There are two aspects to every moment’s experience. One is the content, what it is you are aware of; the other is the intention, what your emotional response is toward that object of awareness. In the Buddhist way of looking at things, the first is largely irrelevant, while the second is immensely important. According to Buddhist psychology, human experience is constructed anew every moment as consciousness of one of the six objects (a form, a sound, a smell, a taste, a touch or a thought) … [Read more...]
Mindfulness Defined: Street Smarts for the Path
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
What does it mean to be mindful of the breath? Something very simple: to keep the breath in mind. Keep remembering the breath each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. H. Rhys-Davids, the British scholar who coined the term “mindfulness” to translate the Pali word sati, was probably influenced by the Anglican prayer to be ever mindful of the needs of others—in other words, to always keep their needs in mind. But even though the word “mindful” was probably drawn from a Christian … [Read more...]
Resourcefulness: a Jataka Story
Andrew Olendzki
Once there was a poor boy who happened upon a dead mouse lying in the road. He wondered if he might turn that mouse’s misfortune into some sort of opportunity for himself. He picked up the mouse and brought it to a tavern, where he offered it to the tavern-keeper to feed his cat. The tavern-keeper was grateful, and gave the boy a penny. With this penny the boy went to the market and bought a very small amount of honey. Then he borrowed a large water pot, filled it with water and … [Read more...]
Escaping the Karma of Addiction
Paul Simons
This article is based on teachings given at BCBS in January, 2008 by Paul Simons & Gregory Bivens in a course called Working with Addiction: Spiritual Self-Schema Therapy. It might seem strange to talk about “spiritual self schema” as something to aspire to in a Buddhist context. In the psychological language of Self-Schema Therapy, it describes an alternative to the “addict self,” the type of mistaken identification with one’s negative thoughts and feelings that perpetuates a cycle of … [Read more...]
How to Be a Bodhisattva
Jan Willis
Shantideva is one of the most revered teachers of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. His most important text, the Bodhicāryāvatāra, was composed in Sanskrit in the eighth century and translated into Tibetan in the eleventh century. There are numerous translations and commentaries to this text, most of them drawn from the Tibetan tradition, and the text we will be using today is from the Tibetan. Like many Buddhist teachers, we do not know a lot definitively about Shantideva, whose name means … [Read more...]
Attached to Nothing
Andrew Olendzki
This is an archaic poem in the Sutta Nipāta, and the language is thus rather compressed. Existing translations vary widely, and this is my best attempt to make sense of the verses while matching the traditional meter’s eight syllables per line. I think Posāla is a yogi of the old school, skilled in attaining formless states of consciousness through intensive concentration practice, including the seventh of the eight stations of consciousness known as “the sphere of nothingness.” This is a … [Read more...]
Back to the Source
John Peacock
John Peacock has been an academic and meditation teacher for 25 years, including monastic training in both the Tibetan and Theravadin traditions. He currently teaches Buddhist studies and Indian religions at the University of Bristol and leads meditation retreats both in the United States and Britain. How did you first enter the stream of the Dharma? I became interested in Eastern religions and philosophy at about the age of eleven and started reading around Indian thought, … [Read more...]
