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 […]
Category: Scholarship
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!
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 […]
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 […]
Akincano is sharing his essay “On Reading the Suttas”. Dharma PhD approved!
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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 […]
Bridging anthropocentricity, one bacteria-laden blog post at a time.
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 […]
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MN 139, Part 2: Synopsis
Cultivating oneself, communicating with others, and seeking out good influences. All this in the service of avoiding conflict. Sounds reasonable.
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MN 139, Part 1: How to Not-Conflict
Playing around with different translations for the sutta title. Parsing Pāli for fun and profit…
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 […]
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Now Get On With It.
Part 1 – Are there two Nibbānas?
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On Anurodha, “Liking”
In your day-to-day, off-the-cushion experience, what part of the 12-link Dependent Origination cycle (12-nidanas) do you notice most readily? I ask because I think it may be the case that many of us spend our days “liking” stuff or “disliking” stuff. But liking/disliking is not in the 12-nidanas. When I first began learning about Dependent Origination I was surprised to […]
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MN 122 – Translation Comparison
Greetings, Friendlies! This month’s homework for the Bodhi College CPP is MN 122, The Longer/Greater Discourse on Emptiness. As previously, I’ve compiled a spreadsheet comparing translations between Sujato, Ñanamoli, and Ṭhānissaro: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J23pjMQkIRkus0LOthLGtHriaZA6Pq4UTwjVaD0umlo/. Exciting stuff. Structure The sutta is not divided into chapters but seems to discuss 9(ish) different things: Mendicants should not allow themselves to […]
Buddha-Stiftung, a Secular Buddhist organization in Germany, will be hosting two online events with Stephen Batchelor on the topic of Human Flourishing. From their email:
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¿Is Vedanā Interoception?
Is vedanā interoception? Or is interoception vedanā? In a 2018 talk on Vedanā (link) @MartineBatchelor referred to @LisaFeldmanBarrett’s book, How Emotions Are Made. She described interoception and asked, “…the question is, is she talking about the same thing [as] me?” [4:29] Here’s my take: In HEAM, Barrett says: “Simple pleasant and unpleasant feelings come from […]
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Parsing MN 9 – Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta
I thought about titling this post “If You Think This Post is Long, You Should Try Reading the Sutta”, but the SEO would be lousy. Anyway. Greetings! I’m still working on MN 9 for the Bodhi College CPP homework. After building the comparative translation spreadsheet it was a bit easier to parse the content of […]
Greetings! For the Bodhi College CPP February homework (they don’t call it homework, but it’s totally homework), we were invited to read Majjhima Nikāya 9, the Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta, “Right View”. (I shudder at that translation, but let’s go with it.) As with MN26, I’ve built a table comparing the Pāli and five English translations. You’re […]
Greetings! For those of you with the fortitude to get to The Netherlands in March, Bodhi College will be hosting a retreat at ITC Naarden titled “The Practice of Human Flourishing“. It will be co-taught by Stephen Batchelor and our man John Peacock. The description on the Bodhi College website: This retreat will focus on […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Episode 8 is ready for you. Jeff helps me with my CPP homework on MN26, the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta. It’s not a deep dive like in this post; instead we talk about what it might look like to apply the theme of the sutta in daily life. As always, send us a line; we’d […]
Greetings! I’m currently participating in one of Bodhi College’s long courses, the Committed Practitioners Programme. Every month we are offered a “Continuing Investigation”. For January we were invited to read Majjhima Nikāya 26, the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta, typically translated “The Noble Search”. Since I’ve not made it very far in my Pāli language studies, I built […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Episode 7 is ready to go. I’m super excited about this one because two things: Thing one, this is the _final_ in Peacock’s series Buddhism Before the Theravada. Can you believe it? The end of an era. Thing two, I’m excited because we are finally starting to talk about taṇhā, upādāna, and models […]
This is one of a series of transcripts of contemporary talks which have particularly resonated with me. This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Buddhism Before the Theravada Part 6. Insight Meditation Center 0:00 The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California please […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Super fun news. Leigh Brasington, a meditation teacher best known for teaching jhānas, released a new book over the weekend. If you don’t already know him, Leigh is quite a character. Rather than going through the trouble of releasing through a publisher, he decided to self-publish and the ebook is available for dāna. […]
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Models of Perception
Sometimes a random note in a pile of paper opens up the most delicious rabbit hole. I offer you the fruit of an evening’s fall in to, and subsequent scramble out of, said hole. You’re welcome! [28DEC2021 Note: I mistakenly understood the Pāli word “Viññāṇa” to be translated as “Perception”. Today I realized I had […]
Greetings, Friendlies. :) As promised, a new episode of Dharma PhD (the podcast) posted today. Nominally Episode 6 continues our discussion of John Peacock’s series “Buddhism Before the Theravada, Part 5”, but this episode was all over the map. So I took the liberty of diverging in this episode. We are still talking about Paṭiccasamuppāda […]
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