For the last couple of years I have been participating in and contributing to the Mind & Life Institute's Mapping the Mind initiative. Among scientific researchers this topic primarily involves mapping out the wiring and firing of various neural networks in the brain, and indeed for those with strong materialist inclinations (which includes most scientists) mapping the mind can only really mean mapping the brain. For practitioners of Buddhist meditation, however, the situation is entirely … [Read more...]
In this issue:
Wise Attention
Sayadaw U Jagara
Sayadaw U Jagara will teach February 6-8, 2015 at BCBS on Wise Attention (yoniso-manasikāra). He is Canadian-born and has been a Theravadin monk for 35 years, primarily in Sri Lanka and Myanmar (Burma). He has trained and taught in the U Ba Khin as well as the Pa-Auk traditions of Myanmar (Burma), where he presently lives. Insight Journal: How did you come to the Dhamma? Sayadaw U Jagara: I came to the Dhamma when my brother returned to Canada from a trip to India. He showed me how to … [Read more...]
Secular mindfulness: potential & pitfalls
Jenny Wilks
This article is based on a presentation at last year's conference at BCBS on Secular Buddhism. Introduction Imagine for a moment that you are a health & fitness trainer—you work with people who go the gym regularly and work out daily, to support them in their efforts to cultivate a perfectly-toned body. Over the past few years you've noticed that many other people in society are beginning to do some exercise—they don't work out daily, but perhaps they attend a weekly yoga class or go … [Read more...]
Some (mostly secular) thoughts about Emptiness
Gay Watson
This article emerges from a paper presented at last year's conference at BCBS on Secular Buddhism, which in turn arose from a period spent writing a book on A Philosophy of Emptiness. This entailed a largely non-Buddhist and widespread consideration of concepts of emptiness from Taoism and Buddhism, through Greek thought, Christian mystics and Romantics to the contemporary world of science, philosophy and art practice. Here I will concentrate on ideas of emptiness in Buddhist teachings and their … [Read more...]
The Evolving Sangha
Jay Michaelson
Jay Michaelson holds a Ph.D from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a J.D. from Yale. He is currently a visiting scholar at Brown University, where he is an adviser to the Varieties of Meditative Experience project. Jay is affiliated with the Practical Dharma movement and the Contemplative Development Mapping Project, and has done a number of long-term vipassanā retreats in the United States and Nepal. He is the author of five books, most recently Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism and … [Read more...]
Neuro-Bhavana: A Video Series with Rick Hanson
Rick Hanson
Welcome to a new turn in Insight Journal offerings. For some time, it has been our aspiration at BCBS to offer our teachings through new media via the internet. Rick Hanson, whom as you may know has taught at BCBS several times, encouraged us to offer his teachings from April of this year as one of our initial projects. The course in total runs 240 minutes, edited into 11 videos, from a weekend course by Rick Hanson that took place at BCBS in April of this year. It includes several … [Read more...]
Awareness of Thinking: Recollective Awareness Practice
Jason Siff
Jason Siff, a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka in the late 1980's, has been teaching meditation in the United States since 1990. He is the founding teacher of the Skillful Meditation Project in Los Angeles. He will teach Awareness of Thinking at BCBS August 13-17. Insight Journal: We heard something about your upcoming book, Thoughts are Not the Enemy, about a year ago. Are you getting any interesting reactions to the ideas in the book? Jason Siff: The book will be released in October, though I … [Read more...]
Jhāna Practice and True Happiness
Shaila Catherine
Shaila Catherine has been practicing since 1980 and teaching since 1996. After studying and practicing extensively with Pa Auk Sayadaw at the Forest Refuge, she wrote a book at his suggestion on jhāna practice and its relationship to vipassanā. In August of this year, she will bring jhāna teachings and her enthusiasm for the suttas to bear on the subject of happiness, in a course at BCBS. Insight Journal asked her to talk about how she arrived at this point, and her plans for the course. … [Read more...]
Natural Buddhism
Gil Fronsdal
Note: This article was developed from one of 20 presentations made at the BCBS conference on secular Buddhism held in March of 2013. Gil Fronsdal is the primary teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and vipassanā in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, was ordained as a Soto Zen priest in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman. He received a PhD in … [Read more...]
How is the Medium Changing the Message?
Ken McLeod
Although we think of technology as a new influence, in fact, markets, technologies, and the teachings of the Buddha have shaped each other in complex reverberations since earliest times. At the conference on secular Buddhism held at BCBS one year ago this month, Ken McLeod led the assembled scholar-teachers through an exercise to examine Western Buddhism through the lens of Marshall McLuhan's "four effects" from McLuhan's Laws of Media. Insight Journal asked McLeod to expand on these ideas about … [Read more...]
