Greetings, Friendlies! One more round in Make-Believe Land before returning to complete faith and reverence. (Maybe.) An hour into that fateful saṅkhāra talk I asked something to the effect: “I get confused when people say: that’s a sankhāra, also, that’s a sankhāra, and that other thing. Also a saṅkhāra. Listening to this talk, I’m wondering, […]
Author: Shannon M Whitaker
Greetings, Friendlies! Continuing from last time in our Neighborhood of Make-Believe… Akincano Weber began that Saṅkhāra talk: The word “karoti” means “making”. “Saṅkharoti” means “making things together”, means compounding things, forming things, processing things with each other. …the noun saṅkhāra is applied to basically three aspects of a dynamic sequence. [1] It is applied to […]
Perhaps. If it is the case that one’s understanding is demonstrated through clarity of instruction… then it may be we are in some trouble regarding the concept of Saṅkhāra. A particularly good example of a recurrent phenomenon: a 2022 retreat with Akincano Weber and John Peacock on Dependent Origination [1], the Saṅkhāra talk. Sixty-four minutes […]
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PPP, Part 6, On Noumena
Greetings, Friendlies! A swerve into classical philosophy. :) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) initially proposed the concept of “noumena”, contrasted with “phenomena”. Phenomena are what make up human experience. What we call objects and experiences, phenomena originate from our sensory perceptions (aka Saḷāyatana, sense doors, sight, sound, taste, etc), these perceptions are then formed into phenomena, ie, […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Last time we looked at some rather extraordinary examples of avijjā, of not understanding how our minds work. This time I’d like to share a case that struck me quite strongly, precisely because it was so much closer to home than the others. This case covered a former Johns Hopkins (JHU) student. She […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Following on from Pile of Provisional Positions 3, about the Classical View of Humanity, and the idea of Avijjā as not understanding how our minds work… In the two semesters I studied Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins, the course that most blew my mind (and this is a high bar) was Cognitive Neuropsychology. […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Following on our metaphorical room cleaning: let’s begin by picking up the Classical Western View of Humanity. The Classical View seems important juxtaposed against what is possible with a more scientifically informed view. By scientifically informed, I mean, among other things, physics (itty-bitty physics all the way up to great big physics), ecology, […]
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Learning in Public
Greetings, Friendlies! I’d like to offer a framework for what it is I think I’m doing, and for what that might mean for you as a reader, how you might engage should you be interested in such engagement. The Classical PhD holds one advantage over the Independent PhD: inherent in the structure one is in […]
When I was small(er) my parents gave me the book, What to Do When Your Mom or Dad Says… Clean Your Room!. Part of a series titled “Survival Series for Kids” (Seriously. My poor parents.): A proto- Marie Kondo treatise. With better pictures. One begins by clearing off and making the bed. That is, establishing […]
Greetings, Friendlies! I harbor some baseless supposition (BS?) that classical dhamma education unfolds via a structure honed over, perhaps, several thousand years? Theories and practices presented in an order and at a pace curated and refined for generations. Practical. Reproducible. Safe. I have not been the beneficiary (or victim) of such a system; coming up […]
If I consider you as inside my tribe, I am naturally “good” to you. I will take care of you; I may even risk my life to save you or that which you love.
If I consider you outside my tribe, look out.
What I see as the fundamental problem, and what I am most interested in working on, is that we humans do not understand the kind of beings we are.
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Avijjā as Mis-understanding
Greetings, Friendlies. :) For your consideration: what about translating Avijjā as “Mis-understanding”? “Ignorance” seems a little pejorative, “confusion” a little apathetic. Mis-understanding may sound odd at first, but in dhamma circles we do something similar when we speak of dis-ease. We are not speaking of illness, we are speaking of _not being at ease_. In […]
Previously we proposed that chemotaxis may be a precursor of vedanā and that holding this view (lightly) may contribute to a more embedded/interconnected understanding of human-beingness in the spectrum of life. This time I’d like to play with the idea that infusing an understanding of vedanā with a sense of taxis/movement can more coherently embed […]
Articulating an idea in the vedanā discussion: Sometimes dharma teachers note that a precursor of vedanā may be observed in organisms as simple as single-celled bacteria. These organisms move towards food (that which is beneficial) and away from toxins (that which is harmful). The term for this movement is “chemotaxis”. “Chemo” from the Greek “khemeia”, […]
Perhaps. Some dharma teachers claim there is no English equivalent for the Pāli “vedanā” . Although I do not know a word in common usage, there has been a word used in psychology since the 1930s, “valence”, that I think will do the job very well. [1] In (the HIGHLY recommended) How Emotions Are Made, […]
“if we want to focus our minds on serious and difficult things, we may at points have to take some radical steps – and to do things that will strike some people as odd and or even unwarranted.” ~Alain de Botton, How to Think More Effectively A few years ago I wrote about Gregg McKeowen’s […]
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Thoughts on Determinism / Free Will
Chatting with a friend about Existentialism, Buddhist Ethics, Determinism, Free Will (because that’s the kind of nerds we are). Today’s position on determinism / free will: I come from a strongly evolutionary perspective, and a strongly materialist perspective. Should be logically hemmed into determinism. I also study ethics and attempt to cultivate (aka, re-wire my […]
Perhaps. Regarding Viññāṇa, I first heard the phrasing “Consciousness Of” from John Peacock’s “Buddhism Before the Theravada” series (Part 5, 53:45): “…consciousness is always a consciousness of…” something. That is, Gotama spoke of consciousness always having an object. (MN 38) “Consciousness is reckoned according to the very same condition dependent upon which it arises. Consciousness that […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Leigh Brasington recently self-published a new book on the Gradual Training; it is available on his website (dāna basis): http://gt.leighb.com/. If you didn’t know, along with _Right Concentration_ (on the sutta jhānas), Leigh published a book on Dependent Origination, also available on his website: https://www.leighb.com/sodapi/index.html. With friendliness!
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Playful Dhamma
Dear Friendlies, Greetings! Writing in a rush, my fingers tangling in the keyboard. Please excuse if incoherent; excited. I think I’ve understood something (again), and wondering if any of you have advice in this direction. An aspect of my life that is lacking in cultivation is the eleventh parami. Humor. Levity. Actually I think the best […]
In the Metta Sutta (Snp 1.8 and Khp 9) there is a line Gil Fronsdal translates “As a mother would risk her own life to protect her child, her only child”. The Pāli here translated as child is “putta”. John Peacock has said that this more accurately translates to “son” (see 1:11:22). My knowledge of Pāli […]
This is one of a series of transcripts of talks I have found particularly helpful. This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Metta as a Path to Awakening (Part 1). AudioDharma.org 0:00 The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, please visit our website at […]
This is one of a series of transcripts of talks I have found particularly helpful. This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Metta as a Path to Awakening (Part 1). Insight Meditation Center 0:00 The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, please visit […]
Playing around with my smart phone and found you can make a lock screen out of just emojis. So… This is my kind of dhamma. Sure, dukkha. But it’s okay to have a sense of humor about it. May you hold your dukkha with a little levity. :)
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The Cosmic Type
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Live Immediately.
This sounds awfully familiar somehow…
Greetings, Friendlies! I was recently (re)introduced to a little practice in the vast sphere of Wise Communication (sammā-vācā) maybe worth sharing: If wise communication involves an openness, a willingness to hear and to understand, then the exercise is to notice the times when I am not able to do that. When I close off, when […]
Dear Friendlies, Greetings! Some of you will appreciate the pleasant vedanā I feel reporting that on “Discuss and Discover” (the Sutta Central Forum) Ajahn Brahmali is posting about his translation of the Vinaya Pitaka. He has also put out a request for comments on a draft of the introduction to the Bhikkhuvibhaṅga: I am currently […]
In Bhikkhu Bodhi’s essay on the Upanisa Sutta (SN 12.23), he writes this about the Pāli word “Nibbidā”, often translated “disenchantment” or, less to my taste, “disgust”. the word’s literal meaning [is] “finding out.” Maybe everyone already knew this. It was news to me. What? “Finding Out?” DuckDuckGo unearthed a 2003 article by Andrew Olendzki […]
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