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...]
Dependent Origination
This article has been excerpted from a program offered by Christina at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies on October 18,1998. Please note that this represents only a small portion of the material offered in the full program. In the Buddha's teachings, the second noble truth is not a theory about what happens to somebody else, but is a process which is going on over and over again in our own lives—through all our days, and countless times every single day. This process in Pali is called … [Read more...]
Dhamma as Skillful Kamma
There is a rather humorous text in the Middle Length Discourses called the Kukkuravatika Sutta, or The Dog-duty Ascetic (M 57). In the Buddha's time, the so-called spiritual scene was full of people who did extreme ascetic practices. In this text, we’re told of an ascetic who likes to practice like he’s a dog. He walks around on all fours, traipsing in and out of puddles, and will only eat food that is thrown on the ground. And he has an ascetic friend who likes to practice like he’s an ox. This … [Read more...]
Shin Buddhism
Taitetsu and Mark Unno are father and son, both distinguished scholars and authors. They have taught a course on Shin Buddhism together for several years now at BCBS. This article is based on the most recent of those courses and on other writing they’ve done on the subject. Tai: When I was a 21-year-old senior at the University of California, Berkeley—many years ago—I had the opportunity to hear the famous Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki give a talk. Afterwards he invited anyone who wanted to ask … [Read more...]
Working with Perception
What is perception? It’s the most immediate derived sense of an object: It’s a flower, it’s a car, it’s a person. There’s a mild impact, contact, a sense of, ah—something strikes the eye. There’s an immediate flurrying or movement around what that is. This becomes more apparent when you meditate and slow the mind down, so that you find some space between the rush of ideas and moods. Then as you’re abiding in a fairly spacious state you feel how things strike you. It could be pleasant, like a … [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...]
Emptiness and Freedom
About 100 AD, a man later known as Nāgārjuna was born into a Brahmin family in southern India. By the time he was twenty, he was well known for his Brahmanical scholarly learning. However, after an encounter with some serious dukkha, he began studying the works of the Buddha. Supposedly in three months he had mastered the early scriptures, but they still left unanswered questions. At that point he encountered an old monk who followed the Mahāyāna tradition. Nāgārjuna was so impressed by the … [Read more...]
Practicing for Awakening
These remarks have been excerpted from a day-long program given by Jack Engler at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies on November 1, 1997. Jack has had a long association with Dharma study and practice. He studied Pali language and Abhidhamma at the Post-Graduate Institute of Buddhist Studies in Nalanda, Bihar, and practiced meditation for several years in India with Anagarika Munindraji and Dipa Ma. He also studied with the Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw in Burma. He is co-author of Transformations of … [Read more...]
Awareness of Thinking: Recollective Awareness Practice
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...]
Wheels of Fire: The Buddha’s Radical Teaching on Process
Ādittapariyāya Sutta: The Fire Sermon, SN 35.28 "Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye—experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain—that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with … [Read more...]