These two verses point to the healing symbolism of the the Buddha’s teaching. He is often pictured as the great physician who, seeing the suffering of all beings in the world, applies the medical formula of the four noble truths to 1) describe the symptoms of suffering; 2) investigate its specific causes; 3) using this information, reverse the causes to conceive a cure; and finally 4) lay out a flexible program of treatment that will lead a person out of affliction to lasting health of … [Read more...]
The Interdependent Arising of Feeling (Insight into the Aggregates)
Andrew Olendzki
Today we are turning our attention to the second of the aggregates, the aggregate of feeling. Before we get very far, however, we will need to appreciate the fact that the Buddhists are using this word quite differently than we usually do in English. Our understanding of the word “feeling” has been molded considerably by the Greek influence upon Western civilization. The Greek philosophers tended to divide the person into three parts. First there are the appetites, the raw drives like … [Read more...]
The Experience of Feeling (Insight into the Aggregates)
Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia
We study and practice with the Buddha’s teaching on the five aggregates in order to take part in the liberating journey towards realizing that body, feeling, perception, intention and consciousness are impermanent, suffering and not self. I have found that the key to this breakthrough liberation has been in observing and discovering for myself how the second aggregate, vedanā or feeling, operates. In the Buddha’s teaching on dependent origination, vedanā marks what some people call the … [Read more...]
A Day of Practice and Discussion, Inspired by the Maṇgala Sutta
Sharon Salzberg
These brief comments are extracted from a day-long program at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies on November 14, 1999. The Maṇgala Sutta Sutta Nipāta 258-269 1 1. The teachings in the sutta are about empowerment, in a way, to craft our lives, to make a life that can be in harmony with other things, a life that can be supportive of our deepest values and the reliance on and respect of simplicity. The blessings in the sutta are, of course, expressions of relationships in the … [Read more...]
Three Views of Transience
Andrew Olendzki
–The Diamond Sutra –Saṃyutta Nikāya 22:95 This famous verse serves as a climax to the Diamond Sutra, a foundation text of the Mahāyāna tradition. Here we see the Sanskrit version in its original script, along with a transliteration and literal translation, as well as a version translated from the Chinese (quoted in Mu Soeng, The Diamond Sutra, p. 135). The same sentiment is articulated in the Pali verse on the right, taken from the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Notice that the Pali verse … [Read more...]
A Question of Skill
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Thanissaro Bhikkhu, also known more informally to many as Ajaan Geoff, is an American-born Theravada monk who has been the abbot of Metta Forest Monaster near San Diego, CA, since 1993. He teaches regularly at BCBS and throughout the US and has contributed significantly to the Dhamma Dana Publications project with his books Wings to Awakening, Mind Like Fire Unbound, and a new free-verse translation of the Dhammapada. Ajaan Geoff, thirty years ago you were a student at Oberlin … [Read more...]
