Deadly? Diary of a Buddhist Yogi: retreat

• What is Buddhist "mindfulness," Ven. Analayo?
• Beware: Wrong mindfulness can be bad (Psych Today)
• 10-day silent meditation retreat experience 🧘‍♀️
• Two people have died after attending ‘vipassana’ retreats with intense 11-hour meditation in silence
• 5 mind-blowing vipassana meditation facts that will change the brain forever
• Vipassana Walking Meditation at Wat Pa Tam Wua, Mae Hong Son, Thailand

Diary of a Buddhist Yogi: Vipassana Meditation Retreat

Diary of a Buddhist Yogi (Kindle Edition)

Author Dhammaloka ("Dharma-world" or "Dharma-light or white") Viriya ("energy") knows that liberation (vimutti, moksha, vimokkha) from the cycle of rebirth (samsara) comes from the Awakening (bodhi-ification) of the (ennobling = enlightening) Truths.

To be awakened, one needs to practice mindfulness-meditation (satipatthana) by relinquishing attachment to the six senses, which will eradicate the clinging to all [of their attendant] phenomena, before the Dhamma (Truth, Teaching, Doctrine) eventually reveals itself to the practitioner.

Once the practitioner catches a glimpse of the Dhamma, the Ultimate Truth, through direct knowing-and-seeing, the practitioner will know there is no more falling back into the mire of this mundane world.

The Buddha pointed out the way to end of all suffering through mindfulness (sati) practice, and many practitioners since the Buddha’s time have reached that bliss and release from practicing in accordance with it.

• Who is S. N. Goenka, and what course did he set up at countless meditation centers?
• What to expect at a Ten-Day Silent Goenka Retreat #vipassana
• Vipassana (bare awareness) meditation anytime anywhere, starting with the breath right here right now
• 10 days as a lay-monk | vipassana meditation | Dhamma Khetta, Hyderabad, India (Goenka course, dhamma.org)
• Julia shares her first vipassana (insight) meditation retreat | Wellbeing Journeys

However, in the author’s observation, although practitioners in this age find the practice fulfilling, they do not experience the awakening moment and therefore do not see the fruition as they hope to.

• What are the challenges of an intensive insight meditation (vipassana) retreat?
• What enables a practitioner to experience bliss (piti) from meditation?
• What does the practitioner experience when the Dhamma finally appears as direct knowledge and vision?
• Vipassanā ("special seeing") Meditators’ Questions

Find out in this book, which is the first-hand experience of a yogi ("practitioner") who went through the trials and tribulations of a vipassana ("insight") meditation retreat at a forest monastery to see for himself the ultimate truths of

1. non-self (that all phenomena are impersonal),
2. disappointment (that all phenomena are unsatisfactory and unable to fulfill),
3. impermanence (that all phenomena are constantly hurtling toward destruction).

Directly knowing-and-seeing these Three Universal Truths produces a life-changing experience.

• NOTE: Not all vipassana meditation retreats are affiliated with Indian S. N. Goenka (dhamma.org). Burmese monk U Ba Khin's star student and businessman just popularized it worldwide with a free, volunteer-based, 10-day structure.

You can do "mindfulness" wrong? - Yes.

WISDOM QUARTERLY COMMENTARY

There are dangers in this Wheel?

The Buddha in the usual list we call the Noble (Ennobling = Enlightening) Eightfold Path called one of those factors samma-sati not sati. What's the difference? One might think one is being mindful, but is it what the Buddha or the noble ones call "right" mindfulness? (If there's a right, that implies there's a wrong way to go about it or fool oneself that one is doing it at all). If "mindfulness" only meant awareness, then I'm being "aware" (conscious) right now, right? Yes! Am I being mindful? Probably not. There's a difference, a big difference. Retreat leaders and personal teachers should talk about it more and stop taking it for granted that one will just figure it out or that it is so patently obvious that it needs no defining or delimiting. It does, at least for over-thinkers. Sure, there are some people who will just take to it like guppies or ducklets to water. (They've likely extensively and successfully practiced in past lives).

• Wrong mindfulness can be bad (Psychology Today)

We don't know what we're doing, but we got a groupon

Therefore, the most important thing before embarking on a vipassana retreat (whether it's Goenka-based or not), know that it is being defined as satipatthana. That means the fourfold setting up of mindfulness, which is explained in great detail in two sutras (Pali canon discourses or suttas). However, and this is the maddening part, almost nothing is said to define mindfulness (Buddhist sati). That is the most important thing to know, but it gets taken for granted. Or very weak definitions are offered, such as defining it as "awareness." We are aware right now, and more than 99% of us are not being mindful about it. For an extensive definition, see the academic work of Western Theravada professor-monk Ven. Analayo.

The Buddhist version of "mindfulness" called sati, as we understand it, is "bare awareness" with detachment, looking on, dispassionate watching. Sounds easy, but it is very hard because it goes against our deeply ingrained habits and traits. Usually when we are aware of anything, we taint that awareness with the Three Poisons of the heart/mind: liking, disliking, indifference (from the roots of all bad karma poorly translated as "greed, hatred, and delusion."

Three Poisons mutually supported wheel hub

Look up lobha, dosa, and moha. And what becomes apparent is that Pali and Sanskrit terms have wide valence, a range of meaning for a single word. "Greed" or lobha does not mean our idea of greediness. It means liking, preferring, welcoming, grasping, attaching, and getting clingy about pleasant phenomena. "Hatred" or dosa does not mean intense fury or anger; it means disliking, having an aversion to, fearing, avoiding, repressing... It is our customary reaction to any and everything we find unpleasant.

Then there's "delusion" or moha, the worst one, the most embedded one, the hardest one to see. It refers to all the wrong views we hold, consciously and unconsciously, distortions of reality, perversions (seeing what is unpleasant as pleasant, what is repulsive as attractive, what is transient as lasting), confusion, not knowing, not understanding, not fathoming, not knowing, not seeing. This is practically our whole existence, if we think about it, but it might be summarized as failing to notice the Three Characteristics of Existence in all things -- that they are ultimately radically impermanent, eventually disappointing (unable to ever fulfill us), and (no matter how impossible it is to conceive, believe, fathom, or accept) altogether impersonal.

I think I get it, Lisa. - Beginner's luck, Bart!

So to be mindful (to see clearly, which is to practice vipassana) is to look on, watch everything without giving in to the unconscious pull of these old habits. Just watch. Just notice. Just maintain attention. Note how when something is pleasing, greed for it arises. When something is displeasing, aversion with regard to it arises. When something is neutral, dull, confusing, hard to grasp, or boring, delusion arises, which is to say we space out, fall asleep, wander to something more interesting, even if it is a very unpleasant memory. Better than boredom. We do everything but be here now when this is the only real place there is to be. There's only now. The past is done. The future will take care of itself. But all our power is here, now. Let's attend to it. Let's finally see it for what it has always been so as to be liberated by the truth. The truth will set us free. What truth? The Truth, sometimes summarized as the Four Noble (Ennobling = Enlightening) Truths, the ultimate (paramattha) Truth, the true nature of existence (personally penetrating the Three Marks of Existence already mentioned). Need a list? There are the 37 Requisites of Enlightenment (the bodhipakkhiyādhammā). That Truth sets one free here and now, immediately.

But there's something every and anyone who embarks on Buddhist meditation needs to know beyond a good grasp of the meaning of "mindfulness" (sati). And that is that one will meet Five Hindrances whenever one tries to sit still or rest the mind or walk and move about with constant attention to the here and now, which does not involve "thinking" about the here-and-now, just watching it dispassionately.

How Siddhartha reached enlightenment? Details all wrong but nice point @DroppingInPodcast

The Five Hindrances one will meet in meditation (and their antidotes)

This is stupid! It doesn't work! Buddha was wrong!

The historical Buddha taught that there are Five Hindrances (pañca nīvaraṇa, Pali pañca nīvaraṇāni), mental factors that hinder, obstruct, derail progress in meditation and ruin daily life [1].

The Theravada Buddhist tradition identifies these factors as specific obstacles to "meditation," which is defined as jhāna (eight stages of stillness, unification, samadhi, concentration, coherence, superconsciousness) in practice.

Contemporary insight meditation teachers identify the Five Hindrances as obstacles to mindfulness meditation and obstacles to samma-samadhi ("right concentration," though "concentration" is problematic because we have many assumptions about what that means). "Stillness" is better, when the heart/mind has settled out, is silent, lucid, observant, directly knowing-and-seeing. But concentration is sometimes useful because ekaggata (singlepointedness or one-pointedness) is a factor of jhana.

The Five Hindrance are part of two types of obstructions (Sanskrit āvaraṇa, i.e., obstacles to insight, realization, awakening, buddhahood), afflictive obstructions (Sanskrit kleśā-avaraṇa, which include the Five Hindrances) and cognitive obstructions (jñeyā-avaraṇa, which bodhisattvas are trying to uproot) [2].

The classic list of Five Hindrances is [3, 4, 5, 6]

1. craving, desire, lust (kāmacchanda): seeking pleasure through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and tactile sensation
2. aversion, ill-will, annoyance, anger (vyāpāda, byāpāda): feelings of hostility, resentment, hate, bitterness
3. sloth-and-torpor (thīna-middha): mental-and-bodily lassitude, laziness, weakness, lack of energy to strive, half-hearted action with little or no effort, attention, concentration
4. restlessness-and-worry (uddhacca-kukkucca): the inability to allow the mind/heart to calm down, relax, become tranquil (passaddhi), serene, unflappable, steady, restful, undistracted, attentive, and focused, diligent, vigilant, energetic
5. Skeptical doubt (vicikiccha): lack of confidence, conviction, faith, trust that one has understood the instructions, the path, or one's abilities to successfully proceed. More

The antidotes are called the Five Factors of Absorptions, the jhana-anga (limbs or factors). By the way, right mindfulness immediately dispels delusion instantaneously.

• 10 days of silence, self-reflection, and inner peace at the Dhamma Laddha Vipassana Meditation Centre in Leh, Ladakh, Buddhist India, Himalayas, near Tibet. #Vipassana
• Five-day Vipassana Meditation Retreat in Umbria, Italy
• 55 years of Dhamma - First Vipassana Retreat - Dhamma Arunachala (3/7/24-13/7/24)
• Meditation Center in India #Dhamma Giri Vipassana Meditation Center, Igatpuri

• Vipassana: How Buddhist meditation helped me heal from trauma and loss
• Insight meditation in India | Dhamma Sota Vipassana Center in Delhi, India
• I cried intensely during my last sit at a 10-day Silent Vipassana Retreat
• 💵💰💴But how much does this experience COST? They are all FREE 10-day courses. What you need to know #free #dana #bydonation

Bring your beloved truck to the retreat

Or psycho girlfriend might try something crazy like (pushing it off cliff to convert to ad campaign)

• Dhammaloka Viriya (diary); Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson (commentary), Ashley Wells (editor) and Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) selection of video shorts, Wisdom Quarterly

Vipassana: liberation through insight

Is vipassana really Buddhist? The truth about the world's most popular meditation

(Buddha's Wisdom) 🔍 IS VIPASSANA REALLY BUDDHIST? THE HIDDEN STORY BEHIND THE WORLD'S MOST PRACTICED KIND OF INSIGHT MEDITATION

Millions of people have practiced Buddhist vipassana meditation, but very few know what the word vipassanā originally meant, or how the modern movement transformed one of Buddhism's oldest insights into a global meditation phenomenon.

• The powerful, practical, and effective Pa Auk Sayadaw system to Buddhist liberation (stream entry and nirvana in this very life) by scholar-monk practitioner at Pa-Auk Forest Monastery (in Burma and around the world), the most Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw (aka Bhaddanta Āciṇṇa)
• What it’s like to spend a week at Pa-Auk Tawya Forest Monastery in Burma (Myanmar) | Meditation Magazine
• The American Monk student of Pa Auk Sayadaw

What is insight (vipassana) meditation actually for? This word doesn't mean "meditation" at all. And the practice millions know from Goenka's free 10-day silent retreats was born not in the Buddha's proto-India, but in [George Orwell's] colonial Burma, the day an empire stopped protecting the Theravada Dhamma.

This is the true story of insight meditation: what vipassanā really means, how it nearly vanished, and how a monk, a farmer, an accountant, and a businessman carried it to the modern world.

📿 DISCOVER:

• The original meaning of vipassanā and why it never simply meant "meditation"
• How the fall of the Burmese kingdom sparked the modern Vipassana Movement
• Why meditation was rare even among Buddhist monastics for nearly 1,000 years
• Why many Buddhist teachers say today's vipassana is both ancient and surprisingly modern
• The unlikely relay that saved insight practice: from Buddhist monk Ledi Sayadaw to a rice farmer to S.N. Goenka's flight home in 1969
• What today's vipassana retreats, the mindfulness movement, and scientific research gained... and what may have been left behind.

🙏 If this changed what viewers thought meditation was, subscribe. The next episode uncovers the other half the world forgot: the deep stillness of jhana ("meditative absorption" as samma-samadhi or "right stillness," "coherent unification of mind") the Buddha paired with insight.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 Day 4 — inside the silence
• 01:54 What vipassanā really means
• 04:33 The ice cube — what seeing actually means
• 09:43 The king is gone — Mandalay, 1885
• 15:09 The farmer, the accountant, and the businessman
• 18:48 How vipassanā conquered the West
• 23:28 The homecoming

#vipassana #vipassanameditation #insightmeditation #buddhism #meditation #buddhistwisdom #mindfulness #theravada #buddhisthistory #goenka #Buddha

📚 SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: (affiliate links)

• Primary Buddhist Texts
• Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN 22.59) — Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta ("The Discourse on Not-Self")
• Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta ("The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse," Majjhima Nikāya, MN 10)
• Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta ("The Greater Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse," Dīgha Nikāya, DN 22)
• Ānāpānasati Sutta ("Discourse on Mindfulness of In-and-Out Breathing," Majjhima Nikāya, MN 118)
• Selected passages from the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification) by Buddhaghosa

Historical and Scholarly Resources

• Erik Braun — The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw amzn.to/4h8DnaQ
• Robert Sharf on meditation in monastic history; Robert Buswell on the lapse of vipassanā practice
• Bhikkhu Anālayo — works on Satipaṭṭhāna and early Buddhist meditation amzn.to/4bDh1KT
• Rupert Gethin — The Foundations of Buddhism amzn.to/4wGpXr3
• Bhikkhu Bodhi — translations of the Pāli canon amzn.to/4w4iJNB
• Prof. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. — writings on modern Buddhism
• Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche — teachings on Tibetan Buddhist meditation and lhaktong (vipaśyanā)
• Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Zen) — teachings on mindfulness, concentration, and insight amzn.to/4w6ILjx

Modern Scientific References

• Jon Kabat-Zinn — Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) amzn.to/4yooPKg
• Research on mindfulness, attention regulation, stress reduction, and contemplative neuroscience

#vipassana How this was made: Made with AI. Sounds or visuals were altered or fully generated. Learn more

Abuse of the Buddhist term "mindfulness"

(Natasha Yehenara) Psychology's corporate takeover of Buddhist mindfulness (sati)

• "Mindfulness" defined by Ven. Analayo Bhikkhu
• The field of psychology appropriated (hijacked) the Buddhist term "mindfulness" (originally sati but now just "awareness" or "paying attention")
• Anyone who thinks it was a commonplace practice in ancient India during the time of the Buddha should look up the Hindu definition of sati, which reveals it used to mean throwing a wife on the pyre when her husband died 😲
• The great work of Jon Kabbat-Zin to help therapists led to the unexpected disconnection of the practice with anything, as if it could be a standalone endeavor
• "Bare attention" is a component of sati, but it must be coupled with dispassionate (unbiased) looking on, free of greed, hatred, and delusion (wanting, aversion, and confusion)
• What is one to be mindful of to advance to insight, realization, and awakening? The Buddha pointed at four things: body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects. What does this mean? Psychology cannot tell us, but the Dhamma can
• Who needs Dhamma when we have a corporate bottom line to advance, productivity to raise, and mental health symptoms to abate?
• Why call it "mindfulness," Psychology? Why not pick a new name for what you've turned this into?

Ego (buddhism podcast) The Buddha didn't teach us only to be "present." He taught us to remember (recollection, memory, bearing in mind, the faculty of sati)

On the road to Berkeley like Benji (The Graduate)

Personally, in college at UC Berkeley many years ago, I took a "Buddhist Psychology" course in the department and was so excited to finally be able to learn what "cognition" meant and what the Buddha had to say about all these psychological things. Our assigned textbook, written by a psychologist, was called Mindfulness. "All right," I thought, "I'm finally going to advance in my practice and being in college is going to help me. Imagine my surprise when, as I read, I did not recognize what was being called "mindfulness." It did not align with all the translated ancient texts I had read and was continuing to read from the Buddhist Publication Society and the Pali Text Society. A few years in the future I would even visit BPS Editor Bhikkhu Bodhi in Kandy, Sri Lanka, to ask him about all this.

The Art and Science of Mindfulness

Not yet having him as a direct resource, except through his translations and BPS newsletter messages, I asked my professor in class about how I was left perplexed by reading our textbook. She looked at me and shrugged, "Of course! This "mindfulness" isn't the Buddha's mindfulness. It is psychology's," she explained. I looked around and many students were nodding their heads in agreement. "There are two mindfulnesses?!" I balked. "There are now" was the implicit answer. "Does Berkeley know about this? Why is this class called Buddhist psychology if all we're going to talk about is Western psychology?" She winked because she was subverting the system and introducing Buddhist ideas back into class, but we had to know that the new mindfulness had been taken, changed, and applied in rigorous scientific ways to the behavioral sciences, therapy, counseling, and the mental health field. Sure, it wasn't the Buddha's mindfulness, but that's because it had to be stripped of all spirituality and/or religiosity to get by the gatekeepers of the university system. What a gyp.

• The Art and Science of Mindfulness: Integrating Mindfulness Into Psychology and the Helping Professions (Shauna L, Shapiro, Linda E. Carlson
• Amazon.com: psychology mindfulness textbooks

Seeing what's actually happening now

Two Paths to Knowledge (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

I trust the Orgy Pit's been scraped and buttered

Many of the most formidable social and cultural problems we face today are rooted in the sharp divide (schism) that has divided Western civilization between science and religion.

Science claims invincible knowledge based on testing (empirical investigation of) the natural world. Most religions do little more than call for faith in supernatural beliefs along with obedience to codes of morality and ethics that require restraint, self-discipline, and worst of all self-sacrifice.

Since most religion, as traditionally understood, often rests on no more than blithe promises and pompous threats, its appeals to our allegiance seldom win.

The ethical ideals it claims to advocate (when not being hypocritical) don't stand a fighting chance against the constant injunction — thrust in our faith by screens, radios, and signboards — to ENJOY life to the hilt while we can.

What'd you do in there? - Well, I took the butter

As a result, a most of humankind has become alienated from religion as any kind of meaningful guide to life, left with no alternative but to plunge headlong into another kind of religion: secularism, the religion of rejecting religion through mass consumerism and hedonism.

Too often, those in the religious camp, sensing the threat secularism poses to their own security, feel driven toward an aggressive fundamentalism in a desperate bid to salvage traditional loyalties.

The quest to establish a sound basis for proper conduct in today's world has been made particularly difficult. Why? A consequence of the "scientific" worldview has been to banish values from real life.

While many scientists, in their personal lives, are staunch advocates of such ideals like world peace, social justice, and greater economic equality (parity), the worldview promoted by modern science gives values no objective grounding, not in the grand scheme of things. Thinking like this, values' root and basis is purely subjective. So they bring along all the qualities that subjectivity suggests: being

• personal,
• private,
• idiosyncratic,
• relative,
• not to be talked about with others
• and sometimes even arbitrary.

The overall effect of this is that, despite the best intentions of many of them, scientists give a green light to lifestyles founded on a quest for personal gratification. Not only that, it's also based on a power drive aimed at exploiting others.

The Buddha's Teaching

"If there's any religion...it would be Buddhism"

In contrast to the classical Western antithesis of religion and science, Buddhism shares with science a common commitment to personally test and uncover the Truth about the world.

Both Buddhism and science draw a sharp distinction between the way things appear and the way they really are. And both offer to open our minds to insights into the real nature of things normally hidden from us, sometimes in plain sight as falsified ideas based on distorted sense perceptions and "common sense."

Forget science-school and meditation. Let's dance!

Still, despite of Buddhism and science's affinity, it is necessary to recognize the great differences in the aim that separates Buddhism and science. Both may share certain conceptions about the nature of reality, but science is essentially a project designed to provide control and objective, factual knowledge, with information about the public domain. Buddhism is a spiritual path intended to promote inner transformation and the direct realization of the highest good, called awakening, enlightenment, liberation, or nirvana.

In Buddhism, the quest for knowledge is important but not as an end in itself or to control others. The main cause of our suffering and bondage is ignorance.

What does that mean? Ignorance (avijja) is not understanding things as they really are. Instead, we distort things even as we perceive them, judge, and label them. So the antidote needed to heal ourselves is knowledge or liberating-insight.

The type of knowledge acquired by practicing Dhamma differs from that sought by science in several ways. Most importantly, the knowledge sought is not gaining objective information about the physical world. It is about a deep personal insight into the real nature of our personal existence.

The aim is not to understand reality from the outside. It is to understand it from the inside, much as psychology originally intended to do. Knowledge from the perspective of one's own living experience is the key -- as it is to shamans, Gnostics, and experimenters on a quest in this lifetime.

We seek not debated "facts" and "opinions" as knowledge, but insight, wisdom, personal knowledge that is inescapably subjective. That's the point. The whole value of it lies in its transformative power and impact on our own life.

Concern with the outer world as an object of direct knowledge arises only insofar as the outer world is inextricably implicated in personal experience.

As the Buddha says, "In this body, with its perception and thought, I declare

• the world,
• the origin of the world,
• the cessation of the world, and
• the way to the cessation of the world."

First, I'll be born as a prince then renounce it all

Buddhism takes personal experience as the starting point, without aiming to use experience as a springboard to an impersonal, objective type of knowledge. Buddhism includes within its domain the entire spectrum of qualities disclosed by personal experience.

This means that Buddhism gives prime consideration to values. But even more, "values" for Buddhism are not merely projections of subjective judgments fashioned according to our personal whims, social needs, or cultural conditioning.

On the contrary, they are written into the texture of reality itself just as firmly as the laws of motion and thermodynamics. So values CAN be evaluated: rated in terms of being true or false and ranked as valid or invalid.

And part of our task in giving meaning to our lives, which means unearthing the true scheme of values. To determine the true gradation of values, we have to turn our attention inward and use subjective criteria of investigation. So what we find, far from being private or arbitrary, is an integral part of the objective order.

This order is permeated by the same lawfulness that governs the movement of the stars and planets.

Science says it's for something

Natural science (wiki)

Affirming the objective reality of values implies another major distinction between Buddhism and science. For liberating-insight or knowledge of enlightenment to arise, an investigator has to undergo a profound personal transformation guided by the inner perception of genuine values.

While natural science can be undertaken as an intellectual discipline, the Buddhist quest is an existential discipline. That can only be implemented by regulating and restraining our conduct, purifying our mind, and refining our capacity for attention.

What is there to pay attention to? To our own physical (bodily) and mental processes.

This kind of Buddhist training requires ethics all the way through. Ethical guidelines support and pervade the entire training. The starting point is right action, and the culmination is the highest liberation of the heart/mind.

OK, there's escape from this lack-of-fulfilment?

What is noteworthy is that the ethical thrust of Buddhist training and the mental thrust of it converge. Where? They converge on the realization of the ultimate truth of selflessness (anatta). [This is an advanced notion, but it is the gateway to stream entry, the first stage of enlightenment.]

It is just here that contemporary science approaches Buddhism in its discovery that "nature" is a process actually. It reveals the lack of any ultimate substance hiding behind a sequence of events. There are events. But this correspondence again points to a fundamental difference.

In Buddhism the impermanent, unsatisfying (unfulfilling), and impersonal nature of reality is not just some factual truth to apprehend (or believe in). It is above all an existential truth. It is a transformative principle.

It offers the key to being able to stop clinging to the false and to let go as we gain right understanding.

Right understanding (seeing things as they really are) leads to right liberation. To use this key for its sole purpose, which is to open the door to spiritual freedom, we must govern our conduct on the premise that the false idea of a substantial self is a delusion.

It is insufficient to merely intellectually grasp this selflessness as some idea or to turn it into a plaything of thought. The principle must be penetrated by training ourselves to discover the absence of selfhood in its subtlest hiding place, the deep recesses of our own bodies and minds.

• 

  Knowing and Seeing: True...

  [HOW? How can this ever be accomplished? Buddhist Meditation Master Pa Auk Sayadaw explains. By mastering "meditation" (the absorptions or jhanas), the mind/heart is purified and able to see. What does it look at? It breaks down this body, this materiality, into its components, the smallest of which are "form particles" (rupa kalapas). The body is not "body," but rather countless constituent elements constantly built up and torn down, rising and falling away. The mind is not "mind," but rather countless constituent elements (a stream of "mind-moments" called cittas) constantly built up and falling away. This is what's really there, if only we could ever see it as it truly is.

• 

  Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw of Burma

  We can see it. That is to say, we can know-and-see directly. How? First, we settle the mind into absorption, emerge and move to a deeper absorption. With practice, this comes at will. Then we turn our attention to the "fourfold setting up of mindfulness." This is just a fancy way of saying we give systematic attention to body, feelings, the mind, and various phenomena. With exercises to directly perceive the Dependent Origination of things (the fact that everything that arises arises dependent on causes and conditions), the mind is made ready to see things as they really are. And in doing so, it naturally lets go of ignorance, illusion, and falsehoods. It thereby gains light, knowledge, wisdom, and liberation.]

Buddhist thinkers and open-minded scientists, if they were to share insights and reflections, could show us an effective way to heal the divide. What divide? The rift between seeking "objective" knowledge and spiritual wisdom. We could bring about a reconciliation of science and spirituality.

In this way, spiritual practice could become an integral part of the discipline that aims at knowledge. Spiritual practice and knowledge combined could become the tools for achieving the highest good stuck in the world and breaking beyond limitations to enlightenment and spiritual freedom.

Hedonist Stephen Hawking in Epstein Files

This has always been the position of Buddhism. The evidence is in the most ancient texts. The Buddha, the "Enlightened One," is not only a kind of scientist, a lokavidu or "knower of the world." He is also, above all, "one complete in both knowledge and conduct" (vijja-carana-sampanno). Could a scientist say that? Could one ever get to that through science? Source: Two Paths to Knowledge

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

American Theravada monk Bhikkhu Bodhi

Bhikkhu Bodhi (born Dec. 10, 1944) is an American Theravada scholar-monk and prolific translator of ancient Buddhist texts from the Pali canon. He was born in New Jersey and moved to California to get his PhD from Claremont before heading to Asia to ordain as a Buddhist monk. He went in search of a teacher and found one in Sri Lanka, Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Thero, along with many fellow Jewish Buddhists from Germany in and around the Buddhist Publication Society (BPS). He now teaches at the Buddhist Association of the United States (BAUS) in Upstate New York (Chuang Yen Monastery) and in New Jersey (Bodhi Monastery, which is not named after him). He is a Buddhist author, translator, and commentator, who was Wisdom Quarterly Dharma Editor Dhr. Seven's first theoretical Dharma teacher [who himself studied at Berkeley and UCLA before journeying to Sri Lanka in Bhikkhu Bodhi's steps and onto India, Nepal, Thailand, and Burma to meet his practical teacher, the great living Buddhist meditation master Pa Auk Sayadaw]. Bhikkhu Bodhi was appointed BPS's second president [2] after its founder, Ven. Nyanaponika, following in the footsteps of the great Western maverick Ven. Nyanatiloka. He is currently president of BAUS and the founder of the Buddhist feminist charity Buddhist Global Relief [3]. More

• Online Dharma Lectures | BODHI MONASTERY
• Bhikkhu Bodhi (accesstoinsight.org, 2005) clarified and expanded by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Vipassana not what you think (Rinpoche)

(Perfect Teacher) Vipassana (Buddhist "insight meditation") is not what you think, explains Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.

Who is this teacher?

What makes you not a Buddhist?

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche (Tibetan རྫོང་གསར་འཇམ་དབྱངས་མཁྱེན་བརྩེ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ།, born June 18, 1961) [1] is also known as Khyentse Norbu. He is a Tibetan Vajrayana lama, filmmaker, and writer who was born in Bhutan, high in the Himalayas.

His five major films are The Cup (1999), Travellers and Magicians (2003), Vara: A Blessing (2013), Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait (2017), and Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache (2019).

(Tibetan Nuns) This Tibetan monastic mantra has not stopped for centuries

He is the author of several published books such as What Makes You Not a Buddhist (2007), Not For Happiness: A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practices (2012), The Guru Drinks Bourbon? (2016), Living is Dying (2020), and several non-fiction works on Tibetan Buddhism for free distribution such as

• Introduction to the Middle Way: Chandrakirti’s Madhyamaka with Commentary (2003) [2] and
• Buddha Nature: Mahayana-Uttaratantra-Shastra with Commentary (2007) [3].

The Cup (1999 film)

He has also written an autobiography in process entitled Mugwort Born. Many of his teachings are available on the Siddhartha's Intent YouTube channel [4].

He is the eldest son of Thinley Norbu and therefore the grandson of Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje. 

Khyentse Rinpoche has teachers from all four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism and is a follower and champion of the Rimé (non-sectarian) movement.

He considers Dilgo Khyentse as his main guru. He is also the primary custodian of the teachings of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. More