Stephen Batchelor and Martine Batchelor, both with extensive backgrounds in monastic Buddhism, are currently lay dharma teachers, practitioners and authors of a number of important books. Naming only a few, Martine has written Walking on Lotus Flowers: Buddhist Women Living, Loving and Meditating; and has co-edited Buddhism and Ecology. Stephen has written Alone with Others, Faith to Doubt, and The Awakening of the West; and they have cooperated on The Way of Korean Zen. They live in South … [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...]
Mapping the Mind
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...]
Secular mindfulness: potential & pitfalls
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...]
Neuro-Bhavana: A Video Series with 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...]
Buddhist Roots & Ethics
Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) have become a wide-spread treatment because of their secular nature. MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) has been extremely successful in introducing large numbers of people to the value of mindfulness practice in coping with common sources of suffering, such as chronic pain. In removing these practices from their original context, Buddhadharma, much was left behind. The role of sīla or ethics, for example, in the cultivation of well-being, is being … [Read more...]
Talking with Andrew Olendzki About His New Roles
Andrew Olendzki has been part of Barre Center for Buddhist Studies since its earliest days, bringing it to life, managing its operations and teaching countless courses to many grateful students. After moving into a full-time role as Senior Scholar in recent years, to focus more on scholarship and teaching exclusively, he is now continuing that role part time and embracing a new role with the Mind and Life Institute in Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts. Insight Journal asked Andy to talk about … [Read more...]
MIT Meets the Monastery
Rajesh Kasturirangan is a faculty member at the National Institute of Advanced Studies at Bangalore, India. He has a doctorate in cognitive science from MIT. He has taught at BCBS about the overlap between Buddhadharma and cognitive science, most recently in 2009. This month, Insight Journal talks with him about a new online community he is starting to explore these issues further. In addition to the implications of its title, MIT meets the Monastery, he uses phrases like "Wisdom and Science," … [Read more...]
Secular Buddhism: New vision or yet another of the myths it claims to cure?
A hundred years ago, almost exactly, Karl Kraus, an eminent Austrian publicist and the German language's foremost satirist, famously claimed in his newspaper that Psychoanalysis is the very mental illness it claims to cure.1 Amusing and bitingly unfair, Kraus turned his violent dislike into a crafty aphorism. Today, we know how prejudiced and superficial his knowledge of psychoanalysis was when he wrote this, how personal slight rather than understanding led to what has become famous not for its … [Read more...]
New rivers, new rafts: The Secular Buddhism Conference
Here some clansmen learn the Dhamma—discourses, stanzas, expositions, verses, exclamations, sayings, birth stories, marvels, and answers to questions—and having learned the Dhamma, they examine the meaning of those teachings with wisdom. Examining the meaning of those teachings with wisdom, they gain a reflective acceptance of them. They do not learn the Dhamma for the sake of criticising others and for winning in debates, and they experience the good for the sake of which they learned the … [Read more...]