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 […]
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! 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 […]
In Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs, the penultimate chapter, “Imagination”, begins with a quote by Richard Rorty: “[A] talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.” This is what Dharma PhD is all about, learning how to speak differently.
This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Buddhism Before the Theravada Part 4. If you’d like to explore further, we’ve produced a podcast episode about this talk (Episode 5, if you’re already subscribed). I’d love to hear what you think! Okay, okay. Just one more thing. A friend of […]
This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Buddhism Before the Theravada Part 3. If you’d like to explore further, we’ve produced a podcast episode about this talk (Episode 4, if you’re already subscribed). I’d love to hear what you think! One more thing… a friend of mine said that […]
This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Buddhism Before the Theravada Part 2. If you’d like to explore further, we’ve produced a podcast episode about this talk (Episode 3, if you’re already subscribed). I’d love to hear what you think! Okay, okay. One more thing… I made a very […]
No, ladies and gentlemen et. al. That is not a typo. Today my dharma-vocab was upgraded. Thanks to the inimitable Anu Garg at A.Word.A.Day, I now know the verb “cliticize”, which means “To attach or become attached”. From one practitioner to another I beg you: Quit Your Cliticizing.
As I begin to explore the Tipiṭaka (the Pāli Canon, the Buddhist scriptures that began to be written maybe about 400 years after Gotama’s death), I find that I need to further translate the scholarly renditions (from Bikkhus Ñanamoli, Bodhi, Ṭhānissaro, etc), into an every-day English that I can more readily access. This seems to […]
Dharma PhD 