http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/picture/upload/noroh.JPG After seeing images such as the one above, I am forced to ask the uncomfortable question - to what extent are Burmese Buddhists, and the Buddhist establishment in Burma, complicit with or even encouraging the on-going atrocities against the min...

after you have right mindfulness does right view happen automatically like the mind judges by itself? will the mind naturally know right from wrong, or must it be learned. Speaking for myself, I have noticed that the more mindful I become, the more aware I am of getting caught up in unhelpful thoug...

Hi echograph, I am Persian, too. Thanissaro Bikhus talks at dhammatalks.org. is almost like having a personal meditation teacher, since much of what he says I have experienced during meditation and it seems as if he were speaking directly to me :) Yes, I am in a very remote part of the world withou...

I have heard some people say that anapanasati is basically a samatha only practice and only satipatanna is vipassana (with the implications that anapanasati might be good for calming thing and developing concentration, but that satipatanna is the "real deal"). On the other hand Buddhadhas...

from my expereince it isnt so dangerous to take a snuff from time to time.. :) No, it's not "dangerous" (although FYI, it raises your risk of developing oral and nasal cancers). But it's not conducive to ending suffering. You are basically using the drug to avoid facing reality in that pa...

Are these basically the same practice? Is vipassana as it is commonly taught today considered satipatanna or anapanasati or both (or does this depend on the precise style, i.e. Mahasi noting vs Goenka etc?) I have heard some people say that anapanasati is basically a samatha only practice and only s...

[ Licking Yourself Clean Ajaan Fuang once said that meditators tend to be like little puppies. They go out and defecate and then come running to their mothers to have their mothers lick them off. They haven't learned how to lick themselves off yet. So as a meditator you need to learn how to lick yo...

Also, I have a question.

In the passages about 'right concentration', I notice that the Buddha lists four jhanas. I have been taught that there are a total of eight jhanas. Is there a particular reason only four are listed in this Sutta?

I am coming very late to this conversation, and do not have the knowledge of Pali to weigh in on the more technical aspects of translation under discussion. Nevertheless, I would like to offer a few comments. There is an interesting passage in Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols that says " I am ...

Hello Vincent, I think I see what you're getting at, but in this case perhaps it is better to take this particular sutta "just as it is". I don't really know Pali, aside from some basic vocabulary, and I am not familiar with the other Sutta that you've cited, but in this case I think the B...

For what it's worth, I think the entire theist/atheist debate is something of a sectarian family quarrel within Western culture (by which I mean the large body of thought incorporating and in some cases synthesizing Greco-Roman philosophy and Abrahamic religion and the concepts pertaining to each). ...

Hi all, I am new here. Have been kind of drifting in and out of dhamma practice for several years now, but I am really trying to get serious about it now - starting to feel that I'm no longer as young as I used to be, that years can go by and feel mispent, etc. I've had some training in vispassana a...