying power of the Dhamma. This increased confidence in the teaching brings along a deepened faith in the Buddha as teacher, and thus disposes one to accept on trust those principles he enunciates that are relevant to the quest for awakening, even when they lie beyond one's own capacity for verification. This, in fact, marks the acquisition of right view, in its preliminary role as the forerunner of the entire Noble Eightfold Path.

Partly in reaction to dogmatic religion, partly in subservience to the reigning paradigm of objective scientific knowledge, it has become fashionable to hold, by appeal to the Kalama Sutta, that the Buddha's teaching dispenses with faith and formulated doctrine and asks us to accept only what we can personally verify. This interpretation of the sutta, however, forgets that the advice the Buddha gave the Kalamas was contingent upon the understanding that they were not yet prepared to place faith in him and his doctrine; it also forgets that the sutta omits, for that very reason, all mention of right view and of the entire perspective that opens up when right view is acquired. It offers instead the most reasonable counsel on wholesome living possible when the issue of ultimate beliefs has been put into brackets.

What can be justly maintained is that those aspects of the Buddha's teaching that come within the purview of our ordinary experience can be personally confirmed within experience, and that this confirmation provides a sound basis for placing faith in those aspects of the teaching that necessarily transcend ordinary experience.

I understand that it isn't easy for some people to accept the deeper aspects of the Buddhadhamma which aren't easily verifiable via ordinary cognitions. But there's nothing ordinary about entering the stream and aligning all of the path factors of the noble eightfold path. To do so is both extraordinary and supramundane.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:28 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
This doesn't negate the right view taught in MN 117.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:27 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Without right view one is, at best, an ethical person who meditates. This isn't a bad thing, but there's nothing specifically Buddhist about being an ethical person who meditates.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:18 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
One of the purposes of right view with mental outflows is to ensure that one doesn't dismiss the teachings on kamma and engage in unskillful conduct that would result in birth in the lower realms.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:05 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Again, it's utterly impossible to engage in the noble eightfold path while holding a wrong view. This means that it's utterly impossible to attain the path of stream-entry if one denies rebirth. It's utterly impossible to attain the fruition of stream-entry if one denies rebirth. The same goes for the higher paths and fruitions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 5:52 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Again, you're missing the point: There is no possibility of practicing the noble eightfold path with wrong view, i.e. denying rebirth. It isn't possible. There's no noble path without right view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 5:38 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Sorry, but modern science does not and cannot refute rebirth. Empirical science has nothing meaningful to say on the subject.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 5:28 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
But let there be no mistake about it, denying rebirth is indeed a wrong view. MN 117:
And what is wrong view? 'There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed. There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no brahmans or contemplatives who, faring rightly &amp; practicing rightly, proclaim this world &amp; the next after having directly known &amp; realized it for themselves.' This is wrong view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 4:44 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Also, I suggest that you'd do well to read what's been said in this thread more carefully.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 4:31 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Again, if a person doesn't believe in the post-mortem continuum of saṃsāric becomming, then there is no reason whatsoever to want to realize nibbāna. The entire purpose of the noble eightfold path is to realize nibbāna, end the mental outflows, and be released from saṃsāric becomming. Any thesis positing an ulterior purpose is absurd on the face of it.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:51 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
No, the point is that there is no dhamma teaching which denies the validity of rebirth. In fact, nowhere in the Vinayapiṭaka, the Suttapiṭaka, the Abhidhammapiṭaka, the Aṭṭhakathā, or the Tīkā is rebirth ever questioned. This notion of questioning rebirth, setting aside the teachings on rebirth, or denying that the Buddha taught rebirth is entirely a modern phenomenon occurring due to the influence of materialist views. This entire phenomenon is a dodgy enterprise thick with the stench of ego-cherishing -- a narcissistic urge to remake the Buddha in one's own image.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:24 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Oh for goodness sake.... Read the suttas in that samyutta. E.g. SN 15.13:
"The blood you have shed when, being cows, you had your cow-heads cut off: Long has this been greater than the water in the four great oceans.

"The blood you have shed when, being water buffaloes, you had your water buffalo-heads cut off... when, being rams, you had your ram-heads cut off... when, being goats, you had your goat-heads cut off... when, being deer, you had your deer-heads cut off... when, being chickens, you had your chicken-heads cut off... when, being pigs, you had your pig-heads cut off: Long has this been greater than the water in the four great oceans.

"The blood you have shed when, arrested as thieves plundering villages, you had your heads cut off... when, arrested as highway thieves, you had your heads cut off... when, arrested as adulterers, you had your heads cut off: Long has this been greater than the water in the four great oceans."


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 1:35 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Of course the Buddha is teaching in these discourses. SN 15.10:
The heap of bones one person leaves behind 
With the passing of a single aeon 
Would form a heap as high as a mountain: 
So said the Great Sage. 
This is declared to be as massive 
As the tall Vepulla Mountain 
Standing north of Vulture’s Peak 
In the Magadhan mountain range. 

But when one sees with correct wisdom 
The truths of the noble ones— 
Suffering and its origin, 
The overcoming of suffering, 
And the Noble Eightfold Path 
That leads to suffering’s appeasement— 
Then that person, having wandered on 
For seven more times at most, 
Makes an end to suffering 
By destroying all the fetters.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 1:03 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
He also showed that it is. SN 15.3:
"What do you think, monks: Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating &amp; wandering this long, long time — crying &amp; weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — or the water in the four great oceans?"

"As we understand the Dhamma taught to us by the Blessed One, this is the greater: the tears we have shed while transmigrating &amp; wandering this long, long time — crying &amp; weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — not the water in the four great oceans."

"Excellent, monks. Excellent. It is excellent that you thus understand the Dhamma taught by me."

SN 15.9:
"From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating &amp; wandering on. Just as a stick thrown up in the air lands sometimes on its base, sometimes on its side, sometimes on its tip; in the same way, beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving, transmigrating &amp; wandering on, sometimes go from this world to another world, sometimes come from another world to this.

"Why is that? From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating &amp; wandering on. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries — enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released."

SN 15.13:
"What do you think, monks? Which is greater, the blood you have shed from having your heads cut off while transmigrating &amp; wandering this long, long time, or the water in the four great oceans?"

"As we understand the Dhamma taught to us by the Blessed One, this is the greater: the blood we have shed from having our heads cut off while transmigrating &amp; wandering this long, long time, not the water in the four great oceans."

"Excellent, monks. Excellent. It is excellent that you thus understand the Dhamma taught by me."

SN 15.14-19:
"A being who has not been your mother at one time in the past is not easy to find... A being who has not been your father... your brother... your sister... your son... your daughter at one time in the past is not easy to find.

"Why is that? From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating &amp; wandering on. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries — enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released."


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:55 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Rebirth has nothing to do with atoms going anywhere.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:26 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Worldly happiness isn't the point of the noble eightfold path. Moreover, a path without right view isn't the noble eightfold path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:15 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
The latter is pointless without the former.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 11:37 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Stopping saṃsāric becoming by developing the noble eightfold path is uniquely Buddhist.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 11:32 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
I consider the three jewels to be the only refuge, not the deluded cognitions of unawakened worldlings.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:07 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Do you consider a post-mortem continuum to be metaphysical ridiculousness Dave?


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 2:52 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
The actual task of engaging the path to the point of arahant fruition is probably the rarest thing in this world, especially in this day and age. If one's motivation is just to be happy in this life, there are easier ways to go about it than dedicating every moment to being a celibate Buddhist yogi.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 1:07 pm
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
Fortunately, Theravādins who have gone for refuge in the three jewels have a number of reliable sources for ascertaining valid knowledge:

1. the Pāli Tipiṭaka; 
2. the written &amp; verbal testimony of noble persons;
3. inferential perception;
4. direct perception.

These are four powerful assets when employed in concert.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 11:38 am
Title: Re: Lay Buddhists and the end of sexual intercourse?
Content:
I see no good reason to doubt it. The ending of the mental fermentations would entail that the arahant no longer experiences sensual desire. But there's only one way to know for sure: realize the arahant fruition.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 9:55 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
If someone has a sincere interest in Buddhism then I think they should be willing to keep an open mind on the question of rebirth, and at least accept that this is a significant teaching of the Buddhadhamma, even while they remain agnostic themselves.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:48 am
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
As already indicated, "reincarnation" is not an accurate term in a Buddhist context. But to answer your question, if you don't believe in the post-mortem continuum of saṃsāric becomming, then there is no reason whatsoever to want to realize nibbāna.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:31 am
Title: Re: Are there any consciousness or awareness in Nibbana?
Content:
FTR the noble path and fruition attainments occur with both concomitant perception and feeling. Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha:
1. The First Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with initial application, sustained application, joy, happiness, and one-pointedness,
2. The Second Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with sustained application, joy, happiness, and one-pointedness,
3. The Third Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with joy, happiness, and one-pointedness,
4. The Fourth Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with happiness and one-pointedness,
5. The Fifth Jhāna Sotāpatti Path-consciousness together with equanimity and one-pointedness.

These are the five types of Sotāpatti Path-consciousness.

So are the Sakadāgāmī Path-consciousness, Anāgāmī Path-consciousness, and Arahatta Path-consciousness, making exactly twenty classes of consciousness. Similarly there are twenty classes of Fruit-consciousness. Thus there are forty types of supra mundane consciousness.

Also, in keeping with the Kathāvatthu, the Visuddhimagga maintains that the cessation of apperception and feeling, which is also called the cessation attainment (nirodhasamāpatti) is neither supramundane nor not-conditioned (asaṅkhata). Visuddhimagga 23.52:
As to the question: Is the attainment of cessation formed or unformed, etc.? It is not classifiable as formed or unformed, mundane or supramundane. Why? Because it has no individual essence. But since it comes to be attained by one who attains it, it is therefore permissible to say that it is produced, not unproduced.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:25 am
Title: Re: "The Deathless" (amata)
Content:
You're missing the point. Nibbāna is the estinguishment of fetters pertaining to each noble path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:10 am
Title: Re: "The Deathless" (amata)
Content:
C'mon Kevin, you're a pretty intelligent guy, you can do better than this. This type of essentialist language is useless.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:04 am
Title: Re: The Buddha's Challenge in Teaching the Dhamma
Content:
I get your point, but insofar as understanding and interpretation lead to right view, they are also dhamma challenges. Practice becomes much more straightforward when the practitioner understands the elements of Theravāda theory which inform ethical conduct, meditation, and discernment.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 17, 2012 9:20 am
Title: Re: freedom from death
Content:
Far more accurate in meaning than "the Unborn," "the Deathless," and so on.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:18 am
Title: Re: Do the Three Realms Really Exist?
Content:
Thanks Mike!


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 16, 2012 4:46 pm
Title: Re: Are there any consciousness or awareness in Nibbana?
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:19 am
Title: Re: Do the Three Realms Really Exist?
Content:
I refuse to believe in chickens....


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:11 am
Title: Re: The Buddha's Challenge in Teaching the Dhamma
Content:
Yes, and it informs all other aspects of the Buddhadhamma.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:08 am
Title: Re: The Buddha's Challenge in Teaching the Dhamma
Content:
I haven't been following the discussion which (I think) led to this thread too closely, but I'd just like to suggest for your consideration that the other key teachings which you listed above also relate directly to idappaccayatā and paṭiccasamuppāda.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Mar 12, 2012 1:30 am
Title: Re: Shamatha in Five (not nine) Stages?
Content:
I'd recommend visiting a Theravāda monastery if at all possible.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 10, 2012 3:53 pm
Title: Re: Suttas on yoniso manasikara?
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Mar 10, 2012 3:49 pm
Title: Re: The fetters of conceit, ignorance and doubt
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:59 pm
Title: Re: Andrew Olendzki on Protestant Buddhism
Content:
Well said Zavk.

Here are a couple of aspects of Theravāda Buddhism that are worth keeping:


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 09, 2012 2:33 am
Title: Re: Meditation, 5 hindrances, and the misconception
Content:
Language isn't static. The meaning of the English term "meditation" has shifted in the past 40-50 years to include Buddhist definitions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Mar 09, 2012 1:10 am
Title: Re: Shamatha in Five (not nine) Stages?
Content:
The Tibetans prefer Indian commentaries to sūtras. Also, the Tibetan canon doesn't have a complete Śrāvaka Sūtrapiṭaka or Abhidharmapiṭaka. Therefore, they have relied almost entirely on the Abhidharmakośa and the Śrāvakabhūmi for Śrāvaka teachings.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:22 pm
Title: Re: Rarely mentioned criteria of the 1st jhana
Content:
Better to follow the suttas and the word commentary of Peṭakopadesa 7.72:
The twofold bodily and mental pain does not arise in one steadied in directed thought and evaluation, and the twofold bodily and mental pleasure does arise. The mental pleasure thus produced from directed thought is joy, while the bodily pleasure is bodily feeling.

SN 48.40 Uppaṭipāṭika Sutta states that the pain faculty (dukkhindriya) ceases completely in the first jhāna, the unhappiness faculty (domanassindriya) ceases completely in the second jhāna, the pleasure faculty (sukhindriya) ceases completely in the third jhāna, and the happiness faculty (somanassindriya) ceases completely in the fourth jhāna.

SN 48.37 Dutiyavibhaṅga Sutta informs us that the pleasure and pain faculties are born of body contact (kāyasamphassaja), whereas the happiness and unhappiness faculties are born of mind contact (manosamphassaja).

Taking all of the above passages into consideration we can deduce that the non-carnal joy (nirāmisā pīti) of the first jhāna is mental pleasure (cetasika sukha, i.e. somanassa) born of mind contact, and the non-carnal pleasure (nirāmisā sukha) of the first jhāna is bodily pleasure (kāyika sukha) born of body contact.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:07 pm
Title: Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?
Content:
Generally speaking, the different collections of suttas that were compiled and redacted by the various early Buddhist sects are similar enough in content that in practical terms they are teaching the same dhamma, regardless of the differences in how the pericopes are arranged.

Here's Tse-fu Kuan's English translations of the Chinese versions of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and the Kāyagatāsati Sutta, and his endnotes for both suttas:


 Sutta_1.pdf
(94.55 KiB) Downloaded 330 times




 Sutta_2.pdf
(92.14 KiB) Downloaded 293 times




 Notes.pdf
(181.51 KiB) Downloaded 302 times


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Feb 28, 2012 8:13 pm
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Some of us have been contemplating these ideas for as long as Batchelor, et al.

Skepticism cuts both ways.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Feb 28, 2012 3:05 pm
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Feb 28, 2012 4:48 am
Title: Re: Blue light
Content:
Light nimittas are just adventitious side-effects of the development of samādhi that occur for some people. And although some teachers emphasize using the occurrence of light nimittas, these phenomena are not essential for samatha.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Feb 27, 2012 3:48 pm
Title: Re: Blue light
Content:
Just a light nimitta. I get the same, especially the latter part of your description of it "washing over me." It's very easy to get attached to such experiences, but they are adventitious and impermanent like anything else.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:56 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
They all teach rebirth. Why? Because it's a canonical doctrine that has never been questioned prior to the rise of materialist influences in the 20th century.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:53 pm
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
By "monastics" I also have in mind Thai, Cambodian, Chinese, Korean, and Tibetan monastics (rebirth is a pan-Buddhist doctrine).


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 6:32 pm
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Your argument entails that the dhammavinaya has been poorly understood by all Buddhists for approximately the past 2500 years, including all of the best Buddhist minds of India and Asia. Yet, somehow, you and your chosen circle of "secularists" have rediscovered the true meaning of the dhammavinaya all these many centuries after the fact. And even more astonishingly, this dhamma actually has very little in common with the worldview and epistemology presented in the suttas themselves, and a whole lot in common with the worldview of modern scientific materialism! Seems rather self-serving, to say the least.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:58 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Yes, Chah and Sumedho are skillful teachers.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:41 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
To be sure, there are different degrees of commitment and different degrees of the sense of urgency to practice. I wonder though, how this notion of secular Buddhism fits with Buddhist monasticism?... I think most of the ordained monastics I know -- who have dedicated their lives to the dhammavinaya -- do accept the teachings on rebirth and take this view seriously and also practice contemplative recollections like recognition of the uncertainty of the time of death, and so on (although I've never conducted anything like a formal survey on the subject).


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:22 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Firstly, tonglen is more about karuṇā and vedanānupassanā than about mettā. Secondly, the "taking" is a metaphor for inducing empathy by contemplating external feelings.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:17 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Yes, Liberal Theology was (and is) a necessary development in Biblical hermeneutics -- in order to differentiate the mythical and allegorical literary styles from the ethical and soteriological message of Christianity. Theistic religions cannot peacefully and coherently coexist and integrate with modernity without this differentiation. And just like for Christianity, liberal hermeneutics doesn't necessitate the rejection of the afterlife, within the context of the Buddhadhamma this differentiation doesn't necessitate rejecting the teachings on post-mortem continuity.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:41 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
I really don't think Batchelor is, Mike. How can one have a meaningful and coherent "sutta method" which fails to accept the validity of passages which are central to the description of the Buddha's awakening and passages which are common throughout the suttas? Just to mention a few, passages describing:
1. the content of the Buddha's awakening,
2. the first two of the three higher knowledges,
3. the first five of the six higher gnoses.

Failing to accept the validity of these teachings, yet still wanting to be a "Buddhist," is analogous to someone calling themselves a "Christian" yet refusing to accept the Trinity or the Resurrection of Christ. It's nonsensical.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Feb 21, 2012 1:29 am
Title: Re: Comparative Book on Meditation and/or Mystical Experiences
Content:
Here are a few:

Asceticism

The Yogi and the Mystic: Studies in Indian and Comparative Mysticism

The Unity of Mystical Traditions: The Transformation of Consciousness in Tibetan and German Mysticism

The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Feb 20, 2012 1:22 pm
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Yes, the head and the heart each develop at their own pace. And there's no set formula -- this development is unique to each individual. Optimally, any combination of faith and skeptical inquiry that leads to resiliency can be useful to help see one through both the highs and the lows.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Feb 20, 2012 7:15 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Here we're talking about what constitutes valid sources of knowledge (pramāṇa). All Indian philosophical schools accept direct perception (pratyakṣa) and inference (anumāna) as valid sources of knowledge. Scripture (āgama) and verbal testimony (śabda) can be added to inferential knowledge, provided that one accepts the authority of of the scriptural source, author, or speaker.

In the context of the Pāli Tipiṭaka (and related collections preserved in other languages), there is simply too much scriptural material that's been preserved which is beyond the range of consensual, empirical experience of the average human being. In addition, there are a vast number of anecdotal sources (i.e. śabda) from every culture and historical period that speak of certain similar non-ordinary phenomenological experiences that result in significant cognitive and therapeutic changes in the individual. These are often highly valued changes resulting in various degrees of liberation and freedom, as well as other types of direct perception of non-ordinary phenomena. Personally, I consider these sources (āgama &amp; śabda) compelling enough to keep an open mind regarding what I do not (yet) know via direct perception.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 11:43 pm
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
According to the suttas direct knowledge can include the recollection of former lives, the divine eye that can perceive beings in different realms, the divine ear which can hear the same, and so on. This knowledge was part of the Buddha's awakening (and also that of many arahant disciples). Therefore, there is no good reason for limiting knowledge merely to what can be known through deluded cognitions of ordinary worldlings. As already suggested, the epistemological premise of the following:
Secular Buddhism is naturalistic, in that it references natural causes and effects, demonstrable in the known world.

Is better aligned with the naturalistic worldview of the Lokāyata than with the Buddhadhamma. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Indian Philosophy, p. 188:
Purandara (a Lokāyata philosopher) [...] admits the usefulness of inference in determining the nature of all worldly things where perceptual experience is available; but inference cannot be employed for establishing any dogma regarding the transcendental world, or life after death or the law of karma which cannot be available to ordinary perceptual experience.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 9:34 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
People are certainly free to call themselves whatever they want. That's fine. It's a pluralistic world.

Personally, I think it's prudent to resist every urge to remake the samaṇa Gotama in one's own image.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 9:16 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
I think it's inaccurate to attempt to recast the Buddha as advocating a materialist worldview or as being an agnostic.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 9:00 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
In the context of the middle way of practice of the dhammavinaya most modern human beings are hedonists to some degree.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:53 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Yeah, much of it should sound familiar to most contemporary, Western educated readers. In Indian Philosophy, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya quotes S. N. Dasgupta:
Purandara (a Lokāyata philosopher) [...] admits the usefulness of inference in determining the nature of all worldly things where perceptual experience is available; but inference cannot be employed for establishing any dogma regarding the transcendental world, or life after death or the law of karma which cannot be available to ordinary perceptual experience.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 6:21 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
No, but neither do these modern secular "Buddhists." At least not in any traditional Buddhist context.

The Cārvāka views are completely in accord with scientific materialism, physicalism, atheism, or whatever one wants to call it. Most notably in the field of epistemology.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 3:55 am
Title: Re: Life without God: Sam Harris interviews Tim Prowse
Content:
Harris draws a lame caricature of religion and then attacks it ad nauseum. Chris Hedges' opening statement in his debate with Harris:
Sam Harris has conflated faith with tribalism. His book is an attack not on faith but on a system of being and believing that is dangerous and incompatible with the open society. He attacks superstition, a belief in magic and the childish notion of an anthropomorphic God that is characteristic of the tribe, of the closed society. He calls this religion. I do not.

Throughout the debate Harris wasn't willing (or able?) to step out of his narrow little worldview and acknowledge other ways of understanding. Boring stuff really.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 3:01 am
Title: Re: Life without God: Sam Harris interviews Tim Prowse
Content:
Harris is narrow minded and annoying.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 19, 2012 3:00 am
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
Buddhist suttas aren't the best source of information on Indian materialist views....


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Feb 18, 2012 11:02 pm
Title: Re: The Secular Buddhist
Content:
It seems that many of you folks have more in common with ancient Indian materialists than you do with any form of Buddhism. Why not just say that you are materialists who practice meditation?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 12, 2012 2:17 pm
Title: Re: The Dhamma eye: "whatever aising-dhamma cessation-dhamma"
Content:
The simile of writing in water seems to be indicating basically the same thing in both cases, i.e. the non-substantiality of phenomena.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Feb 12, 2012 5:35 am
Title: Re: The Dhamma eye: "whatever aising-dhamma cessation-dhamma"
Content:
Wangchuk Dorje (9th Karmapa) says the same thing.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Jan 31, 2012 5:24 pm
Title: Re: "Original Mind" and the atta
Content:
Ajahn Chah addresses this question in What Is Contemplation:
Question: Is this mind you are talking about called the ‘Original Mind’?

Ajahn Chah’s Answer: What do you mean?

Question: It seems as if you are saying there is something else outside of the conventional body-mind (the five khandhas). Is there something else? What do you call it?

Answer: There isn’t anything and we don’t call it anything – that’s all there is to it! Be finished with all of it. Even the knowing doesn’t belong to anybody, so be finished with that, too! Consciousness is not an individual, not a being, not a self, not an other, so finish with that – finish with everything! There is nothing worth wanting! It’s all just a load of trouble. When you see clearly like this then everything is finished.

Question: Could we not call it the ‘Original Mind’?

Answer: You can call it that if you insist. You can call it whatever you like, for the sake of conventional reality. But you must understand this point properly. This is very important. If we didn’t make use of conventional reality we wouldn’t have any words or concepts with which to consider actual reality – Dhamma. This is very important to understand.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:58 pm
Title: Re: Is shunyatha a Mahayana concept? or a Theravada concept?
Content:
See this thread: Emptiness (Suññatā).


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:32 am
Title: Re: percipient of not-self
Content:
Insight is a process that develops over time. The purpose is to develop disenchantment and dispassion towards bodily and mental phenomena by understanding that all phenomena are empty of self or what pertains to a self (cf. SN 35.85). 

Anatta isn't a thing. Therefore, anattasaññā is not the perception of the presence of something. It's the recognition of the absence of a permanent, unchanging self. Similarly, the recognition of impermanence (aniccasaññā) would be more accurately phrased as the recognition of the absence of permanence. The recognition of unsatisfactoriness (dukkhasaññā) is the recognition of the absence of satisfactoriness in that which is not permanent. And again, the recognition of selflessness (anattasaññā) is the recognition of the absence of a permanent and satisfactory self in that which is not permanent and not satisfactory.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Jan 16, 2012 3:10 pm
Title: Re: Any recomendations for a good book on the Five Aggregates
Content:
It's a decent book but hardly worth that price IMO. If you can get a cheaper used copy or borrow a copy through an inter-library loan, then that would be the way to go.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Jan 16, 2012 1:48 pm
Title: Re: Samatha: supression and cultivation
Content:
Yes. Optimally, we can begin to learn to maintain appropriate attention and mental composure in all four postures. AN 4.12 Sīla Sutta:
If while he is walking, standing, sitting, or reclining, a monk is free from greed and ill will, from sloth and torpor, from restlessness and worry, and has discarded doubt, then his will has become strong and impregnable; his mindfulness is alert and unclouded; his body is calm and unexcited; his mind is concentrated and collected.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Jan 16, 2012 1:29 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
There's no need for "fist pounding." Again, the bottom line is that no matter how hard you search you will never find a singular entity that fulfills the criteria for selfhood.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:39 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
This is just more convoluted double-speak that clarifies nothing. The bottom line is that no matter how hard you search you will never find a singular entity that fulfills the criteria of selfhood.

Ṭhānissaro thinks that because his assertion of an arahant's post-mortem "unadulterated experience" is qualified by being outside of time and space, this should exempt him from adhering to a mistaken view. Well, it doesn't.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:11 pm
Title: Re: Why was the Buddha omniscient?
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:06 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
Indeed.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:05 pm
Title: Re: Samatha: supression and cultivation
Content:
The developmental process is similar regardless of one's chosen meditation subject: By attending to the object-support, in this case the breath, the hindrances are starved of their cognitive and affective nutriments, and the jhāna factors are stabilized.

In terms of method, this is taught in brief in the Paṭisambhidāmagga Ānāpānassatikathā and in detail in the Vimuttimagga, the Visuddhimagga, and numerous contemporary texts and dhamma talks pertaining to ānāpānassati.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Jan 15, 2012 12:09 pm
Title: Re: Samatha: supression and cultivation
Content:
The discourses offer specific meditation subjects for working with the hindrances. There is also a very ancient tradition where the meditation teacher and student assess the students temperament and disposition, and the student is given a specific meditation subject on this basis. For example, if the student has a predominantly passionate, lustful disposition then the meditation subject of an unattractive object (asubhanimitta) is given as the student's main meditation practice. If the student has a more aggressive, impatient type of personality then loving-kindness (mettā) is given as the students main meditation practice, and so on.

A few sutta passages....

Desire for Sensual Pleasure (Kāmacchanda)

To remedy desire for sensual pleasure we are advised to attend to an unattractive object (asubhanimitta). AN 1.2 Nīvaraṇappahāṇavagga:
No other phenomenon do I know, monks, on account of which unarisen desire for sensual pleasure does not arise and arisen desire for sensual pleasure is abandoned as much as on account of this: an unattractive object. For one who attends properly to an unattractive object, unarisen desire for sensual pleasure does not arise and arisen desire for sensual pleasure is abandoned.

Aversion (Byāpāda)

In order to abandon aversion we are instructed to develop the liberation of the mind through loving-kindness (mettācetovimutti). AN 1.2 Nīvaraṇappahāṇavagga:
No other phenomenon do I know, monks, on account of which unarisen aversion does not arise and arisen aversion is abandoned as much as on account of this: the liberation of the mind through loving-kindness. For one who attends properly to the liberation of the mind through loving-kindness, unarisen aversion does not arise and arisen aversion is abandoned.
Lethargy and Drowsiness (Thīnamiddha)

As an antidote to lethargy and drowsiness we are advised to develop the productive mental components of arousal (ārambhadhātu), persistence (nikkāmadhātu), and energetic endeavor (parakkāmadhātu). Other passages advise to practice walking meditation, or the recognition of light. AN 1.2 Nīvaraṇappahāṇavagga:
No other phenomenon do I know, monks, on account of which unarisen lethargy and drowsiness does not arise and arisen lethargy and drowsiness is abandoned as much as on account of this: the component of arousal, the component of persistence, the component of energetic endeavor. For one who has aroused energy, unarisen lethargy and drowsiness does not arise and arisen lethargy and drowsiness is abandoned.
Restlessness and Anxiety (Uddhaccakukkucca)

The remedy for restlessness and anxiety is the development of a pacified mind (cetaso vūpasama). Other passages suggest taking up mindfulness of breathing. AN 1.2 Nīvaraṇappahāṇavagga:
No other phenomenon do I know, monks, on account of which unarisen restlessness and anxiety does not arise and arisen restlessness and anxiety is abandoned as much as on account of this: a pacified mind. For one with a pacified mind, unarisen restlessness and anxiety does not arise and arisen restlessness and anxiety is abandoned.
Doubt (Vicikicchā)

Thorough reflection (yoniso manasikāra) is suggested in order to work with any doubts that we may have about the veracity and effectiveness of the dhamma. AN 1.2 Nīvaraṇappahāṇavagga:
No other phenomenon do I know, monks, on account of which unarisen doubt does not arise and arisen doubt is abandoned as much as on account of this: thorough reflection (yoniso manasikāra). For one who thoroughly reflects, unarisen doubt does not arise and arisen doubt is abandoned.
Generally speaking, the cultivation and development of whichever meditation subject is taken up will lead to the suppression of the hindrances and the appearance and strengthening of the jhāna factors. This developmental process is nicely explained in SN 46.3:
Dwelling thus withdrawn, one recollects that Dhamma and thinks it over. Whenever, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu dwelling thus withdrawn recollects that Dhamma and thinks it over, on that occasion the enlightenment factor of mindfulness is aroused by the bhikkhu; on that occasion the bltikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of mindfulness; on that occasion the enlightenment factor of mindfulness comes to fulfilment by development in the bhikkhu.

Dwelling thus mindfully, he discriminates that Dhamma with wisdom, examines it, makes an investigation of it. Whenever, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu dwelling thus mindfully discriminates that Dhamma with wisdom, examines It, makes an investigation of it, on that occasion the enlightenment factor of discrimination of states is aroused by the bhikkhu; on that occasion the bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of discrimination of states; on that occasion the enlightenment factor of discrimination of states comes to fulfilment by development in the bhikkhu.

While he discriminates that Dhamma with wisdom, examines it, makes an investigation of it, his energy is aroused without slackening. Whenever, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu's energy is aroused without slackening as he discriminates that Dharnma with wisdom, examines it, makes an investigation of it, on that occasion the enlightenment factor of energy is aroused by the bhikkhu; on that occasion the bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of energy; on that occasion the enlightenment factor of energy comes to fulfilment by development in the bhikkhu.

When his energy is aroused, there arises in him spiritual rapture. Whenever, bhikkhus, spiritual rapture arises in a bhikkhu whose energy is aroused, on that occasion the enlightenment factor of rapture is aroused by the bhikkhu; on that occasion the bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of rapture; on that occasion the enlightenment factor of rapture comes to fulfilment by development in the bhikkhu.

For one whose mind is uplifted by rapture the body becomes tranquil and the mind becomes tranquil. Whenever, bhikkhus, the body becomes tranquil and the mind becomes tranquil in a bhikkhu whose mind is uplilted by rapture, on that occasion the enlightenment factor of tranquillity is aroused by the bhikkhu; on that occasion the bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of tranquillity; on that occasion the enlightenment factor of tranquillity comes to fulfilment by development in the bhikkhu.

For one whose body is tranquil and who is happy the mind becomes concentrated. Whenever, bhikkhus, the mind becomes concentrated in a bhikkhu whose body is tranquil and who is happy, on that occasion the enlightenment factor of concentration is aroused by the bhjkkhu; on that occasion the bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of concentration; on that occasion the enlightenment factor of concentration comes to fulfilment by development in the bhikkhu.

He closely looks on with equanimity at the mind thus concentrated. Whenever, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu closely looks on with equanimity at the mind thus concentrated, on that occasion the enlightenment factor of equanimity is aroused by the bhikkhu; on that occasion the bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of equanimity; on that occasion the enlightenment factor of equanimity comes to fulfilment by development in the bhikkhu.

There are a number of other excellent discourses related to this development in the Bojjhaṅgasaṃyutta of the Saṃyuttanikāya. And of course, what these discourses summarize in a few paragraphs can encapsulate years of dedicated practice.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jan 14, 2012 10:18 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
Let's be clear Piotr: Ṭhānissaro's imposition of a latent fire theory only serves to buttress his view of an arahant's post-mortem "unadulterated experience." Not only does this theory contradict Buddhist conditionality, it is inextricably entangled in the very thicket of views that we are instructed to avoid and abandon. It's an ill-conceived interpretive strategy that clarifies nothing, and proliferates mistaken assertions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jan 14, 2012 10:10 pm
Title: Re: Is Nirvana Blissful?
Content:
No. It's the elimination of passion, aggression, and delusion.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:50 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
Anyway, returning to the issues.... 

In Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities, Steven Collins correctly understands that any imposition of a Vedic theory of latent fire in the interpretation of Buddhist discourse only serves to fill in intentional silences with the views of the commentator who resorts to this interpretation, and thereby necessarily diverges from the radical message of the Buddhist discourses themselves. Moreover, any view asserting an analogy to the latent fire theory will result in rendering Buddhist soteriology impossible:
In the majority of uses of fire-imagery in Buddhist texts the fires which go out or go down like the sun, are -- like the three fires of Greed, Hatred, and Delusion -- precisely what must be wholly eliminated for release to be possible. If these fires simply return to their "primitive, pure, invisible" state, then according to Buddhist logic and psychology, their invisible existence and potential reappearance would make release impossible.

To concretize the fire-image into a conceptually specific doctrine ... is an example of what the last chapter described as filling Buddhist silences, vocalizing their meaning. Scholars who do this often have their own account of what Buddhism must really mean, one which is divergent with the discourse of Buddhism itself.

Also, in Nibbāna and the Fire Simile, Ven. Ñāṇananda correctly understands that this Vedic theory of latency contradicts Buddhist conditionality:
'The fire has gone out.' How ridiculous it is to conclude that the fire goes somewhere when it goes out. If one asks whether the extinguished fire has gone to the East or West or North or South, it is a foolish question. If something exists depending on causes and conditions, when those causes and conditions are removed, it has to cease....

There is a flush of Buddhist literature thriving in the West which attempts to interpret this fire simile in the light of the Vedic myth that the extinguished fire 'goes into hiding.' Though the Buddha succeeded in convincing the Brahmin interlocutors of the dependently arisen nature of the fire by the reductio-ad-absurdum method, these scholars seem to be impervious to his arguments. What is worse, misinterpretations have even sought refuge in blatant mistranslations of sacred texts.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:04 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
You haven't shown anything of the sort. Ṭhānissaro has been quoted verbatim throughout this thread. There has been no distortion of any of his statements.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:53 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
Ṭhānissaro also thinks that his assertion of a post-mortem "unadulterated experience" of "absolute freedom from all constraints of time, space, and being" should somehow exempt him from getting entangled in wrong views. Well, it doesn't.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:07 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
Sure I did. Mind Like Fire Unbound:
The first chapter surveys ancient Vedic ideas of fire as subsisting in a diffused state even when extinguished. It then shows how the Buddha took an original approach to those ideas to illustrate the concept of nibbāna after death as referring not to eternal existence, but rather to absolute freedom from all constraints of time, space, &amp; being....

Now, although the Vedic texts contain several different theories concerning the physics of fire, there is at least one basic point on which they agree: Fire, even when not manifest, continues to exist in a latent form.... 

But when we look at how the Buddha actually used the image of extinguished fire in his teachings, we find that he approached the Vedic idea of latent fire from another angle entirely: If latent fire is everywhere all at once, it is nowhere in particular. If it is conceived as always present in everything, it has to be so loosely defined that it has no defining characteristics, nothing by which it might be known at all. Thus, instead of using the subsistence of latent fire as an image for immortality, he uses the diffuse, indeterminate nature of extinguished fire as understood by the Vedists to illustrate the absolute indescribability of the person who has reached the Buddhist goal....

This experience of the goal — absolutely unlimited freedom, beyond classification and exclusive of all else — is termed the elemental nibbāna property with no 'fuel' remaining (anupādisesa-nibbāna-dhātu). It is one of two ways in which nibbāna is experienced.... Thus the completely free &amp; unadulterated experience we have been discussing is that of nibbāna after death.

And so Ṭhānissaro wants to have his cake and eat it too. According to him, an arahant's post-mortem state is a "completely free and unadulterated experience," yet we're supposed to believe that this assertion is somehow still immune from being a type of eternalist view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:26 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
The bottom line is that his theory on nibbāna isn't even Buddhist. At best, it's mildly amusing. It certainly doesn't offer a credible alternative or pose a credible challenge to the standard path structures contained in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī and the Vibhaṅga, etc. So there's really no need to get too involved in criticizing it.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Jan 12, 2012 6:48 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
There is no good reason to equate the two.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:19 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
In the endnotes to MN 49 he also asserts that nibbāna is a form of consciousness:
Some have objected to the equation of this consciousness with nibbana, on the grounds that nibbana is no where else in the Canon described as a form of consciousness. Thus they have proposed that consciousness without surface be regarded as an arahant's consciousness of nibbana in meditative experience, and not nibbana itself.

No Indian Buddhist author -- whether Theravāda, Sarvāstivāda, Mādhyamaka, or Yogācāra -- ever made this assertion that nibbāna is a type of consciousness. And in the Introduction to his translation of the same sutta he also asserts that this consciousness is not known by means of any of the six senses at all:
The Buddha describes his awakened knowledge in a variety of ways ... by describing an awakened consciousness that is not known by means of any of the six senses at all.... Some of these assertions — in particular, the assertion of a consciousness not mediated by any of the six senses — are extremely important dhamma lessons....

And in the endnotes to MN 38 he asserts that this consciousness is not included in the consciousness aggregate:
The Buddha, knowing that there are two types of consciousness — the consciousness aggregate (viññāṇakkhandha), which is experienced in conjunction with the six sense media, and consciousness without surface (viññāṇaṃ anidassanaṃ), which is experienced independently of the six sense media....

Again, no Indian Buddhist author -- whether Theravāda, Sarvāstivāda, Mādhyamaka, or Yogācāra -- ever made any of these assertions. So apparently we are to believe that Ṭhānissaro has re-discovered the correct understanding of nibbāna as a form of consciousness which can only be experienced independently of the six sense media, that somehow eluded all of the best and brightest minds of Buddhist India! 

His interpretation of nibbāna is very novel. It's also nonsense.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:08 pm
Title: Re: What are differences between magga and phala?
Content:
For another perspective on this, see Path, Fruit and Nibbāna by Ven. Kheminda Thera.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:38 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
His views haven't been misrepresented in this thread.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Jan 11, 2012 6:30 am
Title: Re: Any recomendations for a good book on the Five Aggregates
Content:
This study is probably the most thorough survey of sutta passages, etc., pertaining to the five aggregates.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Jan 11, 2012 5:10 am
Title: Re: Confidence in Transmission
Content:
I chose "None of the above" because there is no way of knowing what the Buddha actually taught. Thus, there is no way of knowing how accurately the extant collections of discourses represent what he taught.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Jan 11, 2012 5:05 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
I think there is really no other way to proceed. We all have to start from where we are, and begin by committing and re-committing to developing appropriate ethical conduct (sīla) and meditative composure (samādhi). This already involves a significant degree of focus and dedication: choosing to go for refuge in the three jewels; choosing to undertake training according to the five and/or eight precepts; choosing to develop renunciation and live a life of voluntary simplicity; choosing to practice sense restraint; and choosing to commit to a dedicated daily practice schedule. It can take quite some time to establish these aspects of gradual training and really begin to integrate them. And given that much of this will already challenge many preconceived notions and contemporary social and cultural beliefs and customs, it can be confusing at times, and even somewhat disorienting if we don't have the support of admirable, like-minded friends (kalyāṇamitta). Therefore, all of this is most skillfully approached through the orientation of the four noble truths. This is the view that concerns us as practitioners. Any other views are quite irrelevant.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Jan 11, 2012 1:34 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
Yes, we have to proceed one step at a time.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:49 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
It seems to me to be refuting the idea of strict determinism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:54 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
What's being indicated here is the erroneous assumption of a personal subject who has no self. Thus, a mistaken view of personal existence is still functioning as the basis for inappropriate attention. Discernment hasn't successfully eliminated this subjective perspective -- the habitual filter of a separate observer.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Jan 08, 2012 5:44 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
That sutta passage is talking about mistaken ideas of possession due to the conceits of superimposing a subjective perspective. It is not saying that the appropriate recognition of the absence of self is a self-view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:02 am
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
Anatta is a recognition (anattasaññā) of the absence of self, and not a self-view (attadiṭṭhi; attānudiṭṭhi).


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:20 pm
Title: Re: On Thanissaro Bhikkhu's anatta teachings
Content:
In order to understand the recognition of anatta (anattasaññā) it's important to understand the object of negation. Anatta is negating the notion of a permanent Self which is not subject to affliction/dis-ease. It is not negating the utility of healthy, functional developmental processes with conditional self-agency (attakāra). Take SN 22.59 for example, as it is a central teachings on anatta. The Self which is being negated in SN 22.59 is a Self which would be:
1. permanent
2. satisfactory
3. not subject to affliction/dis-ease

This "Self" is refuted: a permanent, satisfactory Self which is not prone to old age, sickness, and death. As SN 22.59 states:
Bhikkhus, form... feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness is not-self. Were form... feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness self, then this form... feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness would not lead to affliction/dis-ease.

This criterion of affliction/disease is the context for the following statement that:
none can have it of form... feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness: 'Let my form... feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness be thus, let my form... feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness be not thus.'

What is not negated is the developmental processes which are conditions for happiness or unhappiness, etc. In fact, there is great emphasis in Buddhism on learning to develop wholesome, skillful (kusala) developmental processes which lead to happiness and joy, and learning to abandon unwholesome, unskillful (akusala) developmental processes which lead to unhappiness, confusion, and conflicted emotions. This is why many contemporary insight meditation teachers have recognized that no significant progress can be made by employing the path of gradual training unless the student is in good mental health. Hence the well known phrase: "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody."


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Jan 06, 2012 7:04 pm
Title: Re: soul, do you have any?
Content:
I've read these authors &amp; texts and many others as well. Buddhist dhamma offers a completely different kind of discourse and soteriological path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Jan 06, 2012 8:48 am
Title: Re: soul, do you have any?
Content:
Indeed. How long would it take before the soul would long for extinguishment?... 

Or, if this simplicity of substance doesn't allow for the alteration of reflexive awareness, what could it be other than an immaterial, sessile barnacle?...


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Jan 06, 2012 3:55 am
Title: Re: soul, do you have any?
Content:
As you may know, the early Church fathers incorporated a fair amount of middle-Platonism and Neoplatonim into their theology (with good reason). But this kind of system and way of thinking is very different from early Buddhism. There is no assertion, reasoning, or contemplation related to a first principle -- a "first cause" -- in Buddhism. Therefore, there is no attention given to anything else related to this notion of a first cause, including a soul or theophany or theosis, etc. Simply stated, Buddhism has no place for theism (or pantheism). The dhamma offers a completely different kind of discourse and soteriological path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Jan 03, 2012 9:39 pm
Title: Re: Jhāna According to the Pāḷi Nikāyas
Content:
IMO it's a bit of a stretch to assume that these figurative expressions were meant to be understood as literal teachings on the development of jhāna.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Jan 03, 2012 5:48 am
Title: Re: Is there sutta basis for the modern bifurcation of jhanas?
Content:
Yes, of course. There's really no possible way at arriving at a (hypothetical) original meaning. Thus, I've relied on various commentaries to help clarify and define Pāli terms as well as interpret sutta passages. IMO, sensitivity to the historical development of ancient commentary offers a coherent and pragmatic method of interpretation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Jan 03, 2012 4:30 am
Title: Re: Why was the Buddha omniscient?
Content:
The ideas regarding a buddha's omniscience were developed long before the emergence of the Mahāyāna.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Jan 03, 2012 4:26 am
Title: Re: Is there sutta basis for the modern bifurcation of jhanas?
Content:
None of this establishes the restrictions that you want to establish.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Jan 02, 2012 10:28 am
Title: Re: Is there sutta basis for the modern bifurcation of jhanas?
Content:
MN 111, AN 9.36, DN 2, and numerous other discourses demonstrate that this isn't so. All four of these developments of samādhi intersect with jhāna at some point.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 25, 2011 5:35 pm
Title: Re: I'd Like to Know More About Buddhanussati
Content:
There is a concluding section of the Suttanipāta Pārāyanavagga which isn't translated on ATI. See Pārāyanānugītigāthā. This is what Williams is referring to.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 25, 2011 1:54 pm
Title: Re: Bases for Skillful Action?
Content:
Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.13.4:
The mysteries are transmitted mysteriously.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2011 8:17 pm
Title: Re: Oh Nooo, why I end up here? What's wrong?
Content:
Yes. Which is why they were not considered necessary attainments by the early Buddhists. And they were never considered necessary attainments by the Theravadins.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2011 7:15 pm
Title: Re: 2012 Uposatha Calendar...
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2011 6:48 pm
Title: Re: Oh Nooo, why I end up here? What's wrong?
Content:
Indeed. We can also call these first two by their more common early classifications as simply "jhāna" (i.e. the four jhānas) and the "formless attainments" (arūpasamāpatti).


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2011 6:40 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Good work Alex. This offers a clearly demonstrable and therefore identifiable basis of designation for both the object and the cognition. All designated within the framework of conventional discourse, just like the suttas are. No need for a theory of momentariness. No need for a theory of two truths.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2011 6:36 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Yes, well here we have two extremes with regard to duration.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2011 10:46 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:



Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2011 7:25 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Momentariness is already an abstraction. It doesn't matter at all how short a duration you wish to ascribe to a mind moment, it's still an abstraction that has no demonstrable basis.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2011 7:23 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Already answered. Why would you want to think that they are the same one?


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:14 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Cognitions are classified in terms of sense faculty and object. MN 38 Mahātaṇhāsankhaya Sutta:
Monks, consciousness is reckoned by the particular condition dependent upon which it arises. When consciousness arises dependent on the eye and forms, it is reckoned as eye-consciousness; when consciousness arises dependent on the ear and sounds, it is reckoned as ear-consciousness; when consciousness arises dependent on the nose and odors, it is reckoned as nose-consciousness; when consciousness arises dependent on tongue and flavors, it is reckoned as tongue-consciousness; when consciousness arises dependent on body and tangibles, it is reckoned as body consciousness; when consciousness arises dependent on the mind and mind-objects, it is reckoned as mind-consciousness.

And there also has to be the corresponding engagement or "act-of-attention" (samannāhāra) for any of the six consciousnesses to arise. MN 28 Mahāhatthipadopama Sutta:
Now if internally the eye is intact but externally forms do not come into range, nor is there a corresponding engagement, then there is no appearing of the corresponding type of consciousness. If internally the eye is intact and externally forms come into range, but there is no corresponding engagement, then there is no appearing of the corresponding type of consciousness. But when internally the eye is intact and externally forms come into range, and there is a corresponding engagement, then there is the appearing of the corresponding type of consciousness.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 21, 2011 10:31 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Ven. Ṭhānissaro:
Some Theravadins insist that questioning the commentaries is a sign of disrespect for the tradition, but it seems to be a sign of greater disrespect for the Buddha — or the compilers of the Canon — to assume that he or they would have left out something absolutely essential to the practice.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 21, 2011 10:02 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Let's see.... 

tiltbillings: "[Some] with good reason as any, consider the Sujin take on things, especially vipassana meditation, equally out there as Ingram's approach." Source.

tiltbillings: "Nanavira was given to overblown, dense prose and not always the best reasoning." Source.

tiltbillings: "Essentially Wallace is tarring the whole of the Western contingent of vipassana teachers with this sort of accusation as makes in his cheesy interview." Source.

And on and on it goes....


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 21, 2011 3:13 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
I don't consider your habit of attempting to steamroll over all substantive criticism as being either desirable or acceptable. Maybe you think that this is a way to preserve the status-quo of Theravāda Buddhism. But as far as I'm concerned, this brand of conservatism is ill-conceived. Informed discussion and substantive criticism should never be deemed threatening or harmful.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:14 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
If this were really the case then there would be no objections from any quarter about clearing the path of approximately 2000+ years of accumulated debris. Nor would there be threats of incurring negative kamma from merely critiquing the teaching methods or views of any particular teacher or sayādaw.... At any rate, it seems far more advisable to have no dog in the hunt.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:10 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
How would I know if he's a sotāpanna or a sakadāgāmi and so on? But relevant to this discussion, I've never heard or read anything by him regarding the Visuddhimagga presentation of the insight knowledges.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:06 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Rhetorical question.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:17 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
The mind is highly susceptible to the power of suggestion as well as the urge towards confirmation bias and other cognitive biases. This is why insight has to proceed further to deconstruct the saññā embedded in experience itself. This is the progression from right view to no view, where no experience is special.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 7:34 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
How would one directly perceive the limits of perception when perception is itself constrained by its own limitations? And how would one correctly differentiate between this veridical perception and any number of adventitious phenomena that can be perceived as side effects of samādhi? Having experienced various kinds of adventitious occurrences myself, such as a perceptual strobing effect, or incessant dissolution, or the momentary cessation of awareness, etc., I don't consider any of these experiences to be a reliable basis for insight, especially since one is just as prone to experience many other more stable mental nimittas as side effects of samādhi.

Fortunately, all of this is easily avoided by basing insight into impermanence on pragmatic empiricism, just as we find in the suttas, where there is nothing esoteric, mysterious, or hidden about impermanence. Your body will surely die. My body will surely die. Death could occur at any time. And mental processes are subject to even greater change, alteration, and passing away than the body. Conventional description offers a more meaningful, pragmatic, and therefore useful reference, using a clearly demonstrable basis for designation. 

In this way there is no need for inducing painful sensations in order to recognize dukkha, or perceptions of incessant dissolution in order to recognize impermanence, or any other adventitious experiences. One can get on with developing the noble eightfold path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 6:32 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
It should be quite evident. As Sujato says, "The very fact that such a controversy could possibly arise is a sign how far we have drifted from the Buddha's pragmatic empiricism."


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 4:51 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
(a) adhering to the idea of a direct perception of momentary dissolution without accepting the existence of discrete, momentary dhammas is nonsensical; (b) the doctrine of momentariness is itself arbitrary with no demonstrable basis; and therefore both are untenable views. Ven. Sujato:
Find this hard to swallow? You might be interested to know that in contemporary abhidhamma circles it is, apparently, the orthodox position that the series of ‘mind-moments’ can only be directly seen by Buddhas, and perhaps chief disciples. This is, admittedly, challenged by some, who claim it can be seen in meditation. In just the same way, a Christian meditator will claim to see God, or a Hindu to see the universal Self. Seek and ye shall find. The very fact that such a controversy could possibly arise is a sign how far we have drifted from the Buddha’s pragmatic empiricism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 4:04 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Actually, according to this view the mind attends to a completely new and different object each moment. For example, take the mundane experience of listening attentively to a song as it plays. In terms of conventional designation one can describe this song as undergoing alteration and change as it plays. But according to the view of radical momentariness, each moment of attentive listening requires a new and different object. So instead of listening to "a song" there are now how many "songs" or "sub-songs" or "pieces of song"? 100 thousand?... 100 million?... 100 trillion?... Is this not arbitrary? How could it not be? Ven. Sujato:
Thus impermanence becomes, not simply being subject to birth and death, rise and fall, but the momentary dissolution of phenomena – one dhamma rises and ceases in an instant, leaving no trace of residue in the next. Samadhi becomes, not an exalted, stable coalescence of mind, but a ‘momentary samadhi’ running after the fluctuations of phenomena. The path becomes, not a gradual program of spiritual development, but a ‘path-moment’, gone in a flash. And the mind itself becomes just a series of ‘mind-moments’.... This idea seems to derive some of its impressiveness from its air of acrid, pessimistic, reductionist severity, which is often mistaken as a sign of really uncompromising wisdom.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 2:30 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Change and alteration of what persists do not entail the "constant perishing of phenomena" or "incessant dissolution." To arrive at this latter conclusion requires belief in a view of discrete dhammas subject to momentary arising, subsistence, and dissolution.

Ledi Sayādaw, A Manual of the Excellent Man:
In the ultimate sense, however, new psychophysical phenomena arise only after the old phenomena have perished, which is death. This constant perishing of phenomena is also called cessation (nirodha) or dissolution (bhaṅga). It is only when one discerns the ultimate truth of this cessation of phenomena that one gains insight.

Mahāsi Sayādaw, The Great Discourse on the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta:
The yogī perceives that all the nāmas, rūpas which manifest themselves at the moment of seeing, hearing etc., are undergoing instant dissolution and are, therefore, transient.... When the yogī comes to the bhaṅga stage, during the interval of one cycle of rising and falling, numerous moments of dissolution will be seen to flit by. The material body of rising and falling, being subjected to incessant dissolution is indeed not permanent.

And one doesn't have to look too far to find this view spelled out in detail. For example, the Visuddhimaggamahāṭīkā:
[Conditioned dhammas] individual essences (sabhāva) have rise and fall and change. Herein, conditioned dhammas' arising owing to causes and conditions, their coming to be after non-existence, their acquisition of an individual self (attalābha), is 'rise'. Their momentary cessation when arisen is 'fall'. Their changedness due to aging is 'change'.

So here we have discrete momentary dhammas acquiring individual selves, then aging, then dying. In other words, the "constant perishing of phenomena."


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:49 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
The "philosophical ideas" such as the doctrine of momentariness and the realist epistemology of unique particulars and so on, are inextricably tied to the Visuddhimagga and post-Visuddhimagga thought-world. It makes no sense at all to accept the the stages of insight knowledge as they're presented in the Visuddhimagga and further elaborated in later commentaries without accepting these embedded views.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:09 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Yes.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 5:45 am
Title: Re: shakyamuni Buddha and Maitreya Buddha
Content:
Here is a translation of the Pāli Anāgatavaṃsa: Chronicle of the Future [Buddha] which describes the visionary narrative relating to Metteyya (Maitreya).
It is not possible for anyone to describe completely at length Ajita’s great accumulation of merit which is not small, which is of great fame. I will tell [you about] it in part. Listen to me, O Sāriputta.

In this auspicious world cycle, in the future, in a crore of years, there will be an Awakened One named Metteyya, the best of two-footed beings,

of great merit, great wisdom, great knowledge, great fame, great power, great steadfastness; he will be born, one who sees.

That Conqueror will be born, having a great [state of] rebirth, [great] mindfulness, full of wisdom, of great learning, he will be a preacher, a knower of all things, one who sees well, who touches, plunges into, and grasps.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 1:48 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
I don't see anyone here trying to convince you of anything.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2011 1:38 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Maybe it's time for you to quit accusing people who don't agree with you of engaging in a "scorched-earth approach."


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 6:42 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
As far as I'm concerned, the fundamental teachings of the Pāli dhamma are the only thing worth discussing. Period. Anything other than these fundamental teachings is unnecessary and should be cleared from the path lest it impede what is important. The recognition of unattractiveness (asubhasaññā) is important. The recognition of death (maraṇasaññā) is important. The recognition of impermanence (aniccasaññā) is important. The recognition of dispassion (virāgasaññā) is important. The theory of momentariness is not important. The theory of two truths is not important. And any other novel ideas that Buddhaghosa introduced to Theravāda commentary are not important. Moreover, if one isn't tied to the thought-world of the Visuddhimagga, then Burmese Vipassanā doesn't really have much to offer that's especially interesting or important.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 5:16 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
That's fine. I don't "reject the commentaries in toto out of hand" either.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 4:27 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
You're free to follow whatever interpretation you wish.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 4:22 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
I'm not asserting anything. I'm criticizing the assertion that the doctrine of momentariness is central to Buddhist insight and/or that it is present in the suttas.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 11:37 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Buddhaghosa, Dhammasaṅgaṇi Aṭṭhakathā:
Herein, the continued present (santatipaccuppanna) finds mention in the commentaries (atthakatha); the enduring or long present (addhapaccuppanna) in the discourses (sutta).

Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis:
The theory of impermanence in Buddhism has been generally misunderstood because it came to be confused with a later theory known as the 'doctrine of moments' (ksanavada/ kanavada), which was formulated from a logical analysis of the process of change (parinama) by the later Buddhist scholars belonging to the scholastic (abhidhamma) tradition. But such a theory is conspicuous by its absence in the early discourses.

von Rospatt, The Buddhist Doctrine of Momentariness:
There can be no doubt that the theory of momentariness cannot be traced back to the beginnings of Buddhism or even the Buddha himself. It does not fit the practically orientated teachings of early Buddhism and clearly bears the mark of later doctrinal elaboration. Thus in the Nikāyas/Āgamas there are many passages which attribute duration to material and even mental entities, whereas there is, at least to my knowledge, no passage which testifies to the stance that all conditioned entities are momentary.... Furthermore, the fact that the theory of momentariness was a controversial issue among the various schools of the so-called Hīnayāna indicates that it is not canonical.

Sujato, The Mystique of the Abhidhamma:
In the later abhidhamma, the treatment of time is dominated by a radical new theory, totally unlike anything in the suttas or even the canonical abhidhamma, the theory of moments (khaṇavāda).... Now it is quite possible to take this theory, compare it with the suttas, and refute it point by point. But here I would simply like to point out what an implausible and useless idea it is.

Bodhesako, Change: An Examination of Impermanence in Experience:
Indeed, although the four Nikāyas occupy some 5,500 pages of print in their abbreviated roman-script edition, there seems to be not a single statement anywhere within them that requires us to understand thereby (in opposition to the above passages) a doctrine of flux. On the contrary, the Suttas are wholly consistent on this point (as on others). Therefore even in precisely those passages where we would most expect to find such a doctrine, if it were to be found in the Nikāyas at all, the assertion is conspicuously absent.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 11:06 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Typical. You assert claims then refuse to establish them when asked.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 10:12 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Momentariness is pseudo-impermanence with no demonstrable basis. If you want to affirm a doctrine of momentariness then the onus is on you to show how this "experience" is veridical and established by direct perception.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 10:07 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Yes. Duration is the alteration of what persists.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:52 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Not as affirming a doctrine of momentariness.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:51 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
The suttas are.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:46 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Which precludes arbitrary momentariness.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:42 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Ven. Bodhi's translation is better. Moreover, if you consider the context of the sutta it has nothing to do with a theory of momentariness. It's a criticism of devas and deva realms.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:18 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
I'd suggest that it's far better to base one's practice on what is taught in the suttas.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:11 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
The contemplation of rise and fall (udayabbayānupassinā) as it's taught in the suttas pertains to understanding specific conditionality (idappaccayatā). For example, SN 22.57 Sattaṭṭhāna Sutta:
With the arising of nutriment there is the arising of form. With the cessation of nutriment there is the cessation of form. And this noble eightfold path is the way leading to the cessation of form....

With the arising of name-and-form there is the arising of consciousness. With the cessation of name-and-form there is the cessation of consciousness. And this noble eightfold path is the way leading to the cessation of consciousness.

And SN 22.5 Samādhi Sutta:
And what, monks, is the origin of form? What is the origin of feeling? What is the origin of recognition? What is the origin of fabrications? What is the origin of consciousness? Here monks, a monk seeks delight, welcomes, remains attached.

And what does one seek delight in, welcome, and remain attached to? One seeks delight in form, welcomes it, and remains attached to it. Due to seeking delight in form, welcoming it, and remaining attached to it, delight arises. Delight in form is clinging. With clinging as a condition, existence; with existence as a condition, birth; with birth as a condition, aging and death, sorrow, grieving, pain, unhappiness, and despair come to be. Such is the origin of this entire heap of unsatisfactoriness.

One seeks delight in feeling, welcomes it, and remains attached to it... One seeks delight in recognition, welcomes it, and remains attached to it... One seeks delight in fabrications, welcomes them, and remains attached to them... One seeks delight in consciousness, welcomes it, and remains attached to it. Due to seeking delight in consciousness, welcoming it, and remaining attached to it, delight arises. Delight in consciousness is clinging. With clinging as a condition, existence; with existence as a condition, birth; with birth as a condition, aging and death, sorrow, grieving, pain, unhappiness, and despair come to be. Such is the origin of this entire heap of unsatisfactoriness.

This, monks, is the origin of form, this is the origin of feeling, this is the origin of recognition, this is the origin of fabrications, this is the origin of consciousness.

And what, monks, is the passing away of form? What is the passing away of feeling? What is the passing away of recognition? What is the passing away of fabrications? What is the passing away of consciousness? Here monks, a monk does not seek delight, does not welcome, does not remain attached.

And what does one not seek delight in, not welcome, and not remain attached to? One does not seek delight in form, does not welcome it, and does not remain attached to it. Due to not seeking delight in form, not welcoming it, and not remaining attached to it, delight in form ceases. With the cessation of delight, the cessation of clinging; with the cessation of clinging, the cessation of existence... Such is the cessation of this entire heap of unsatisfactoriness.

One does not seek delight in feeling, does not welcome it, and does not remain attached to it... One does not seek delight in recognition, does not welcome it, and does not remain attached to it... One does not seek delight in fabrications, does not welcome them, and does not remain attached to them... One does not seek delight in consciousness, does not welcome it, and does not remain attached to it. Due to not seeking delight in consciousness, not welcoming it, and not remaining attached to it, delight in consciousness ceases. With the cessation of delight, the cessation of clinging; with the cessation of clinging, the cessation of existence... Such is the cessation of this entire heap of unsatisfactoriness.

This, monks, is the passing away of form, this is the passing away of feeling, this is the passing away of recognition, this is the passing away of fabrications, this is the passing away of consciousness.

There's no need for a pseudo-impermanence doctrine of momentariness nor the Visuddhimagga presentation of insight-knowledges.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 8:52 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
He's less than clear on this point.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 5:40 am
Title: Re: Questions about mn 111, Anupada Sutta
Content:
The distinction is between carnal pleasure (sensual desire) and the non-carnal pleasure of jhāna. The former is a hindrance; the latter is to be developed as part of the path.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2011 5:25 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
It seems to me that one could follow the basic meditation instructions of Mahāsi Sayādaw or U Ba Khin, etc., without subscribing to the view of momentariness. But this probably isn't possible once one gets into the subsequent stages of insight knowledge.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 10:46 pm
Title: Re: Happy Birthday plwk!!!
Content:
Happy birthday plwk!!!


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 12:39 pm
Title: Re: Allowances of differences within the Theravada
Content:
Sure. People can disagree without being petty or mean. Criticism isn't a bad thing either. Of course, it should be informed and substantive.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 7:30 am
Title: Re: Allowances of differences within the Theravada
Content:
If we don't set up camps in the first place then there's no need to eyeball each other from across an imagined no-man's-land.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:23 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
And for the reasons already provided, this insight has nothing to do with perceiving discrete momentary dhammas.

Nevertheless, if you think the idea of momentariness is a useful representation of your own experiential cognitive processes, then it can be useful to that extent. But this doesn't mean that it isn't a conceptual interpretation of what you are experiencing.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:35 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
I'm not dismissing the laws of thermodynamics as a source of worldly knowledge. I'm suggesting that one doesn't need to know anything about the laws of thermodynamics to practice the path and attain liberation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:31 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
There's no reason to believe in discrete momentary dhammas.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 15, 2011 10:12 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
I prefer to rely on the entire Suttapiṭaka.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 15, 2011 12:43 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
I believe that the laws of thermodynamics have little if any relevance with regard to the four noble truths, the noble eightfold path, and liberation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 15, 2011 12:31 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
There are many decent and well-intentioned teachers. I don't know of any one who would stand out as better or more learned or more accomplished than all others.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 14, 2011 6:37 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
My concerns pertain to view, specifically (i) privileging the writings of Buddhaghosa, et al, over all earlier Pāli sources to such an extent that the latter can only be understood through the former; and (ii) placing so much emphasis on "attaining" an event called a "path moment" without sufficiently locating this experience within the larger soteriological context.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 14, 2011 11:03 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
FTR I have never said nor implied that the Burmese Vipassanā traditions have no legitimacy. I have said:
[T]he most important factors for productive progress in meditation are the maintenance of appropriate ethical conduct, being committed to renunciation and a life of voluntary simplicity, engaging in either solitary or group retreats on a fairly regular basis, and being dedicated to sustaining a daily practice schedule. If these conditions are in place (and it can take time to develop these optimal conditions), then whatever method of instruction one relies on, and whatever primary meditation object one engages in, there will be significant progress.

This whole "samatha vs. vipassanā" debate where some parties are intent upon either tacitly criticizing or overtly attacking the meditation instructions of the Mahāsi Sayādaw tradition and the U Ba Khin tradition as not being the sammāsamādhi of the early teachings, is completely without merit. In both of these traditions the meditation instructions are conjoined samatha &amp; vipassanā methods. Following these instructions can certainly lead to the attainment of the four jhānas as these are described in the canon.

And:
"Jhāna" as it occurs in the suttas can refer to either (i) jhāna which scrutinizes an object-support (ārammaṇūpanijjhāna) or (ii) jhāna which scrutinizes characteristics (lakkhaṇūpanijjhāna). The former is also called samatha jhāna and the latter is also called vipassanā jhāna. Mahāsi Sayādaw, The Wheel of Dhamma: 
Jhāna means closely observing an object with fixed attention. Concentrated attention given to a selected object of meditation, such as breathing for tranquility concentration, gives rise to samatha jhāna, whereas noting the characteristic nature of mind and body and contemplating on their impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and insubstantiality brings about vipassanā jhāna.

Jhāna which scrutinizes characteristics (lakkhaṇūpanijjhāna) occurs during any moment of the development of vipassanā (vipassanābhāvanā), as well as during any path or fruition attainment. As Sayādaw U Pandita explains in In This Very Life: The Vipassanā Jhānas, vipassanā jhāna can occur with the jhāna factors of each of the four jhānas, and therefore fulfill the criteria of the standard jhāna formula.

And: 
Anyone who denies the efficacy of classical vipassanābhāvanā without rūpāvacarajjhāna and modern Burmese vipassanā jhāna is asserting that they -- and the select few that agree with them -- are right, and anyone who doesn't agree with them is necessarily wrong. This not only represents a dismissive, extreme agenda, the entire premise is nonsensical on the face of it.

And:
All of the different common [meditation] instructions will work if applied. The most important point is to sit on your sitting mat or cushion -- regularly and repeatedly -- and apply the instruction that resonates with you.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 14, 2011 10:49 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
It's your choice whether or not you find any of this annoying. The idea of clearing the path, which was initiated by Ñāṇavīra and carried on by Ñāṇananda, continues to be a relevant concern for many Theravāda lay practitioners, monastics, and scholars. This clearing inevitably involves the criticism of historical accretions. Maybe it's time to enlist the far less diplomatic and genteel words of Ven. Sujato. The Mystique of the Abhidhamma:
In the later abhidhamma, the treatment of time is dominated by a radical new theory, totally unlike anything in the suttas or even the canonical abhidhamma, the theory of moments (khaṇavāda). This postulates that time is constituted of a series of discrete, indivisible units, rather like a series of billiard balls lined up on a table. Each unit, or ‘moment’, is infinitesimally small, such that billions pass by in a lightning-flash. So while the suttas emphasize the length of time, the abhidhamma emphasizes the shortness. This theory shapes the abhidhamma conception of a whole range of central doctrines. Thus impermanence becomes, not simply being subject to birth and death, rise and fall, but the momentary dissolution of phenomena – one dhamma rises and ceases in an instant, leaving no trace of residue in the next. Samadhi becomes, not an exalted, stable coalescence of mind, but a ‘momentary samadhi’ running after the fluctuations of phenomena. The path becomes, not a gradual program of spiritual development, but a ‘path-moment’, gone in a flash. And the mind itself becomes just a series of ‘mind-moments’.

Now it is quite possible to take this theory, compare it with the suttas, and refute it point by point. But here I would simply like to point out what an implausible and useless idea it is. Quite obviously, time may be analyzed as finely as we wish, its divisibility determined only by the sharpness of our analytical razor. Any unit of time has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That beginning, too, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and so on ad infinitum. There is simply no good reason to postulate an ultimate substratum of time to which other strata can be reduced. This idea seems to derive some of its impressiveness from its air of acrid, pessimistic, reductionist severity, which is often mistaken as a sign of really uncompromising wisdom.

The guiding objective for the formulation of the mind-moment theory would seem to be for exactitude of definition. So while the Buddha spoke of the mind ‘changing while it stands’, the abhidhamma just speaks of ‘standing’. It is much easier to define a static entity than a process evolving over time. This is why a butterfly collector wants to have his butterflies dead, with a pin stuck through their heart and a little label underneath, not madly meandering about in the woods. The dead mind. But the Buddha was not a butterfly collector, he was an observer of nature. He wanted us to watch the flight and flitter of the butterfly, to understand how it behaves in its natural environment, and to follow it gently, delicately, quietly until it settles down to rest and be still according to its nature – which he called ‘samadhi’....

Just what is going on here? Why postulate such an odd theory, raising so many pseudo-problems, and so contrary to the suttas, to common sense, and to experience? What is occurring, I suggest, is that the domain of discourse has been shifted from the empirical to the metaphysical. The suttas treat time in a straightforward, pragmatic, empirical terms – birth, ageing, and death, the changing states of the mind, the progressive development of spiritual qualities. The purpose, the sole purpose, is to empower the practitioner to get a handle on this stuff of life, directing attention to the seat of the problem – how our attachments cause suffering, and how to find peace by letting go. But the abhidhamma aims to describe, not just the spiritual problem and its solution, but the totality of existence. Inevitably, the subjective stance of the suttas becomes objectified, and as the focus moves from meditation to study, the concepts in the books become imposed on reality; in fact, they become reality itself. The quest for truth becomes a quest for definition, and reality becomes as neatly departmentalized as a mathematical table. ‘Ultimate reality’ becomes, not what you are experiencing now, but what you read about in abhidhamma books. 

Find this hard to swallow? You might be interested to know that in contemporary abhidhamma circles it is, apparently, the orthodox position that the series of ‘mind-moments’ can only be directly seen by Buddhas, and perhaps chief disciples. This is, admittedly, challenged by some, who claim it can be seen in meditation. In just the same way, a Christian meditator will claim to see God, or a Hindu to see the universal Self. Seek and ye shall find. The very fact that such a controversy could possibly arise is a sign how far we have drifted from the Buddha’s pragmatic empiricism. This is bad enough; but even worse when we realize that the theory in question made its appearance a millennium after the Buddha’s time. This, for me, is as good as an admission that the whole thing is mere metaphysical speculation. No wonder the abhidhammikas have been so keen to father the canonical abhidhamma (and sometimes even the commentaries!) on the Buddha himself, despite massive evidence to the contrary.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:48 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
What do the laws of thermodynamics have to do with the mind?


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 14, 2011 8:07 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
There were many centuries of Theravāda tradition before this theory made its appearance. What value is there in holding on to untenable conceptual accretions such as this theory of momentariness?


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 14, 2011 1:59 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
How minute are these "minute moments of conditioning"?


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:58 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Dependent upon a sense sphere and sense object coming together, the corresponding consciousness arises. When attention is averted elsewhere, that specific consciousness ceases. Furthermore, during the duration of this experience that specific consciousness undergoes change and alteration. This duration is relative to the attention given to the object of consciousness and is therefore not restricted to any fixed momentary limit.

This is known via discernment obtained through meditative development. Based upon this, one comes to understand impermanence, and so on. All of this is recognized based upon prior learning, and can be described conventionally, with no recourse to any two truths theory or theory of momentariness.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 10, 2011 3:29 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
It's a developmental process: disenchantment (nibbidā), leading to dispassion (virāga), which will culminate in the full extinguishment (parinibbāna) of fetters pertaining to each one of the four paths.

As Dave has indicated, this developmental process requires discernment obtained through meditative development (bhāvanāmayā paññā).


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:49 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Liberating gnosis includes at least some degree of disenchantment (nibbidā), leading to dispassion (virāga), which will culminate in the full extinguishment (parinibbāna) of fetters pertaining to each one of the four paths.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:39 pm
Title: Re: is ever ok to criticize any Buddhist idea or technique?
Content:
This sort of thing isn't unique to Goenka's fans. For example, U Hla Myint:
Some time ago in a certain town in Burma, there was a prominent monk who taught his personal method of practice. He also wrote books criticising Ledi Sayādaw and Mahāsi Sayādaw. Shortly after these efforts, he had a fall. Panditārāma Shwe Taung Gon Sāsana Yeikthā’s chief abbot, Sayādaw U Panditabhivamsa is of the opinion that such retributive effects can befall detractors and critics of Mahāsi Sayādaw.

He states the following:

1. Anyone who attacks Mahāsi Sayādaw will surely suffer a fall and that the method of practice promulgated by this person, will not last long as the burning of dried paddy straw.
2. The Mahāsi method is liken to a balloon of hot air and the greater the one forces it down, the higher will it rise.
3. One who criticises the Mahāsi method is still aloof of the right path.
4. One who does not appreciate that the Mahāsi method is correct is like a blind person.

Mahāsi Sayādaw faced numerous challenges when he first arrived in Sri Lanka to propagate the Dhamma. Many monks and the laity wrote articles in the press denouncing his method. Subsequent to these acts, they each suffered a fall.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 09, 2011 2:19 am
Title: Re: Learning Dhamma
Content:
I have always made a conscious effort to support those aspects of the Burmese vipassanā meditation instructions that can be used within the framework of the view and practice presented in the early Pāli sources. For example, here, and here, and here. Thus, I have hardly been unyielding or lacking nuance.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:58 am
Title: Re: is ever ok to criticize any Buddhist idea or technique?
Content:
And what is this "knee-jerk stuff"? I was quietly following the discussion at that point and for quite a while afterwards, and it seemed to me that Dmytro and others were making some valid and critically substantiated points.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 08, 2011 11:58 pm
Title: Re: is ever ok to criticize any Buddhist idea or technique?
Content:
Yes, your agenda is quite clear.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 08, 2011 11:45 pm
Title: Re: is ever ok to criticize any Buddhist idea or technique?
Content:
For the most part, until quite recently, I've been quite content to stand aside and let you attempt to steamroll over any criticisms brought forward by other DW members or criticisms expressed by teachers and authors who are not members here. During this time the trend has been that you've steadfastly refused to acknowledge that there might be a meaningful basis for any of these criticisms. Whether it's with regard to the meaning and function of sati, the four satipaṭṭhānas, the explicit use of the theory of momentariness, or the noble path and fruition attainments, according to you everyone who criticizes any of these as their used by any of the Burmese Vipassanā teachers is mistaken.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 08, 2011 11:03 pm
Title: Re: is ever ok to criticize any Buddhist idea or technique?
Content:
It's now rather apparent that you are not interested in any criticism whatsoever of the Burmese Vipassanā movement, even when furnished with textual support and point by point reasoning.

Burmese Vipassanā is a modern interpretation of the Visuddhimagga and post-Visuddhimagga commentaries and treatises pertaining to the insight knowledges, which in some cases at least, introduces novel interpretations of this material. Add to this that the insight knowledges as found in the Visuddhimagga are an interpretation of the Paṭisambhidāmagga, which introduce novel ideas not found in the Paṭisambhidāmagga. Add to this that the Paṭisambhidāmagga itself introduces novel ideas not found in the suttas. The culmination of all these novel additions results, in some cases at least, in unwarranted divergences from what is found in the suttas or even the canoncial Abhidhamma. This has been demonstrated to be the case with textual support and point by point reasoning on numerous occasions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 08, 2011 10:33 pm
Title: Re: Learning Dhamma
Content:
As do I. When fellows like U Paṇḍita and Kearney understand nibbāna to be a momentary blip of nothingness it's clear that the soteriological significance of nibbāna and the foundational structure of the four noble truths has been misunderstood by this community. It's little wonder then, when someone like Ingram comes along, who has trained in this same Mahāsi tradition, and claims that the full realization of nibbāna doesn't result in the complete extingishment of lust and anger. Why is this not surprising? Because the soteriological significance of nibbāna and the foundation of the four noble truths has been forgotten by this community.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 08, 2011 6:54 pm
Title: Re: Learning Dhamma
Content:
Such as those of Sujin Boriharnwanaket, Sayādaw U Paṇḍita, Patrick Kearney, Daniel Ingram, Kenneth Folk, and so on. 

Fortunately, we still have the Pāli discourses available to us, and the injunction in DN 16:
Without approval and without scorn, but carefully studying the sentences word by word, one should trace them in the Discourses and verify them by the Discipline. If they are neither traceable in the Discourses nor verifiable by the Discipline, one must conclude thus: 'Certainly, this is not the Blessed One's utterance; this has been misunderstood by that bhikkhu — or by that community, or by those elders, or by that elder.' In that way, bhikkhus, you should reject it.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 08, 2011 3:19 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
The doctrine of momentariness is merely an intellectual superimposition. A mind moment is an arbitrary concept which impedes clear seeing.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 07, 2011 6:18 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
The immediate present has no temporal duration. Duration is always a relationship between two different times, such as the present and the past. This is the case whether the duration is .0005 nanoseconds or 5 days. And since duration cannot exist in the immediate present, there is no reason to privilege the concept of an extremely short duration over other lengths of duration. All durations are relative.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:32 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
The doctrine of momentariness is pseudo-impermanence. It was a poor idea when it was first thought up and it remains a poor idea to this day.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:29 am
Title: Re: Learning Dhamma
Content:
Your point being what?


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 07, 2011 4:16 am
Title: Re: Learning Dhamma
Content:
The fourfold analytical understanding is mentioned in brief in various suttas, mostly from the Aṅguttaranikāya. These are further developed in the Abhidhamma Vibhaṅga (Chapter on Paṭisambhidā­vibhaṅga), and various chapters and sections of the Paṭisambhidāmagga.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:43 am
Title: Re: Learning Dhamma
Content:
If you think that what I have to offer isn't sufficiently objective then you could either (a) add what you believe to be a more objective perspective, or (b) forget about it and move on.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:38 am
Title: Re: Learning Dhamma
Content:
I certainly don't insist that others agree with me on anything. I never have. I do, however, prefer issues to be discussed meaningfully based on historical Pāli sources and systematic interpretation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:21 am
Title: Re: Learning Dhamma
Content:
Discussing dhamma on this forum is open to everyone who wishes to participate, regardless of the extent of their prior study and practice. But informed opinions and understanding are more substantive than uninformed ones. And this obviously includes understanding informed by practice. The two (learning and practice) aren't mutually exclusive.

People are going to believe what they choose to believe, based on various criteria, some more valid than others. What I find hard to fathom is defensive posturing as soon as some tradition or teaching is questioned.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Dec 06, 2011 7:43 pm
Title: Learning Dhamma
Content:
Right view is important. It's the forerunner of the noble path and integral to practice. It is more comprehensive than just practical advice. It orients and informs all aspects of discernment, ethical conduct, and meditation. Moreover, the historical development of Theravāda views and commentary isn't rocket science. In fact, compared to other Buddhist schools, the first 1000+ years of Theravāda Buddhism is pretty straightforward. It's not all that difficult nor time consuming in this day and age to learn the fundamental teachings thoroughly as well as the basic commentarial additions. Is this a high standard? I'd suggest that dhamma practice requires a standard of excellence.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 3:39 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
This sounds to me like an interpretation of experience based on a profusion of mental proliferation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 3:10 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Indeed. 

Why would one devote one's precious time on the sitting cushion or in retreat practicing bare attention to incessant dissolution and so on, unless one believed that there was good reason to do so?

On the other hand, if one understands the practice of bare attention to be of limited use in and of itself and considers the doctrine of momentariness to be an unwarranted deviation from the view of the four noble truths and specific conditionality, then it seems likely that they will devote their sitting practice and retreat time to developing a wider range of skills pertaining to mindfulness and samādhi. Ven. Ṭhānissaro, One Tool Among Many: The Place of Vipassanā in Buddhist Practice:
To take a reductionist approach to the practice can produce only reduced results, for meditation is a skill like carpentry, requiring a mastery of many tools in response to many different needs. To limit oneself to only one approach in meditation would be like trying to build a house when one's motivation is uncertain and one's tool box contains nothing but hammers.

Nothing more need be said.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:52 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
No, it isn't. 

Some people would rather learn Buddhadhamma than Buddhaghosadhamma.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 7:56 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
And how do you know they aren't wrong?


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 6:31 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
How can you discern something if you don't believe it is there?


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 3:33 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
They all teach dry-vipassanā without the need for jhāna. Pa Auk also teaches jhāna, as does Goenka.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 3:21 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
According to their interpretation, vipassanā cannot occur in jhāna.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 1:19 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Personal experiences are quite irrelevant to this sub-forum and this thread. I only mentioned that as one example. It isn't a case study.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 12:26 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
"Overly rigid"? It isn't "overly rigid" to subscribe to teachings which are meaningful and coherent. You may think it is, but it isn't.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Dec 05, 2011 12:00 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Oh? How so?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:59 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Why should you care? The real question for you is: What are you experiencing?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:48 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Nonsense. Believe whatever you want. But there are no sacred cows in Buddhism, and everything is open to critical investigation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:38 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
When have I ever said that you should take me as the arbiter of these things???


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:09 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
People claim to experience all sorts of things. Just because someone claims to experience something doesn't mean that their claim is valid. They could very well be basing their claim on incorrect inferences and all sorts of cognitive biases.

For example, there was a time when I uncritically acquiesced to the view of radical momentariness and indeed experienced what I took to be the direct perception of incessant dissolution. Later, I came to understand that this was an inaccurate interpretation of what I was experiencing and I had no alternative but to abandon that view.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:41 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
There is no "complaint." One either accepts or at least acquiesces to the view of discrete momentary dhammas or one doesn't. If one doesn't, then the insight stage of knowing the incessant dissolution of discrete momentary dhammas lacks meaning and coherence. It would be like trying to discern the incessant dissolution of unicorns.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:35 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
If one attends to the recognition of the thought for its entire duration one can inferentially know that it underwent alteration and change (aññathatta &amp; vipariṇāma) during this duration, and then ceased. This duration is relative to the attention given to the object of consciousness, in this case a thought, and is therefore not restricted to any fixed momentary limit.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:19 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
It's for each of us to discern if what we are directly perceiving or inferring on the basis of direct perception is valid or invalid.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:05 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
You'll have to clarify what you mean by "rise and fall." This phrase is understood differently in different contexts.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:03 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Without observing discrete momentary dhammas with sub-moments of origination (uppāda), subsistence (ṭhiti), and dissolution (bhaṅga) the "observation" of incessant dissolution is impossible.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 9:46 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
So if one doesn't accept or at least acquiesce to the view of discrete momentary dhammas with sub-moments of origination (uppāda), subsistence (ṭhiti), and dissolution (bhaṅga) then the insight stage of knowing the incessant dissolution of discrete momentary dhammas lacks meaning and coherence.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 8:25 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
It would have to be discrete momentary dhammas.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 4:21 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
It seems to me that this line of investigation takes us away from the penetration of the four noble truths.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 4:17 pm
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
But impermanence must be the characteristic of dhammas that can be directly perceived right? So what is it that is directly perceived to be undergoing incessant dissolution if not discrete momentary dhammas?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:43 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
How is it that knowing things to be true is ignorance?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:24 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Haven't most particles been around since shortly after the big bang?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 3:20 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Then what is the basis for insight?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 3:13 am
Title: Re: Nature of time
Content:
I consider time and conditioned things to both be useful conventions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 3:04 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
The OP offers a representative selection of quotations from well known vipassanā teachers on the dissolution of discrete, momentary dhammas, which is a stage of insight meditation as they teach it. Question: How do you relate to these ideas?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sun Dec 04, 2011 2:46 am
Title: Re: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
Feel free to reword the question so that it's meaningful for you.


Thanks everyone who's responded so far.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:46 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Yes, I agree.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:44 pm
Title: Vipassanā: What Is Dissolution, Really?
Content:
It's common in teachings and texts on vipassanā to hear that mind (nāma) and matter (rūpa) are actually comprised of discrete, momentary things undergoing incessant dissolution (bhaṅga). For example:

Ledi Sayādaw, A Manual of the Excellent Man:
In the ultimate sense, however, new psychophysical phenomena arise only after the old phenomena have perished, which is death. This constant perishing of phenomena is also called cessation (nirodha) or dissolution (bhaṅga). It is only when one discerns the ultimate truth of this cessation of phenomena that one gains insight.

Mahāsi Sayādaw, The Great Discourse on the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta:
The yogī perceives that all the nāmas, rūpas which manifest themselves at the moment of seeing, hearing etc., are undergoing instant dissolution and are, therefore, transient.... When the yogī comes to the bhaṅga stage, during the interval of one cycle of rising and falling, numerous moments of dissolution will be seen to flit by. The material body of rising and falling, being subjected to incessant dissolution is indeed not permanent.

Sayāgyi U Ba Khin, The Essentials of Buddha-Dhamma in Meditative Practice:
The Buddha taught his disciples that everything that exists at the material level is composed of kalāpas. Kalāpas are material units very much smaller than atoms, which die out almost immediately after they come into being.... The life-span of a kalāpa is termed a “moment,” and a trillion such moments are said to elapse during the wink of a man’s eye.

S.N. Goenka, Meditation Now:
Every moment, masses of subatomic particles — kalāpas — within the framework of the body, arise and pass away, arise and pass away. How do they arise? The cause becomes clear as you investigate the reality as it is without influence from any past conditioning of philosophical beliefs. The material input, the food that you have taken, becomes a cause for these kalāpas to arise. You will also find that kalāpas arise and pass away due to the climatic atmosphere around you.

Pa Auk Sayādaw, The Practice Which Leads to Nibbāna:
The meditator discerns the five khandhas, in the past, present, and future both internally and externally and seeing only the passing away and ceasing of them he applies the three characteristics one at a time. At the time when a meditator takes matter as an object and sees it passing away and knows that it is impermanent; this knowledge of impermanence of an object is called insight knowledge.

Questions:

(i) Is it really true that mind (nāma) and matter (rūpa) are discrete, momentary things undergoing incessant dissolution? 

(ii) Is it really true that matter is comprised of momentary kalāpas which undergo incessant dissolution?

(iii) If so, how do you know this to be true?

(iv) If not, can "insight" into conceptual fictions really be considered insight at all?


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:22 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
I think we should avoid falling victim to the seductive allure of conceptual realism.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:37 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
I know you were. And "momentary dhammas rising and falling in rapid succession" is a conceptual fiction.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:35 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Not to mention the dubious practice of attending to the continual "dissolution" (bhaṅga) of momentary nāma and rūpa. Never mind the fact that the idea of the continual "dissolution" of momentary nāma and rūpa is never attested to in the suttas and has nothing to do with the instructions found in the Satipaṭṭhāna Suttas and is introduced through the power of suggestion on the part of the vipassanā teacher and later confirmed as an actual and true perception of the impermanence of reality.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 2:26 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
You're welcome. Now we can all sheepishly congregate like good little Buddhists.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 2:11 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Okay, then sit and practice bare attention until you experience a momentary blip -- the lights go out, then the lights come back on -- and voila! you're a sotāpanna!

You'll have to excuse me though, for considering this claim less than compelling.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:27 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
The dhamma doesn't mean anything goes. Should one refrain from all criticism? Probably. But at any rate, I haven't said anything that hasn't already been said by people who far more respectable than myself.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 4:42 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
The specific saṅkhāra which is the origin of dukkha is craving (taṇhā): craving sensual pleasure, craving existence, and craving non-existence (kāmataṇhā, bhavataṇhā, and vibhavataṇhā). SN 56.11 Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta:
And this, monks, is the noble truth of the origin of unsatisfactoriness: craving which leads to further existence, associated with delight and passion, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving sensual pleasure, craving existence, craving non-existence.

But before we can terminate these cravings we have to begin with the first path where we eliminate the fetters of identity view (sakkāyadiṭṭhi), doubt (vicikicchā), mistaken adherence to rules and duty (sīlabbataparāmāsa) and associated underlying tendencies. The Paṭisambhidāmagga:
How is it that the discernment of the termination of continuance in one who is fully aware is gnosis of full extinguishment (parinibbāna ñāṇa)?

Through the stream-entry path he terminates identity view (sakkāyadiṭṭhi), doubt (vicikicchā), and mistaken adherence to rules and duty (sīlabbataparāmāsa).... This discernment of the termination of continuance in one who is fully aware is gnosis of full extinguishment....

He causes the cessation of identity view, doubt, and mistaken adherence to rules and duty through the stream-entry path.

And so on for the fetters which are terminated on the remaining three paths. These gnoses of full extinguishment (parinibbāna ñāṇas) are also called gnoses of the bliss of liberation (vimuttisukha ñāṇa-s). The Paṭisambhidāmagga:
With the stream-entry path, gnosis of the bliss of liberation arises due to the abandoning and cutting off of:

(1) identity view,
(2) doubt,
(3) mistaken adherence to rules and duty,
(4) the underlying tendency of view,
(5) the underlying tendency of doubt.

With the once-returner path, gnosis of the bliss of liberation arises due to the abandoning and cutting off of:

(6) the gross fetter of passion for sensual pleasure,
(7) the gross fetter of aversion,
(8) the gross underlying tendency of passion for sensual pleasure,
(9) the gross underlying tendency of aversion.

With the non-returner path, gnosis of the bliss of liberation arises due to the abandoning and cutting off of:

(10) the secondary fetter of passion for sensual pleasure,
(11) the secondary fetter of aversion,
(12) the secondary underlying tendency of passion for sensual pleasure,
(13) the secondary underlying tendency of aversion.

With the arahant path, gnosis of the bliss of liberation arises due to the abandoning and cutting off of:

(14) passion for form [existence],
(15) passion for formless [existence],
(16) conceit,
(17) restlessness,
(18) ignorance,
(19) the underlying tendency of conceit,
(20) the underlying tendency of passion for existence,
(21) the underlying tendency of ignorance.

Therefore, the cessation of dukkha progresses sequentially with the cessation of very specific fetters pertaining to each of the four noble paths. The state wherein one experiences the extinguishment (nibbāna) of fetters appropriate to each path and fruition, is supramundane jhāna (lokuttarajjhāna). And this state must necessarily arise with the concomitant jhāna factors and other mental factors such as attention (manasikāra) and apperception (saññā), as well as gnosis (ñāṇa). Without the presence of these mental factors there can be no gnosis and therefore no path attainment or fruition attainment.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 4:00 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
The noble path is for terminating specific saṅkhāras which are the causes of dukkha, not for inducing the "cessation of material process noted and the mental process noting them." This latter type of cessation is irrelevant in the context of Buddhist soteriology. It has nothing to do with realizing the noble path attainment.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 3:53 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
No need to be sorry Ben.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 3:28 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
It's pretty clear what they are teaching. I think it's low quality and students should find better informed and trained teachers.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 3:21 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
It's quite clear that Sayādaw U Paṇḍita, et al, have misunderstood the four noble truths. If you think that that sutta justifies their notion of path attainment, then I'd suggest that you don't understand the four noble truths either.

These fellows have misunderstood and thereby misrepresented the function of sammāsati as well as the noble path attainments. What they're teaching contradicts the Theravāda exegesis contained in the Vibhaṅga, the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, the Paṭisambhidāmagga, and the Visuddhimagga. And if they are indeed claiming that the saṅkhata lakkhaṇa and sāmañña lakkhaṇa are cognized by direct perception, this contradicts Karunadasa as well. This would make them more committed to reification than even Karunadasa's commentarial sources.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 12:07 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Me either. Sn 3.12 Dvayatānupassanā Sutta:
Whatever is transitory certainly has a false nature.


Author: Nyana
Date: Sat Dec 03, 2011 12:01 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
I think it means that dependent on a sense sphere and sense object coming together, the corresponding consciousness arises. When attention is averted elsewhere, that specific consciousness ceases. Furthermore, during the duration of this experience that specific consciousness undergoes change and alteration. This duration is relative to the attention given to the object of consciousness and is therefore not subject to any fixed momentary limit.

There's no basis for reading it as referring to the khaṇavāda interpretation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 02, 2011 10:04 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Yes, indeed. Karunadasa's The Dhamma Theory:
What emerges from this Abhidhammic doctrine of dhammas is a critical realism, one which recognizes the distinctness of the world from the experiencing subject yet also distinguishes between those types of entities that truly exist independently of the cognitive act and those that owe their being to the act of cognition itself.

And:
[A] dhamma is a truly existent thing (sabhavasiddha).

And:
The description of dhammas as paramattha means ... objective existence.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:37 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
The sutta you quoted doesn't address the issue under discussion.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:31 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
There is a major difference between alteration and change (aññathatta &amp; vipariṇāma) on the one hand, and the theory of discrete momentary dhammas rising and falling in rapid succession, on the other. David Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis:
The theory of impermanence in Buddhism has been generally misunderstood because it came to be confused with a later theory known as the 'doctrine of moments' (ksanavada/ kanavada), which was formulated from a logical analysis of the process of change (parinama) by the later Buddhist scholars belonging to the scholastic (abhidhamma) tradition....

It is significant that the Abhidhamma pitaka of the Theravadins makes no mention of either the theory of atoms or the theory of moments. They are certainly not found in either the Pali Nikayas or the Chinese Agamas. In his commentary on the Dhammasangani, Buddhaghosa makes a very important remark regarding the theory of moments. He says: "Herein, the continued present (santatipaccuppanna) finds mention in the commentaries (atthakatha) ; the enduring or long present (addhapaccuppanna) in the discourses (sutta). Some say that the thought existing in the momentary present (khanapaccuppanna) becomes the object of telepathic insight" (DhsA, p. 421). According to this statement, it was 'some people' (keci) who spoke about the momentary present; it was found neither in the discourses nor in the commentaries preserved at the Mahavihara which Buddhaghosa was using for his own commentaries in Pali. This may be taken as substantial evidence for the view that the doctrine of moments was not found in Theravada Buddhism as it was preserved at the Mahavihara in Sri Lanka. In the same way, the theory of atoms was for the first time suggested by Buddhaghosa.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 02, 2011 8:58 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
It isn't a question of existing moments, it's a question of existing discrete momentary dhammas. And the latter are indeed claimed to truly exist by the realist commentators. It's the basis of their epistemology.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 02, 2011 8:38 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
A look at Sayādaw U Paṇḍita's The Practical Way to Nibbāna based on the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta demonstrates that the three propositions already mentioned are explicit and central to the view and practice he describes:
Meditating yogis should understand what is meant by the following three marks or characteristics of psycho-physical phenomena:

(1) sabhāva lakkhaṇa
(2) saṅkhata lakkhaṇa
(3) samañña lakkhaṇa

Sabhāva lakkhaṇa means the specific or particular mark or characteristic of mental and physical phenomena....

Each and every particular mark or characteristic of all psycho-physical phenomena has a beginning, a middle and an end. In Pāḷi scriptural language, these are termed uppāda, ṭhiti and bhaṅga. Uppāda means the beginning or arising of a phenomenon. Ṭhiti is duration or continuance or proceeding towards dissolution. Bhaṅga is breaking up or dissolution.

These three lakkhaṇas (marks or characteristics) are called Saṅkhata lakkhaṇa (saṅkhata = compounded or conditioned). The third mark or characteristic of all psycho-physical phenomena is called samañña (general or common). The impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and impersonality of all conditioned phenomena constitute their common or general mark or characteristic....

We have dealt with the first aphorism — true nature will be revealed only when phenomena are noticed as and when they arise.

The second aphorism says: Only when sabhāva (true nature) is ‘seen’, will saṅkhata lakkhaṇa (characteristic of conditionality) become manifest, meaning the phenomenon being noted will be ‘seen’ to arise, to continue and to pass away.

When saṅkhata lakkhaṇa is ‘seen’, samañña lakkhaṇa will appear.... So the third aphorism is: Only when saṅkhata becomes apparent will samañña be ‘seen’.

This will be followed by the fourth aphorism which says: When samañña is ‘seen’, vipassanā ñāṇa (insight knowledge) emerged.

And also from the same text:
Immediately after the last consciousness in this series of accelerated noting has ceased, magga and phala (path and fruition) arises, realizing nibbāna, the cessation of all formations.... After the last act of noting, the cessation of the formations and realization of nibbāna become manifest. This is why those who have realized nibbāna would say: "The objects noted and the consciousness noting them cease altogether...." He knows that the cessation of material process noted and the mental process noting them is the realization of nibbāna. Those who are well informed know that the cessation of the formations is nibbāna.... They would say inwardly: "I have now realized nibbāna and have attained sotāpatti magga-phala."

So if you weed out the realist epistemology, the theory of radical momentariness, and the wrong view that the noble path attainment is the cessation of all formations, what are you left with that is especially meaningful and coherent?


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 02, 2011 6:46 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
I don't think it's too much to ask that a teaching be coherent and based on what is found in the suttas themselves, and not be predicated on fictions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Fri Dec 02, 2011 6:43 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Alexander von Rospatt, The Buddhist Doctrine of Momentariness:
There can be no doubt that the theory of momentariness cannot be traced back to the beginnings of Buddhism or even the Buddha himself. It does not fit the practically orientated teachings of early Buddhism and clearly bears the mark of later doctrinal elaboration. Thus in the Nikāyas/Āgamas there are many passages which attribute duration to material and even mental entities, whereas there is, at least to my knowledge, no passage which testifies to the stance that all conditioned entities are momentary.... Furthermore, the fact that the theory of momentariness was a controversial issue among the various schools of the so-called Hīnayāna indicates that it is not canonical.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 01, 2011 11:57 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
The Burmese Vipassanā of Mahāsi Sayādaw and Sayādaw U Paṇḍita, et al, is at a minimum, predicated on at least three related propositions: (i) the primary function of sati is bare awareness; (ii) reality is actually comprised of discrete momentary dhammas which rise and fall in rapid succession, and therefore the recognition of impermanence requires directly perceiving the individual characteristics of these discrete momentary dhammas via bare awareness; and (iii) reality and truths pertaining to reality are objectively established through epistemological realism.

Ven. Ñāṇananda significantly contributed to questioning and criticizing the historicity and veracity of the third proposition, but continued to tacitly accept and employ the second proposition in his analysis, and to explicitly acknowledge and employ the first.

And although these theories were first introduced in the commentaries and became dominant in the sub-commentarial texts, they aren't to be found in the suttas and have been criticized by a number of scholars and scholar-monks for not accurately representing the teachings contained in the suttas.

The thing is, during the second half of the 20th century one could hardly turn around in any Theravāda setting without encountering these propositions and being told that this was indeed the view and the unique practice of Theravāda Buddhism. During this period Burmese Vipassanā found its way into every Asian Theravāda country and was also exported to Western countries, and for the most part was uncritically accepted. Fortunately, we now know that prior to the widespread ascendancy of Burmese Vipassanā in the 20th century, the Theravāda was far more dynamic than this. And in certain remote places other Theravāda practice traditions managed to survive.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 01, 2011 7:14 pm
Title: Re: Happy Birthday sattva ! ! !
Content:
Happy birthday!!!


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 01, 2011 6:34 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
"Rise and fall" as it's used in the suttas has nothing to do with the theory of momentariness -- i.e. the arising and disappearance of discrete momentary dhammas. This theory wasn't introduced into Theravāda until much later. Rather, in the suttas the contemplation of rise and fall (udayabbayānupassinā) is decribed in MN 122:
‘Such is form, such its origin, such its passing away. Such is feeling, such its origin, such its passing away. Such is recognition, such its origin, such its passing away. Such are fabrications, such their origin, such their passing away. Such is consciousness, such its origin, such its passing away.’

We are being instructed to experientially understand and attend to each of the aggregates as they are present, and also reflect upon their conditional origin and cessation by giving thorough attention to specific conditionality (idappaccayatā). This is further explained in SN 22.57 Sattaṭṭhāna Sutta (abridged):
With the arising of nutriment there is the arising of form. With the cessation of nutriment there is the cessation of form. And this noble eightfold path is the way leading to the cessation of form. 

The pleasure and happiness that arise in dependence on form: this is the allure of form. That form is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change: this is the drawback of form. The subduing and abandoning of desire and passion for form: this is the escape from form.

With the arising of contact there is the arising of feeling. With the cessation of contact there is the cessation of feeling. And this noble eightfold path is the way leading to the cessation of feeling.

The pleasure and happiness that arise in dependence on feeling: this is the allure of feeling. That feeling is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change: this is the drawback of feeling. The subduing and abandoning of desire and passion for feeling: this is the escape from feeling.

With the arising of contact there is the arising of recognition. With the cessation of contact there is the cessation of recognition. And this noble eightfold path is the way leading to the cessation of recognition.

The pleasure and happiness that arise in dependence on recognition: this is the allure of recognition. That recognition is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change: this is the drawback of recognition. The subduing and abandoning of desire and passion for recognition: this is the escape from recognition.

With the arising of contact there is the arising of fabrications. With the cessation of contact there is the cessation of fabrications. And this noble eightfold path is the way leading to the cessation of fabrications.

The pleasure and happiness that arise in dependence on fabrications: this is the allure of fabrications. That fabrications are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change: this is the drawback of fabrications. The subduing and abandoning of desire and passion for fabrications: this is the escape from fabrications.

With the arising of name-and-form there is the arising of consciousness. With the cessation of name-and-form there is the cessation of consciousness. And this noble eightfold path is the way leading to the cessation of consciousness.

The pleasure and happiness that arise in dependence on consciousness: this is the allure of consciousness. That consciousness is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change: this is the drawback of consciousness. The subduing and abandoning of desire and passion for consciousness: this is the escape from consciousness.

It's important to understand that it is the noble eightfold path which is the way leading to the cessation of the aggregates, and that our engagement with this path involves comprehending both the allure and drawbacks of the aggregates. After having recognized that the drawback in each case is that they are impermanent and can’t be relied upon, we can come to discern the escape from the aggregates, which consists of subduing and abandoning desire and passion for these bodily and mental processes.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 01, 2011 6:21 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
It's really quite odd that you would consider discussing the fundamentals of sati "fruitless."


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 01, 2011 6:01 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
No, I'm not saying that. Saññā is not the same as paññā. But there can be no paññā without saññā. BTW, the followers of Buddhaghosa's system also accept that the three characteristics are known by inferential cognition (anumānañāṇa) Why? Because the three characteristics are universals (i.e. sāmaññalakkhaṇa) and not unique particulars (i.e. salakkhaṇa). The latter are cognized by direct perception, the former are not.


Author: Nyana
Date: Thu Dec 01, 2011 5:31 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Sati is even more fundamental than this. In terms of sati as memory, it's what allows for context and the continuity of experience. In terms of practice it is both calling to mind (apilāpana) as well as keeping in mind (upaggaṇhana). Cf. Milindapañha.

In commentarial terms, regarding sati's characteristic (lakkhaṇa), property (rasa), manifestation (paccupaṭṭāna), and basis (padaṭṭāna), the Vism. adds the following (Ch. 14.141):
By means of it they remember (saranti), or it itself remembers, or it is just mere remembering (saraṇamatta), thus it is sati. Its characteristic is not floating [away from the object]; its property is not losing [the object]; its manifestation is guarding the state of being face to face with an object; its basis is strong noting or the satipaṭṭhānas of the body and so on. It should be seen as like a post due to its state of being firmly set in the object, and as like a gatekeeper because it guards the gate of the eye and so on.

(In the Vism. apilāpana is interpreted differently than in the older Milindapañha, but that isn't germane to this discussion.)


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:16 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Indeed. And also be motivated to actually engage in abandoning it.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:44 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
To remedy desire for sensual pleasure (kāmacchanda, also rāga) we are instructed to attend to, develop, and maintain recognition of an unattractive object (asubhanimitta). AN 1.2 Nīvaraṇappahāṇavagga:
No other phenomenon do I know, monks, on account of which unarisen desire for sensual pleasure does not arise and arisen desire for sensual pleasure is abandoned as much as on account of this: an unattractive object. For one who attends properly to an unattractive object, unarisen desire for sensual pleasure does not arise and arisen desire for sensual pleasure is abandoned.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Regarding saññā, SN 22.95 Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta:
Recognition (saññā) is like a mirage.

Regarding the entire complex of name-and-form (nāmarūpa), Sn 3.12: Dvayatānupassanā Sutta:
Whatever is transitory certainly has a false nature.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:30 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
There's nothing to be gained by waffling. At some point one either buys into the view and system presented in the Visuddhimagga and post-Visuddhimagga treatises and commentaries or one doesn't.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 2:36 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
This is either a disingenuous statement or you are uninformed (or misinformed) about the Vipassanā meditation traditions which are based upon the view presented in the Visuddhimagga and further elaborated in post-Visuddhimagga commentaries.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 12:37 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
I was speaking of a lack of interest in Burmese vipassanā in general. If one isn't tied to the thought-world of the Vissudhimagga, then Burmese vipassanā doesn't really have much to offer that's especially interesting or important.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:04 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
That's fine. And those of us who are quite unconcerned with the apologetics of Burmese vipassanā will continue to post here on DW in the midst of your protests and complaints.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:20 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
"Laying waste"?...There's no need to "lay waste" to anything. Let's get real -- you are always ready to attack anything which questions the dubious assumptions of Burmese vipassanā. Assumptions which are old and boring and better set aside when writing a doctoral dissertation in 2002.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:56 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
You've actively participated in numerous threads dealing with the subject, often directly responding to the posts in question. In point of fact, just in the past few weeks I deleted a post which you objected to, which pertained to this issue in the context of the two truths theory.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:53 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
As I've already mentioned to Dukkhanirodha, "present moment awareness" is viññāṇa. Specifically, the five sensory consciousnesses. It isn't sati. Sati functions to direct awareness away from the five strands of sensual pleasure and place, develop, &amp; maintain awareness within the domain of any one of the four satipaṭṭhānas.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:35 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Sure it does.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:20 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
When we stop buying into what Ñāṇananda has referred to as the "relentless tyranny of the empirical consciousness." That is, the "myth of the given."


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:16 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
The path is fabricated to lead to dispassion, cessation, and liberation.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:08 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
IMO Ven. Anālayo could have spent more time and effort detailing the fundamentals of sati. He begins in the right place (p. 46):
The noun sati is related to the verb sarati, to remember. Sati in the sense of "memory" occurs on several occasions in the discourses, and also in the standard definitions of sati given in the Abhidhamma and the commentaries.

But only three paragraphs later he is off stating his theory that sati "functions as awareness of the present moment." So much for the fundamentals and details offered in the ancient Pāli texts....


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:54 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
I do too. But I would add that "perception" isn't the best translation of saññā. "Recognition" is better. Secondly, saññā is also a fabrication (saṅkhāra). Thirdly, the recognition of impermanence (aniccasaññā) would be more accurately phrased as the recognition of the absence of permanence. Similarly, the recognition of unsatisfactoriness (dukkhasaññā) is the recognition of the absence of satisfactoriness in that which is not permanent. And the recognition of selflessness (anattasaññā) is the recognition of the absence of a permanent and satisfactory self in that which is not permanent and not satisfactory.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:43 am
Title: Re: Meanings of sati undebunkable once and for all
Content:
This is obvious.


Author: Nyana
Date: Wed Nov 30, 2011 3:51 am
Title: Re: Meanings of sati undebunkable once and for all
Content:
Fortunately, the suttas and abhidhamma are in agreement on this issue.

A good practical introduction is offered in Mindfulness Defined by Ven. Ṭhānissaro.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:10 pm
Title: Re: Meanings of sati undebunkable once and for all
Content:
Probably one of the most succinct and precise definitions of sati is given in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya:
smṛtir ālambanāsaṃpramoṣaḥ

Smṛti is not losing the object [of the mind].


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:03 pm
Title: Re: Meanings of sati undebunkable once and for all
Content:
The Sankrit root smṛ and the term smṛti predate Buddhism. In the ancient Ṛgveda, smṛ means "to remember" or "to keep in mind." Monier Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary includes the following for each:
smṛ
to remember, recollect, bear in mind, call to mind, think of, be mindful of
to remember or think of with sorrow or regret
to hand down memoriter, teach, declare
to recite, to be remembered or recorded or declared (as a law) or mentioned in the smṛti
to be declared or regarded as, to cause to remember or be mindful of or regret
to remind any one of, to wish to remember
smṛti
f. remembrance, reminiscence, thinking of or upon (loc. or comp.), calling to mind (smṛtim api te na yānti, " they are not even thought of "), memory
memory as one of the vyabhicāri-bhāvas (q.v.)
Memory (personified either as the daughter of dakṣa and wife of aṅgiras or as the daughter of dharma and medhā)
the whole body of sacred tradition or what is remembered by human teachers (in contradistinction to śruti or what is directly heard or revealed to the ṛṣis)
These ancient meanings of "remembrance" and "keeping in mind" were retained in the Buddhist canonical discourses as well as the Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda commentarial traditions. For example, the faculty of sati (satindriya) is defined in SN 48.9 Paṭhamavibhaṅga Sutta as follows:
Katamañca, bhikkhave, satindriyaṃ? Idha, bhikkhave, ariyasāvako satimā hoti paramena satinepakkena samannāgato cirakatampi cirabhāsitampi saritā anussaritā – idaṃ vuccati, bhikkhave, satindriyaṃ. 

And what, monks, is the faculty of sati? Here, monks, a noble disciple is satimā, possessing supreme sati and discretion, one who remembers and recollects what was done and said long ago. This is called the faculty of sati.

Likewise, in SN 46.3 Sīlasutta we find the following passage relating to the awakening factor of sati (satisambojjhaṅga):
Yasmiṃ samaye, bhikkhave, bhikkhu tathā vūpakaṭṭho viharanto taṃ dhammaṃ anussarati anuvitakketi, satisambojjhaṅgo tasmiṃ samaye bhikkhuno āraddho hoti; satisambojjhaṅgaṃ tasmiṃ samaye bhikkhu bhāveti; satisambojjhaṅgo tasmiṃ samaye bhikkhuno bhāvanāpāripūriṃ gacchati. 

Dwelling thus withdrawn, one recollects the dhamma and thinks it over. Whenever, monks, a monk dwelling thus withdrawn recollects that dhamma and thinks it over, on that occasion the awakening factor of sati is aroused by the monk, on that occasion the monk develops the awakening factor of sati, on that occasion the awakening factor of sati comes to fulfillment through development in the monk.

And SN 45.8 Vibhaṅga Sutta we find the description of right sati (sammāsati):
Katamā ca, bhikkhave, sammāsati? Idha, bhikkhave, bhikkhu kāye kāyānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṃ; vedanāsu vedanānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṃ; citte cittānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṃ; dhammesu dhammānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṃ – ayaṃ vuccati, bhikkhave, sammāsati.

And what, monks, is right sati? Here, monks, a monk dwells contemplating the body in the body, ardent, fully aware, satimā, having removed covetousness and displeasure with regard to the world. He dwells contemplating feelings in feelings, ardent, fully aware, satimā, having removed covetousness and displeasure with regard to the world. He dwells contemplating mind in mind, ardent, fully aware, satimā, having removed covetousness and displeasure with regard to the world. He dwells contemplating phenomena in phenomena, ardent, fully aware, satimā, having removed covetousness and displeasure with regard to the world.

It's worth noticing that this description of right sati is qualified by being ardent (ātāpī), fully aware (sampajāna), and satimā. To clarify the meanings of these terms we can turn to the Satipaṭṭhānavibhaṅga of the Pāli Abhidhammapiṭaka, which gives the following word analysis for each:
“Ātāpī” ti. Tattha, katamaṁ ātappaṁ? Yo cetasiko viriyārambho nikkamo parakkamo, uyyāmo vāyāmo ussāho ussoḷhī thāmo dhiti asithilaparakkamatā, anikkhittachandatā anikkhittadhuratā dhurasampaggāho, viriyaṁ Viriyindriyaṁ Viriyabalaṁ Sammāvāyāmo – ayaṁ vuccati “ātappaṁ”. Iminā ātappena upeto hoti samupeto upāgato samupāgato, upapanno samupapanno samannāgato. Tena vuccati “ātāpī” ti.

“Sampajāno” ti. Tattha, katamaṁ sampajaññaṁ? Yā paññā pajānanā vicayo pavicayo dhammavicayo, sallakkhaṇā upalakkhaṇā paccupalakkhaṇā, paṇḍiccaṁ kosallaṁ nepuññaṁ vebhabyā cintā upaparikkhā, bhūrī medhā pariṇāyikā vipassanā sampajaññaṁ patodo, paññā Paññindriyaṁ Paññābalaṁ paññāsatthaṁ, paññāpāsādo paññā-āloko paññā-obhāso paññāpajjoto paññāratanaṁ, amoho dhammavicayo Sammādiṭṭhi – idaṁ vuccati “sampajaññaṁ”. Iminā sampajaññena upeto hoti samupeto upāgato samupāgato, upapanno samupapanno samannāgato. Tena vuccati “sampajāno” ti.

“Satimā” ti. Tattha, katamā sati? Yā sati anussati paṭissati sati saraṇatā, dhāraṇatā apilāpanatā asammussanatā, sati Satindriyaṁ Satibalaṁ Sammāsati – ayaṁ vuccati “sati”. Imāya satiyā upeto hoti samupeto upāgato samupāgato, upapanno samupapanno samannāgato. Tena vuccati “satimā” ti.

“Ardent”. Herein, what is ardour? Whatever mental exercise of effort, exertion, great exertion, enterprise, endeavour, attempt, travail, vigour, courage, exertion that is not lax, not putting aside of (wholesome) desire, not putting aside of responsibility, being taken up with responsibility, effort, the faculty of effort, the strength of effort, right endeavour – this is called “ardour”. With this ardour he is endowed, truly endowed, having attained, truly attained, being possessed, truly possessed, furnished (with it). Because of this “ardent” is said.

“Full awareness”. Herein, what is full awareness? That which is wisdom, knowing, investigation, deep investigation, investigation of (the nature of) things, discernment, discrimination, differentiation, erudition, skilfulness, subtlety, clarification, thoughtfulness, consideration, breadth, intelligence, guidance, insight, full awareness, examination, wisdom, the faculty of wisdom, the strength of wisdom, the sword of wisdom, height of wisdom, light of wisdom, lustre of wisdom, flame of wisdom, treasure of wisdom, non-delusion, investigation of (the nature of) things, right view – this is called “full awareness”. With this full awareness he is endowed, truly endowed, having attained, truly attained, being possessed, truly possessed, furnished (with it). Because of this “full awareness” is said.

“Satimāti”. Herein, what is sati? That which is sati, recollection, recall, sati, remembrance, bearing (in mind), not losing, not confusing, sati, the faculty of sati, the strength of sati, right sati – this is called “sati”. With this sati he is endowed, truly endowed, having attained, truly attained, being possessed, truly possessed, furnished (with it). Because of this “satimā” is said.

And so it's clear that the meaning of sati as "remembrance" and "keeping in mind" was still very much retained in the Vibhaṅga (and in parallel passages in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī).

Likewise, the early meanings of remembrance and keeping in mind are retained in the Milindapañha, which gives the characteristics of sati as "calling to mind" or "noting" (apilāpana) and "taking hold" or "keeping in mind" (upaggaṇhana). These two characteristics are further explained as follows:
“Sati, mahārāja, uppajjamānā kusalākusalasāvajjānavajjahīnappaṇītakaṇhasukkasappaṭibhāgadhamme apilāpeti ‘ime cattāro satipaṭṭhānā, ime cattāro sammappadhānā, ime cattāro iddhipādā, imāni pañcindriyāni, imāni pañca balāni, ime satta bojjhaṅgā, ayaṃ ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo, ayaṃ samatho, ayaṃ vipassanā, ayaṃ vijjā, ayaṃ vimuttī’ti. Tato yogāvacaro sevitabbe dhamme sevati, asevitabbe dhamme na sevati. Bhajitabbe dhamme bhajati abhajittabbe dhamme na bhajati. Evaṃ kho, mahārāja, apilāpanalakkhaṇā satī”ti...

“Sati, mahārāja, uppajjamānā hitāhitānaṃ dhammānaṃ gatiyo samanveti ‘ime dhammā hitā, ime dhammā ahitā. Ime dhammā upakārā, ime dhammā anupakārā’ti. Tato yogāvacaro ahite dhamme apanudeti, hite dhamme upaggaṇhāti. Anupakāre dhamme apanudeti, upakāre dhamme upaggaṇhāti. Evaṃ kho, mahārāja, upaggaṇhanalakkhaṇā satī”ti. 

“As sati springs up in the mind of the recluse, he repeatedly notes the wholesome and unwholesome, blameless and blameworthy, insignificant and important, dark and light qualities and those that resemble them thinking, ‘These are the four foundations of mindfulness, these the four right efforts, these the four bases of success, these the five controlling faculties, these the five moral powers, these the seven factors of enlightenment, these are the eight factors of the noble path, this is serenity, this insight, this vision and this freedom.’ Thus does he cultivate those qualities that are desirable and shun those that should be avoided.”...

“As sati springs up in the mind, he searches out the categories of good qualities and their opposites thinking, ‘Such and such qualities are beneficial and such are harmful’. Thus does he make what is unwholesome in himself disappear and maintain what is good.”


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Nov 29, 2011 7:41 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
"Present moment awareness" is viññāṇa. The gist of what you are attempting to argue for is that sati doesn't mean sati, rather, sati means viññāṇa.


Author: Nyana
Date: Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:42 am
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Again, the noun sati is related to the verb sarati, which means "to remember." This meaning is retained in all of the Pāli texts which define sati and give instructions of the development of satipaṭṭhāna.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Nov 28, 2011 10:03 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Again, the recognition of impermanence always relies on memory and is therefore always inferential. And since the recognition of unsatisfactoriness and the recognition of selflessness are based upon the recognition of impermanence they too are inferential.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Nov 28, 2011 4:08 pm
Title: Re: Objection to the Views of Venerable Analayo
Content:
Actually, it's quite relevant whether you acknowledge its relevance or not. The Pāli Tipiṭaka is a better and more authoritative source than your opinions.


Author: Nyana
Date: Mon Nov 28, 2011 2:35 pm
Title: Re: sammāsamādhi: the four jhānas
Content:
I'm not suggesting that jhāna is commonplace. But the English term "superhuman" carries quite inaccurate connotations.


