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...]
A Simple Turning in Place: Forty Years in the Dharma
At a program held at the study center in September 2008, Joseph Goldstein was asked to reflect upon his long experience with meditation and the Dharma. These words have been extracted from that presentation. My first real inquiry into any kind of spiritual dimension happened when I was a freshman in college. I became obsessed, as only a college freshman can, with the effort to figure out whether or not God existed. My mind was filled with it, day and night. It felt like my whole life depended … [Read more...]
Very Good Dharma Friends
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...]
Sharing a Vision of Practice
Kamala Masters has been practicing insight meditation for two decades with Munindra-ji, Sayadaw U Pandita and others, and has been mentored in her native Hawaii by Steven Smith and Michele McDonald-Smith. She has been leading retreats at IMS and elsewhere with Steve Armstrong and others for several years. She and Steve make their home on Maui, where they are raising a daughter. Steve Armstrong first came to IMS in 1977, served on the staff for more than two years and on the IMS board of … [Read more...]
Silent Illumination
"Silent Illumination," or mozhao, is often associated with the Caodong (Jp. Soto) School of Chan (Jp. Zen), and specifically with master Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157). Never before had anyone articulated this teaching so clearly. Hongzhi was prompted to write about Silent Illumination because it was so misunderstood and unfairly criticized. He wished to show that Silent Illumination was the realization of Chan, the awakening of one's true nature. In Buddhism, there may be different expressions … [Read more...]
Meeting Your Thoughts At a Resting Place
There is a particular discourse, titled, Vitakkasanthāna Sutta, that is taught as the Buddha's way of working with thoughts in meditation, for when I teach in a more traditional or orthodox setting, I encounter people who swear by it and take me to task on it. So, I am now going to face my biggest critic, the Buddha himself, as he is interpreted by scholars and lay meditation teachers alike. When this discourse is viewed with unprejudiced eyes regarding thinking in meditation, the Buddha may … [Read more...]
Honoring a Life & Legacy in the Dhamma: Mirka Knaster on Munindra
A young man in the East Bengal region of India, born in 1915 to a Buddhist family that traces its roots to the time of Siddhattha Gotama, raised in a home that respects both study and practice, reads every book he can get his hands on. Becoming fascinated with the Dhamma, he comes to work for the Mahabodhi Society, a group devoted to reawakening Buddhism in the land of its birth. Through this work he comes to meet with everyone who is anyone among those spurring the emergence of Buddhism in … [Read more...]
Shining the Light of Death on Life: Maranasati Meditation (Part II)
The first part of this article which appeared in the Spring 1994 issue of Insight ended with this quote from the great Tibetan yogi Milarepa: "In brief, without being mindful of death, whatever Dharma practices you take up will be merely superficial." What was Milarepa suggesting? When we forget about our own death, we may also be more likely to forget the dharma? If we don't recall death we will also lose the wish to train our minds in dharma? In forgetting about death do we become … [Read more...]
Insight is Liberating Only If It is Lived
How did you first become interested in Buddhist practices? I first began my practice in the Tibetan sedition in 1970. By a strange set of circumstances I ended up in India at 17. Totally culture shocked, I sat in a dingy hotel room in old Delhi and wondered how quickly I could get out of India. An old India hand advised me to head for the mountains to recover before I fled. Arriving in McLeod Ganj, the home of the Dalai Lama and a large settlement of Tibetan refugees. I was stunned by the … [Read more...]