Joseph, after practicing in India for ten years and teaching in this country for more than twenty, you have recently returned from a well-earned teaching sabbatical, in which I understand you did quite a bit of personal meditation practice. Has anything emerged from this experience, in terms of greater clarity? I think one of the pieces that has emerged from the time off is a greater clarity about where I'd like to put my energy in the following years. With so many newer teachers coming … [Read more...]
The Wings of the Bodhisattva
These words are extracted from a course offered by Joanna at BCBS in October, 2000. In every tradition, the spiritual journey seems to be presented in two ways. One is like a journey out of this messy, broken, imperfect world of suffering, into a sacred realm of eternal light. At the same time, within the same tradition, the spiritual journey is also experienced and expressed as going right into the heart of the world—into this world of suffering and brokenness and imperfection—to discover … [Read more...]
The Working of Boundless Compassion
Taitetsu Unno is Jill Ker Conway Professor Emeritus of Religion at Smith College in Northampton, MA. He retired recently after a distinguished academic career and is an ordained priest in Shin Buddhism, which he teaches in various settings throughout the United States. He is the author of Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn Into Gold and River of Fire, River of Water. How did you interest in Buddhism come about? I had the privilege of meeting Dr. D. T. Suzuki in San Francisco in 1951, and … [Read more...]
Caregiving and the Buddha’s Way
When seen with clarity, any non-harmful activity can be a field for spiritual practice—be it hair dressing, astrophysics or feeding the cat. But caregiving would seem to have special status; spiritual qualities are part of the job description. Caregivers know well the challenges of trying to manifest compassion and selflessness on the job, while those who are practitioners of Buddhist teachings are led into even more complex challenges. These include struggling with the seeming contradictions of … [Read more...]
Cultivating the Brahmavihāras
An Interview with Bhikkhu Anālayo on his new book, Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation Insight Journal: Bhante, most people know you for your work with the satipaṭṭhānas. Why now this book on the brahmavihāras? Bhikkhu Anālayo: For one, it reflects my own practice. For me, satipatthāna is the very foundation. But this foundation does not stand on its own. It also has its complement in the brahmavihāra practice, in particular as it fulfills samatha—tranquility—meditation. … [Read more...]
Escaping the Karma of Addiction
This article is based on teachings given at BCBS in January, 2008 by Paul Simons & Gregory Bivens in a course called Working with Addiction: Spiritual Self-Schema Therapy. It might seem strange to talk about “spiritual self schema” as something to aspire to in a Buddhist context. In the psychological language of Self-Schema Therapy, it describes an alternative to the “addict self,” the type of mistaken identification with one’s negative thoughts and feelings that perpetuates a cycle of … [Read more...]
How to Be a Bodhisattva
Shantideva is one of the most revered teachers of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. His most important text, the Bodhicāryāvatāra, was composed in Sanskrit in the eighth century and translated into Tibetan in the eleventh century. There are numerous translations and commentaries to this text, most of them drawn from the Tibetan tradition, and the text we will be using today is from the Tibetan. Like many Buddhist teachers, we do not know a lot definitively about Shantideva, whose name means … [Read more...]
The Nature of Compassion
This article is excerpted from a talk given at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies on July 27, 1994. My colleague Joseph Goldstein and I just returned from teaching in Boulder, Colorado at the Naropa Institute. Naropa was celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and it was also the twentieth anniversary of our beginning to teach in this country. It was a time filled with nostalgia and also a time for a lot of reflection: what have we done over the last twenty years? Have we done what we … [Read more...]