Showing posts with label four foundations of mindfulness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label four foundations of mindfulness. Show all posts

Saturday, September 5, 2026

Deadly? Diary of a Buddhist Yogi: retreat


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.

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.
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).
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.


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 (paƱca nÄ«varaį¹‡a, Pali paƱca nÄ«varaį¹‡Äni), 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 āvaraį¹‡a, i.e., obstacles to insight, realization, awakening, buddhahood), afflictive obstructions (Sanskrit kleśā-avaraį¹‡a, which include the Five Hindrances) and cognitive obstructions (jƱeyā-avaraį¹‡a, 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.

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
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Saturday, August 29, 2026

Berkeley Zendo on Vipassana insight?



Linda Galijan is the Berkeley Zen Center’s first female abbot (Facebook)

"I never get lost because I don't know where I'm going" - Zen Master Ikkyū, 15th century.
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At the BZC altar (Nathan Dalton)
BERKELEY, California - Saturday, August 29, 2026: The Berkeley Zen Center's Abbess Linda (Shinchi Linda Galijan Rōshi) will set off for a monthlong vipassana (Buddhist four-dimensional insight as sati) retreat under her root teacher Gil Fronsdal.

Her other root teacher was BZC Founder Mel Weitsman, a direct transmitted disciple of ShunryÅ« Suzuki, who also founded two affiliated temples, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and the San Francisco Zen Center). For the weekly Saturday Dharma talk, Abbot Linda as she is referred to, extolled the virtues of Theravada Insight Meditation, also known as vipassana, stating that while it is different than Zen's shikantaza, it is just the same. That is to say, they coordinate and aid one another to bring about the same realization (kenshō) or “clear seeing.” Vipassana literally means “special or clear seeing.”

Is satori “insight”? Not quite but not altogether different, both being a kind of iteration of wisdom (prajƱā), clearly seeing into the true nature of experience -- directly perceiving what is ever-present but usually unseen: The Three Marks of Existence.
Prof. Jason Arday (anglicanmainstream.org)
These weekly Dharma talks, and we've attended a few now, generally amount to nothing, doing nothing, accomplishing nothing, but seeming very deep for their Taoist-style nothingness or pointlessness. It may just be that they land later, filled with wisdom and no rush to make any obvious point. Last Saturday (8/22/26), an elderly Zen abbess from Santa Cruz, a long-time professor at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC.edu), gave a wonderful talk about social suicide, literally. She discussed her intimate familiarity with plagiarism and academic scandals in the social sciences as brought up by the tragic case of an accused person-of-color at Cambridge University in England. Accusations by a right-wing troll led to an investigation of Black Prof. Jason Arday (RIP), who was humiliated by the accusation and chose to end his life in ignominy. This is tragic, our Zen speaker explained, because far worse is done by seasoned senior white professors who weather the storm, which usually comes to nothing, no retraction, no dismissal, no punishment. It seems to be the way of hubris and academic progress. She would know because she sat on many a committee to deal with such issues as well as being part of the peer-review process, which even when it turns up plagiarism by professors usually comes to naught.

Bodhisattva Dolly Parton passes away at 80
But this talk was different, better, more substantive, less fluffy white rice, more solid and gomashio-sprinkled tofu, as it were. Why?

The jokes keep coming, little nudges about this and that, never getting too heavy to "stink of Zen," but at the end of it was a reverie about the newest, latest to be recognized bodhisattva, The Dali Parton. Abbot Linda praised "Buddhist Rebecca Solnit." Who knew the feminist woman who can't pronounce "women"* was a Buddhist? News to us.
The enso in Zen is like a zero, circle
Everyone giggled and enthusiastically nodded along in recognition of the recently passed country music star, humanitarian, lover of humankind, and philanthropist. This is in accord with the local NPR affiliate in the Bay Area playing the first of a 9-part Radio Lab (by the great Jad Abumrad) series on Dolly: Creator of 'Dolly Parton's America' podcast discusses her life and legacy | KALW
  • *How to correctly pronounce "women": /wih-minn/
What's so great about Buddhist insight?
What's the point of Buddhism, Dick Gere, insight? - Why not just worship His Holiness, Lisa?
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When one knows-and-sees, the heart lets go.
Then a longtime member of the sangha asked, "What do they do in vipassana meditation?" Abbot Linda perked up and outlined the fourfold setting up of mindfulness the historical Buddha talks about in the two Satipatthana Suttas, the greater and shorter "Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourses." One make the heart/mind serene by sitting and attending to the breath until it is concentrated [and absorbed or in a zen state called jhana if possible. Then one emerges and turns attention to other aspects of the body]. One then progresses, turning attention to feelings (the three categories of sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral). Thereafter, attention is placed on mind.

No, Bart, just sit! Don't you dare have a goal!
Finally, one gives one-pointed attention to dhammas or mental phenomena usually categorized in Buddhist lists like the Five Hindrances and Four Ennobling Truths. [This is generally the way vipassana is understood, cultivating liberating insight by clearly seeing these four categories of "things." For in seeing them clearly, it is very difficult to identify and remain attached to the wrong views of self, satisfaction, and permanence. One instead sees things as they truly are -- hurtling towards destruction, unable to ever satisfy or fulfil, and utterly impersonal. In seeing this, the heart/mind lets go, stops clinging and grasping at ephemeral phenomena, and arrives at release, sometimes glimpsing the awe-inspiring freedom of nirvana. That's satori, that's kensho, that the first stage of enlightenment the Buddha called stream-entry.]

Sitting with Gil Fronsdal
How to see? Stillness and silence
This September 2026 vipassana retreat offers an experienced Zen and Insight (Vipassana) meditators a period of intensive residential practice guided by Gil Fronsdal. The teaching and practice orientation will be “Shikantaza Through the Support of Insight,” Shikantaza or “just sitting” being the core Soto Zen practice. The schedule will include mindfulness in complete noble silence with morning, afternoon, and evening formal sitting (zazen); formal Åryōki mindfulness meals (taking the least amount of food); work periods; and daily meditation instructions and nightly Dharma talks. There will also be formal and informal meetings with teachers. Participants commit to stay on for the duration (except by arrangement or emergencies). The retreat includes a 30-day sesshin (ꎄåæƒ, lit. means “gathering heart/mind” but is usually translated as “Silent Zen Retreat Intensive”).
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Monday, August 10, 2026

How to LIVE if we're sure we'll die?

(Buddhism Podcast) When death comes, what truly matters? | Buddhist Wisdom

Some are as if dead already
Things can wait. What's the rush?
Heedlessness (Pāli pamada, Sanskrit pramāda, Tibetan bakmepa) is a Buddhist term translated as "heedlessness," "carelessness," "negligence," and so on. In the Mahayana tradition, pramāda is defined to not apply oneself earnestly and carefully to adopting a wholesome attitude and abandoning unwholesome actions. More

The heedful do not die*
I'll do what can be done right now.
Heedfulness (Pāli appamāda, Sanskrit apramāda, Tibetan Wylie bag yod pa) is a Buddhist term translated as "diligence," "conscientious," "concern," "vigilance," and so on. It is defined as taking great care concerning what should be adopted and what should be avoided [1, 2].

In the Theravada Pāli canon, a vast collection of the historical Buddha's earliest teachings, the term appamāda is very significant. The essence of its meaning cannot be captured with a single English word. "Heedfulness," "diligence," and "conscientiousness" all capture certain aspects of appamāda. It is identified as one of the 11 virtuous mental factors in the Mahayana Abhidharma teachings. More
  • *One will never again die when one gets off of the samsaric cycle of endless "wandering on" of rebirths chasing fulfillment that is not to be found.
  • Nirvana is "the deathless" (amata, amrita, ambrosia)
    • Watch my death-defying jump against nature!
  • The Four Right Efforts: (1) The effort to prevent harmful, unskillful things that have not yet arisen. (2) The effort to abandon harmful, unskillful things that have already arisen. (3) The effort to promote the arising of skillful things that have not yet arisen. (4) The effort to maintain, develop, and bring to culmination skillful things that have already arisen.
Five Recollections (Upajjhatthana Sutta)

What did the historical Buddha teach?
Here are two English translations and the original Pali text of the "Five Recollections," remembrances, or contemplations:
  1. I am sure to become old; I cannot avoid aging.
    I am subject to aging, have not gone beyond aging.
  2. I am sure to become ill; I cannot avoid illness.
    I am subject to illness, have not gone beyond illness.
  3. I am sure to die; I cannot avoid death.
    I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death.
  4. I am subject to separation and loss and to be parted from all that is dear and loved by me.
    I will grow different, separate from all that is meaningful and appealing to me.
  5. I am the owner of my actions (karma), heir of my actions, actions are the womb (from which I have sprung and will be reborn), actions are my relations, actions are my protection. Whatever actions I do, skillful or unskillful, of these I shall be the heir [2].
    I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, wholesome or unwholesome, to that will I fall heir [3].
Cultivate all eight factors of the Path
The Buddha advised, "These are the five facts to often reflect on, whether one is a woman or a man, a layperson or a monastic" [5].

Since the Buddha redefined karma as "intention" (cetana, the decisive intent underlying a deed or action) in the Nibbedhika Sutta, intention or intentionally-committed actions may be better translations of "karma" in the fifth recollection. More
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The 'goal' of Buddhism: Enlightenment

What could go wrong? Broken "enlightenment"

Apathy or indifference?
In neurology, abulia (aboulia from Ancient Greek Ī²ĪæĻ…Ī»Ī®, meaning not-"will") [1] is a lack of will, volition, initiative, willful-motive. It is a disorder of diminished motivation.

Abulia falls in the middle of the spectrum of diminished motivation, with apathy being milder and akinetic mutism being the most severe [2].

The condition was originally considered to be a disorder of the will [3, 4], as aboulic individuals are unable to act or make decisions independently.

Can everyone become a buddha?
(Natasha Yehenara) If all have "Buddha-nature," can everyone become one?

Their condition may range in severity from subtle to overwhelming. In the case of akinetic mutism, many patients describe that as soon as they "will" or attempt a movement, a "counter-will" or "resistance" [a possessive demonic spirit?] rises up to meet them [5]. More
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Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Vipassana: liberation through insight


Is vipassana really Buddhist? The truth about the world's most popular meditation
Buddha's Wisdom
(Buddha's Wisdom) šŸ” 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.
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.

šŸ“æ 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.
šŸ™ 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

šŸ“š SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: (affiliate links)
  • Primary Buddhist Texts
  • Saį¹ƒyutta Nikāya (SN 22.59) — Anattalakkhaį¹‡a Sutta ("The Discourse on Not-Self")
  • Satipaį¹­į¹­hāna Sutta ("The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse," Majjhima Nikāya, MN 10)
  • Mahāsatipaį¹­į¹­hāna Sutta ("The Greater Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse," DÄ«gha 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 Satipaį¹­į¹­hāna 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
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