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...]
Wheels of Fire: The Buddha’s Radical Teaching on Process
Ādittapariyāya Sutta: The Fire Sermon, SN 35.28 "Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye—experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain—that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with … [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...]