This tender poem of loss and recovery was (probably) composed by Patacara, one of the leading women of the Buddha's order of nuns. Born the daughter of a wealthy banker, Patacara fell in love with one of her father’s servants and ran off to live happily with him in a forest hamlet. Then, through a series of tragic accidents, she lost first her husband, then two sons, and finally her parents and brother. Wandering destitute, naked and mad with grief, she in time met the Buddha face to face, who … [Read more...]
Andrew Olendzki
Evolving Beyond Delusion
The human species is evolving, and at a very rapid rate now that the evolution is cultural rather than biological. Physical changes may still occur; but at such a glacial pace we are unlikely to notice anything. Changes in the human mind, however, are dramatic and can be seen all around us. The twin forces of greed and hatred—the primal urge to want more of what pleases us and to want what displeases us to go away—have been useful adaptive tools throughout our primitive past, but are rapidly … [Read more...]
Dedicated to Dhamma
On October 11, 1994, an inauguration ceremony took place at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies to mark the completion and occupation of a significant new building. Built entirely with donated funds, the building is comprised of a large meditation hall/conference room/meeting room upstairs with a foyer that can also be used in a variety of ways, and 14 single rooms on the lower floor equipped for both study and practice. The new facility allows the study center now to host between fifty and a … [Read more...]
The Call of the Peacocks
Theragatha 211-12 This highly alliterated poem, attributed to the elder monk Culaka, plays with the prefix su-, which occurs no less than 14 times in these two short stanzas. It has three primary meanings, covered successively through the poem: 1) lovely or well-formed, 2) good, thorough, or well done, and 3) it is often used as a simple intensive prefix, meaning very- or most-. The plaintive call of the peacock, commonplace during the 3 month rainy season retreats undertaken by the … [Read more...]
Exploring New Approaches: The Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
How many ways are there to...how do I put it? Study Buddhism? Understand the dharma? Train in the sasana? Explore the Buddhist tradition? Follow the path? Engage in Buddhist Studies? Inquire into the nature of reality? You see the problem already. There are a lot of ways of going about doing whatever-you-call-it, and what you call it makes a significant difference to what you actually wind up doing. The word "Buddhism" itself, as we are all no doubt aware, is a modern word. It is an … [Read more...]
A Wish of Lovingkindness
Cullavagga V.6 This less-well-known mettā verse has its origins in an ancient, probably pre-Buddhist, snake charm. It is taught by the Buddha in the Vinaya in response to his hearing of a monk who perished after being bitten by a snake. The first stanza, not translated here, extends loving kindness to the four main groups of snake deities. The Buddha tells the monks that if they adequately develop loving kindness to these snake deities, they will be free of harm from snake … [Read more...]
The Context of Impermanence
Some of the best dharma talks I have ever heard are the ones given by the Buddha. Fortunately, much of what he said was recorded and transcribed, and though there are numerous historical questions we are unable to fully answer about their transmission, I have found that, by and large, what is published in the Pali Canon is an immeasurably valuable source for trying to understand—in some detail—what the Buddha taught regarding the nature of my own experience. I like to look very closely at … [Read more...]
Outline of Abhidhamma
The Abhidhamma is a body of literature that emerged shortly after the lifetime of the Buddha, comprising the third of the “three baskets” (Tipitaka) of the early Buddhist canon. The word also refers broadly to a body of thought whose roots are in the psychological teachings and meditation practices of the suttas (the discourses) and whose branches reach far into the mature philosophical discussions of the Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna traditions. The Abhidhamma is essentially an attempt to … [Read more...]
Post Copernicus
Remember how people used to naively think the earth was at the center of the universe, and that the sun and all the stars revolved around us? And then Copernicus came along and declared the radically counter-intuitive truth that the earth in fact orbited the sun. This launched a scientific revolution that focused on studying everything from an objective stance, as if we could hover outside ourselves and get a disembodied perspective on it all. This way, as the story goes, our view is not … [Read more...]
Free of Fear
bhaddiya theragatha 863-4 Bhaddiya was a great Sakya chieftain, the son of the matriarch Kali-Godha whom the Buddha identifies as the most high-born person in his circle. He was good friends with Anuruddha, the Buddhas cousin (and Ānanda’s brother), who persuaded him to go forth with him into the homeless life under the Buddha’s instruction. Both friends, like Siddhartha, enjoyed a privileged upbringing, and had to make some adjustments to the renunciate life of a wandering … [Read more...]
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