Once when the Buddha was living at Sāvatthi, King Pasenadi of Kosala ate a whole bucketful of food, and then approached the Buddha, engorged and panting, and sat down to one side. The Buddha, discerning that King Pasenadi was engorged and panting, took the occasion to utter this verse: Now at that time the brahmin youth Sudassana was standing nearby, and King Pasenadi of Kosala addressed him: "Come now, my dear Sudassana, and having thoroughly mastered this verse in the presence of … [Read more...]
Mind Changing Brain Changing Mind: The Dharma and Neuroscience
The knowledge of neuroscience has doubled in the last twenty years. It will probably double again in the next twenty years. I think that neuropsychology is, broadly, about where biology was a hundred years after the invention of the microscope: around 1725. In contrast, Buddhism is a twenty-five-hundred-year-old tradition. You don't need an EEG or MRI to sit and observe your own mind, to open your heart and practice with sincerity. I don't think of neuropsychology as a replacement for … [Read more...]
A Comprehensive Matrix of Constructed Experience
These are the building blocks with which we construct our world. Every action which creates karma is represented on this chart. It is meant as an exhaustive categorization of all conditioned human experience. Try examining each of these options, one at a time, and look for examples of such activity in your own life and practice. You will find that such a matrix of experience provides a generic and de-personalized way of looking at what is taking place moment by moment, which supports the … [Read more...]
Lions in the Wilderness
Early Buddhist Appreciation of Nature This article is extracted from a paper presented on March 9, 1996 at the Harvard Conference in honor of retiring professor Masatoshi Nagatomi. In East Asia, Buddhism became easily identified with nature poetry—especially in the Ch'an and Zen traditions. The Buddhist concern for being fully present in the moment harmonized nicely with the Chinese poetic tradition of evoking a concrete natural image in touching detail. And in the Japanese aesthetic … [Read more...]
“Seeing” the Āsavas
The Sabbāsava Sutta (M 2) is one of the most important and practical teachings in the Pāli Canon. It summarizes our most deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and it points to the methods by which these are managed and overcome. This is what it's all about—seeing our patterns and working with them skillfully. Thus, one might say that the Sabbāsava Sutta outlines the whole of the practice. The key word here is āsava, often translated as "taint" although there have been … [Read more...]
The Arrows of Thinking
Papañca & the path to end conflict In a striking piece of poetry (Sn 4:15), the Buddha once described the sense of saṃvega—terror or dismay—that inspired him to look for an end to suffering. I will tell of how I experienced saṃvega. Seeing people floundering like fish in small puddles, competing with one another— as I saw this, fear came into me. The world was entirely without substance. All the directions were knocked out of line. Wanting a haven for myself, I saw … [Read more...]
Mindfulness & the Cognitive Process
If sati, mindfulness, is not there in ordinary life, it is not working. If it is only there on retreat, and absent in your daily life, this is also problematic. What makes this integration so difficult is that taṅhā, desire or craving, is not just something added to our experience: It is literally built into our cognitive process. We are, if you will, born with the pathology of desire. Part I: The Pathology of Desire Craving, or taṅhā in Pali, is the central problem identified by the … [Read more...]
Deep Dukkha
Getting Down in the Trenches with the First Noble Truth In his book, Venerable Father: A Life with Ajahn Chah, Paul Breiter tells the story of an encounter with Ajahn Chah after the latter had just completed two successive nights of long Dharma talks. As Ajahn Chah was walking away from the meditation hall, he said to Breiter, “Anicca, dukkha, anattā—I can’t listen to any more!” As most Buddhist practitioners know, anicca, dukkha, anattā—impermanence, suffering, no-self—refer to the three … [Read more...]