Joseph Goldstein is a co-founder and guiding teacher of IMS. He has been teaching vipassanā and mettā retreats worldwide since 1974. In 1989, he helped establish BCBS and, more recently, IMS’s Forest Refuge. He is the author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, One Dharma, The Experience of Insight, and Insight Meditation, and co-author of Seeking the Heart of Wisdom. A pdf version can be downloaded here. As challenging as it is, it seems important to explore the meaning and … [Read more...]
Climbing to the Top of the Mountain
You have lived in a forest monastery in Sri Lanka for many years, Bhante. What brings you to America? I originally came to the U.S. to visit my father and sister. But for twenty-five years I have been afflicted with a chronic headache condition, which has resisted every type of treatment I have tried to date. My father suggested I arrange a consultation at The Headache Institute of New York, a clinic in Manhattan. Thus for the past few months I have been taking treatment at this clinic. Is … [Read more...]
From Burma to Barre
The Liberation Teachings of Mindfulness in the Land of the Free Jake Davis grew up just a few miles from IMS. He first became involved in insight meditation through the young adults ’ retreat there. He went on to spend more than a year as a Theravada monk in Burma, learning the language, studying texts and practicing meditation. The Dhamma Dana Publications project, hosted by BCBS, is in the process of publishing Jake's book Strong Roots for free distribution, with the ongoing support of … [Read more...]
A Tiny Dot in a Vast Universe
An interview with Issho Fujita For the last eighteen years, Reverend Issho Fujita has been the resident teacher at Pioneer Valley Zendo, a Soto Zen practice center in Charlemont, western Massachusetts. He has taught a weekend retreat on Dogen Studies at BCBS each year for the last ten years. He has recently decided to move his family back to Japan. The Insight Journal talked with him about his hopes and aspirations in such a move. Would you talk a little bit about what it was like growing … [Read more...]
A Verb for Nirvana
Back in the days of the Buddha, nirvana (nibbāna in Pali) had a verb of its own: nibbuti. It meant to “go out,” like a flame. Because fire was thought to be in a state of entrapment as it burned—both clinging to and trapped by the fuel on which it fed—its going out was seen as an unbinding. To go out was to be unbound. Sometimes another verb was used—parinibbuti—with the “pari-" meaning total or all-around, to indicate that the person unbound, unlike the fire unbound, would never again be … [Read more...]
Sharpening Mañjuśrī’s Sword
Leigh Brasington has been practicing meditation since 1985 and is the senior American student of the late Ven. Ayya Khema. Leigh began assisting Ven. Ayya Khema in 1994, and was authorized to teach in 1997. He teaches in Europe and North America. Leigh, you are a teacher perhaps best known for guiding people through an exploration of the jhānas, stages of concentration meditation known as “absorptions.” But this is not all you do, am I right? For my day job I’m a software engineer. I live … [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...]
Mindfulness of Breathing: Ānāpānasati Sutta (MN 118)
Understanding Key Terms developed: bhāvitā This word is simply the causative form of the verb "to be," and thus means "causing to be," from which we get "development." It is a word used often for meditation in general, and for certain kinds of meditation in particular, such as the development of loving kindness (mettā-bhāvanā). cultivated: bahulākatā Used often beside development as a synonym, this term literally meant something that is done (kata) a lot (bahuli). The way we … [Read more...]
Back to the Source
John Peacock has been an academic and meditation teacher for 25 years, including monastic training in both the Tibetan and Theravadin traditions. He currently teaches Buddhist studies and Indian religions at the University of Bristol and leads meditation retreats both in the United States and Britain. How did you first enter the stream of the Dharma? I became interested in Eastern religions and philosophy at about the age of eleven and started reading around Indian thought, … [Read more...]
Deep Listening: An Interview with Gregory Kramer
Gregory Kramer is the director of Metta Foundation in Portland, OR, (www.metta.org) and teaches Insight Dialogue meditation and Dharma Contemplation worldwide. I presume you didn’t graduate high school saying to yourself, “I’m going to spend my life teaching Dharma.” Might there have been a few steps between there and here? How did you get into all this, Gregory? Actually, I did graduate high school feeling a close affinity to the internal life. That’s just how I was as a kid. I didn’t … [Read more...]