One question that often comes up for the modern student of Buddhism is “What did the Buddha teach?” The short answer, it seems to me, is something like “Who knows?” It’s kind of like asking “What is a tree?” (or any other question, for that matter). There is just no getting at what something really is. All that can be said is what it looks like from this perspective or that point of view, which, when you think about it, is saying far more about ourselves than about the tree, or about what the … [Read more...]
Dharma Contemplation: Soaking Ourselves in the Words of the Buddha
As interest in Buddhist teachings becomes more mainstream, many people are beginning to feel a yearning for encounters with the Dhamma that are, as close as possible to the source, possibly less colored by contemporary interpretations or emphases. While it is not possible to access truly unadulterated teachings—there is much debate about what constitutes the words of the Buddha and translations always add a layer of interpretation—the spread of sutta study groups and sales of books from the … [Read more...]
The Net of Brahmā: 62 Flavors of Wrong View (Dīgha Nikāya 1)
This chart outlines at a glance the first discourse of the Dīgha Nikāya, the Long Discourses of the Buddha, which lays out a number of different ways in which people can hold mistaken views about the nature of the self and of the world. The first eighteen views are based upon speculations about the past, while the final forty-four all have their root in speculation about the future. In both cases we see the drawbacks of “hammering it out with reason,” but we also see how easy it can be to … [Read more...]
The Rock Inscriptions of King Ashoka
King Ashoka was a remarkable leader, by any standard. He inherited from his father and grandfather an immense kingdom, encompasing most of present-day India and Pakistan, which he ruled for more than forty years from 274 to 232 B.C.E. Converting to Buddhism early in his reign, he worked tirelessly to uplift and civilize his world through the influence of Dhamma—the teaching of the Buddha. He had numerous inscriptions carved on stones and pillars set up in all reaches of his empire, but … [Read more...]
After Buddhism
A New Idiom for a Pragmatic, Ethical Culture Based on the Teachings of Gotama Stephen teaches courses on Buddhism and leads meditation retreats all over the world. He is a guiding teacher at Gaia House and translator and author of various books and articles including the bestselling Buddhism Without Beliefs, Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil, and Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. Stephen's new book, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age, will be available … [Read more...]
A Question of Skill
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...]
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...]
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...]
True & False: Dharma After the Western Enlightenment
Insight Journal: How do Western Buddhists, in spite of our many modern views, take their forms too literally? Rita Gross: Since I often teach in a Mahāyāna setting, let me use an example from that tradition. According to Mahāyāna legend, the Buddha hid his Mahāyāna teachings in the realm of the nāgas, serpent-like creatures who dwell under the sea, because his students were not yet ready to receive them. Eventually these teachings were retrieved by the great 2nd-century master Nāgārjuna. This … [Read more...]