One question that often comes up for the modern student of Buddhism is “What did the Buddha teach?” The short answer, it seems to me, is something like “Who knows?” It’s kind of like asking “What is a tree?” (or any other question, for that matter). There is just no getting at what something really is. All that can be said is what it looks like from this perspective or that point of view, which, when you think about it, is saying far more about ourselves than about the tree, or about what the … [Read more...]
Andrew Olendzki
A Comprehensive Matrix of Constructed Experience
These are the building blocks with which we construct our world. Every action which creates karma is represented on this chart. It is meant as an exhaustive categorization of all conditioned human experience. Try examining each of these options, one at a time, and look for examples of such activity in your own life and practice. You will find that such a matrix of experience provides a generic and de-personalized way of looking at what is taking place moment by moment, which supports the … [Read more...]
Keeping the Wheel Rolling
Sāriputta (also known by the name Upatissa) was the Buddha’s leading follower, particularly praised for his wisdom. These verses, containing eight syllables per line, have been extracted from a longer poem of thirty seven verses preserved in the Theragāthā. They describe man who continues to spend his time in solitary meditation in the forest, even after having attained the full awakening of the arahant. The elder keeps the dharma wheel of the Buddha’s teaching rolling by such dedication to … [Read more...]
The Net of Brahmā: 62 Flavors of Wrong View (Dīgha Nikāya 1)
This chart outlines at a glance the first discourse of the Dīgha Nikāya, the Long Discourses of the Buddha, which lays out a number of different ways in which people can hold mistaken views about the nature of the self and of the world. The first eighteen views are based upon speculations about the past, while the final forty-four all have their root in speculation about the future. In both cases we see the drawbacks of “hammering it out with reason,” but we also see how easy it can be to … [Read more...]
A Mother’s Blessing
The woman who is said to have composed this poem was Pajapati, the Buddha's step-mother and a Queen of the Sakyas. Her younger sister was Maya, married to King Suddhodana only after Pajapati herself was unable to conceive an heir. Queen Maya died in childbirth, and it was Pajapati who raised Gotama as her own son. After his enlightenment, Pajapati also left the palace and became the first of the bhikkhuis, the order of nuns. The third stanza suggests that her attainments included the … [Read more...]
Lions in the Wilderness
Early Buddhist Appreciation of Nature This article is extracted from a paper presented on March 9, 1996 at the Harvard Conference in honor of retiring professor Masatoshi Nagatomi. In East Asia, Buddhism became easily identified with nature poetry—especially in the Ch'an and Zen traditions. The Buddhist concern for being fully present in the moment harmonized nicely with the Chinese poetic tradition of evoking a concrete natural image in touching detail. And in the Japanese aesthetic … [Read more...]
The Lonely Forest Dweller
These lovely verses are attributed to Tissa Kumāra, the youngest brother of King Ashoka, and if this is true it demonstrates how some of the poetry of the Theragāthā entered into the Pali Canon relatively late—at the time of the Third Council (c. 250 B.C.E.). Prince Tissa was made Vice Regent when Ashoka was first consecrated King. But within only a few years, inspired by the example of a forest-dwelling monk he encountered while hunting, he renounced worldly life to live as a simple Buddhist … [Read more...]
Beaten Like A Thief
These powerful words echo through twenty-five centuries of humanity to reach our ears today. It makes one's spine tingle to think how many voices—now long silent—have uttered these words in each of the one hundred generations that have come and gone since Sirimanda first composed them. How many have heeded their message? How many can hear it today? This is the kind of literature that leads some to view Buddhism as holding a pessimistic outlook on the world. But in fact it is merely expressing … [Read more...]
The Rock Inscriptions of King Ashoka
King Ashoka was a remarkable leader, by any standard. He inherited from his father and grandfather an immense kingdom, encompasing most of present-day India and Pakistan, which he ruled for more than forty years from 274 to 232 B.C.E. Converting to Buddhism early in his reign, he worked tirelessly to uplift and civilize his world through the influence of Dhamma—the teaching of the Buddha. He had numerous inscriptions carved on stones and pillars set up in all reaches of his empire, but … [Read more...]
The Parable of the Six Creatures
Salayatana Samyutta XXXV.206 (SIV, 198) When a person, seeing a form with the eye, is attached to pleasing forms and repelled by unpleasing forms; or, hearing a sound with the ear, is attached to pleasing sounds and repelled by unpleasing sounds; or, smelling an odor with the nose, is attached to pleasing odors and repelled by unpleasing odors; or, tasting a flavor with the tongue, is attached to pleasing flavors and repelled by unpleasing flavors; or, touching a physical sensation with … [Read more...]
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