At BCBS, September 2004 I would like to spend some time this morning exploring a very important idea the Buddha developed—the idea of care. Now many of you may not be familiar with this particular term, at least not put this way: care. It’s usually translated... well, actually it’s not usually translated as anything, and that’s part of the problem. APPAMĀDA The word in Pali is appamāda, which is actually a negative term. The a-, as in Greek, means “not,” and pamāda translates as something … [Read more...]
Stephen Batchelor
After Buddhism
A New Idiom for a Pragmatic, Ethical Culture Based on the Teachings of Gotama Stephen teaches courses on Buddhism and leads meditation retreats all over the world. He is a guiding teacher at Gaia House and translator and author of various books and articles including the bestselling Buddhism Without Beliefs, Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil, and Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. Stephen's new book, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age, will be available … [Read more...]
Freedom Through Not Knowing
I was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in 1974, and trained in that tradition—the Geluk tradition, the more scholarly tradition of Tibetan Buddhism—for the following six or seven years. Part of that training involved dialectics, the logical and critical analysis of Buddhist doctrine. One of the assurances I was given as a young monk was that, were I to devote myself to this critical inquiry, I would come to certainty that ideas such as rebirth and karma can be demonstrated by reason to be … [Read more...]
