Kevin Kim offers a juicy bit of dharma gossip I hadn’t heard before:
Rumor has long had it that the current Dalai Lama might simply announce that he is the last incarnation of his lineage. I think this is a clever political move (the metaphysics don’t concern me much, as I don’t subscribe to [...]
Visitors to this site who have been attracted by a series of recent posts may be wondering: what’s the connection between the Buddhism/meditation stuff and all this interest in psychopharmacology? Fair question; or two questions, actually. First question: What’s the relationship between the meditative practices that have developed in the Buddhist [...]
This is by the Dalai Lama:
The reason why we find so much discussion of epistemology, or how to define something as a valid cognition, in Buddhist writings is because all our problems, suffering and confusion derive from a misconceived way of perceiving things. This explains why it is so important for a practitioner to determine [...]
I found this in an interview with Ajahn Amaro at Inquiring Mind:
It seems to me that for many laypeople in our society who go to the nice retreat centers, the whole role of renunciation is excised from the Dharma field. Monasticism is forgotten or seen as a quaint lifestyle that happens off on the edges. [...]
The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant (found here):
Once upon a time there was a certain raja who called to his servant and said, “Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind… and show them an elephant.” “Very good, sire,” replied the [...]
(previous installment here)
The concluding chapter of OBM is quite brief. Griffiths summarizes his findings thus:
It seems, then, that in looking at the Indian Buddhist debates surrounding the attainment of cessation the following conclusions can be drawn about the basic Buddhist view of the relations between the mental and the physical. First, the mental and [...]
Will Buckingham posts the following report at thinkBuddha.org:
It was not that long into my visit that I stumbled across an interesting insight into the workings of my mind. I was meeting a lot of people, every single day, and it was pretty exhausting. And what I noticed was this: that my initial response to others [...]
Anyone who’s been tuning in here during the past week hoping for a continuation of the Great Karma Debate has been sorely disappointed, for which I apologize. For one thing, I’ve been busy; I suppose I can now officially add “freelance programmer” to my list of occupations, having had a bid on a project [...]