In a discourse about the teaching of non-self, the Buddha offers the following illustration: “Bhikkhus, what do you think? If people carried off the grass, sticks, branches and leaves in this Jeta Grove, or burned them or did what they liked with them, would you think: ‘People are carrying us off or burning us or doing what they like with us?' No, venerable sir. Why not? Because that is neither our self nor what belongs to our self.” (M 22) As we hear this example today, however, we have to … [Read more...]
The Three Institutional Poisons: Challenging Collective Greed, Ill Will, & Delusion
David Loy
The historical Buddha Shakyamuni lived at least 2,400 years ago. Buddhism began as an Iron Age religion, and all its important teachings are pre-modern. So can Buddhism really help us understand and respond to contemporary social problems such as economic globalization and biotechnology, war and terrorism (and the war on terrorism), climate change and other ecological crises? What the Buddha did understand is human dukkha—how it works, what causes it and how to end it. Dukkha is usually … [Read more...]
There’s More to Giving Than We Think
Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia
A number of years ago, I taught several workshops on the theme of generosity (dāna) as a spiritual practice. The audience was a group of volunteers at a community meditation center. It was a bit of a rude awakening for all of us to discover that only a few of the volunteers saw their service as an integral part of their spiritual practice. A majority of the volunteers said that they offered their time and energy because they didn’t have much money and volunteering was a way to attend the … [Read more...]
Seeking the Seeker
Jack Engler
I once asked my teacher, Anagarika Munindra-ji, ’’What is the dharma?” He said, very simply, “Dharma is living life fully. ” When we practice mindfulness meditation, many things arise in awareness. We typically turn our attention to each thing in turn—different thoughts, feelings, body sensations, states of mind. We often don’t turn our attention to that which is doing the observing, that which seems to be doing the thinking, that which is aware. This is what I want to do today—to actually … [Read more...]
The Case Against Racism
Andrew Olendzki
The tendency in human nature to discriminate against people because of their skin color, social standing or birth, and to consider one racial group to be more pure than another, is probably as old as mankind itself. Racism was alive and well in ancient India, where pale-skinned Indo-European brahmins placed themselves at the pinnacle of a caste system that included nobles, merchants, workers and the universally denigrated outcasts. In this discourse the Buddha offers a series of cogent … [Read more...]
Beyond Joy and Sorrow
Andrew Olendzki
These bantering verses, exchanged between the Buddha and Kakuddha, the “son of a deva" or a forest sprite, are replete with subtlety, word play and double meaning. Notice the matching structure of the verses, a very common device of early Buddhist poetry. The fourth stanza mirrors the third, line by line, and the theme is echoed again in the fifth stanza. The Buddha follows the poetic lead of the sprite, but reverses the meaning of his words. Kakuddha assumes delight (nandi) to be the requisite … [Read more...]
Teaching Buddhism in America
Bhikkhu Bodhi
Excerpted from Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi's remarks to the Community Dharma Leaders program at BCBS, June29, 2006. I have been thinking about the discussion we had yesterday on the problems you’ve encountered in teaching Buddhism in America. I would like to offer a few of my own thoughts on this subject. As we go along, I will also share with you the general outlines of one scheme I’ve worked out for pulling the Buddha’s teachings together into a single, all-embracing whole. In my view one of the … [Read more...]
