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 […]
Category: Discourse
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 […]
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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 […]
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. :)
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 […]
Transcript for Episode 9 of Dharma PhD (the podcast); we talk about bringing a dhammic lens to the zombie apocalypse (ie, HBO’s TV Series, _The Last of Us_).
On the hunt for dhammic video editing mitta; apply here!
Akincano is sharing his essay “On Reading the Suttas”. Dharma PhD approved!
Perspective, Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude. Thanks, science.
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MN 139, Part 5: Subhūti
Maybe it’s not really about Subhūti?
Continuing to unpack MN 139, On Avoiding Conflict (Parts 1, 2, 3)… recently Ajahn Nisabho gave a bonzer talk, Culture War Pacifism: The Dhamma of Dolly Parton. He spoke about engaging skillfully in political discourse, about not being caught up in the collective papañca of the culture wars. Might this bit in MN 139, about […]
There is a role for political discussion, for talking to people about what is meaningful. There is a role for political action and taking action. But when one is determining when and how to do that, it’s very important to understand that as practitioners of this path, you have stepped into a higher order narrative, […]
Bridging anthropocentricity, one bacteria-laden blog post at a time.
Heard this in a bonzer talk a few days ago. This is it, isn’t it? It’s about, if you’re a closed sort of person, it’s about how do we open up more? Even if I can’t open up to the person, I can open up _in the direction of_ the person. And just that little […]
MN 139, on avoiding conflict, could be divided into three themes: cultivating oneself, communicating with others, and seeking out good influences in one’s life. I didn’t catch this at first, but now I see in this second theme, Communicating With Others, Gotama encouraging us to speak in such a way that we allow our interlocutors […]
Greeting, Friendlies! Part of the tangle of ideas I spoke about in Part 1 comes from reading or hearing teachers or practitioners* use words in contexts such that I think they are referring to a territory near(ish) to Awakening. In this post I’d like to acknowledge these words and ask the hivemind what others might […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about Awakening. What is it? How does one get there? What does one “get” from it? Why do I want whatever it is? Are these even the right kinds of questions to be asking?
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Within Yourself
Happy Birthday, Marvin.
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The Eleventh Pāramī
During an Insight Dialogue Online session this week, the lovely Susie Clarion quoted someone saying A Sense of Humor might make a nice eleventh pāramī. I vote for Levity. :) PS: If you’re not doing Insight Dialogue yet, why not give it a try? PPS: In my iOS Pāli-English Dictionary, null results for both humor […]
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Incremental Backups
Because the more people coming up with silly Dhamma T-shirts, the better. :) (link)
Edit: If you want to start with Part 1, that’s here. The meditation teacher Leigh Brasington wrote a book on Dependent Origination which he self published and made available for Dāna on his website. He kindly (and enthusiastically!) read my previous post on DO and Conditionality. With his permission, here’s an image we cobbled together: A few […]
Dharma PhD 