This silly looking cartoon of a video is profound, so much so that we are included to call its maker, Greg Knows All, "Añña GREGḍañña" or "Greg who knows" (after the Buddha's very first enlightened disciple, Añña Konḍañña, "Kaundinya who knows, who see").
When the wandering ascetic Siddhartha first thought to teach and make known the Path to Enlightenment (Bodhi) and Liberation (Nirvana), what today the ancient Theravada tradition calls "Buddhism" or Buddha-Dhamma (The Doctrine of the Awakened One), he had no one to teach, no one at least whom he thought would understand. There were his wise albeit unenlightened teachers, but they were passed away and reborn in worlds where they could not be reached for a very long time. Some planes of existence are so long lasting, it's staggering. So he realized his five former companions on his spiritual quest might get it. When he taught them, one did. And that was Kondanna (Kaudinya)
He may be reading this from somewhere, possibly What the Buddha Taught or a scholarly rundown of the historical Buddha's path by Bhikkhu Bodhi or Ven. Professor Analayo. Wow, Greg.
Monastic Disciplinary Rules (Patimokkha, the "Path to Moksha" for Buddhist nuns and monks)
The Buddha's Gradual Path of Progress does not drop off suddenly but deepens like the ocean shelf, producing its result. 1) Virtue is established to bring about peace of mind and serenity of spirit free of misgivings and worry. 2) Atop that foundation of peace and blamelessness, stillness (samadhi), profound peace of mind, is placed. 3) The crowning of this pyramid is what establishes it and makes it permanent, insight (the gnostic experience of wisdom for oneself and depending on no one's authority, direct knowing-and-seeing, personal realization)
The "dark" side of Theravada first came to light for us in reading Tim Ward's What the Buddha Never Taught. The problem then was the behavior of Buddhist "novices" (monks-in-training) in Thailand, which is a cultural custom to ordain before being considered ready for marriage in the wildly popular and largely Theravada Buddhist country.
Ward reports that as a samanera (white clad follower of eight or ten precepts), one Westerner had reported that a novice pleasured himself while staring over this sleeping person. We were shocked and mortified that such a thing could happen or be allowed to happen, but this is not the act of a male intending to be a monk until enlightenment or for the rest of his life. These hormonal boys are sent to the monastery for "temporary ordination" as young as 7 and may stay a few days or one rainy season (Rains Retreat). That's how it could happen.
Now, imagine the horror that men (20 and older) who take monastic vows live as wolves among the faithful givers of alms, taking advantage of the generosity of Buddhist supporters but having no aim of enlightenment or even keeping the monastic precepts recited in the patimokkha. That is a shame and a pity and directly the fault of a monastic sangha ("spiritual community") that does not enforce the rules or disciplinary procedures the historical Buddha laid down for the long life of the sangha and the Dhamma (the Teaching that leads to enlightenment in this very life).
The larger problem nowadays is even worse than that and is the real source of widespread corruption, homosexuality, crime, and hypocrisy in the sanghas of the Theravada countries. And that is that so few males want to enter the monastic life for genuine and sincere reasons that these societies have found workarounds: send in males who have no interest in practice but who need support and are willing to at least pretend to be well-behaved monks, teachers, and examples to the rest of society.
This problem has also appeared in Catholic countries all over the world, with overwhelming corruption, sinfulness, and public disaffection. It may be worse in Catholicism, which used to allow its priests to get married until the Vatican found it far more PROFITABLE to ban clergy marriages, which were directing donations to the children of clergy members as inheritance. When the practice of clergy marrying was BANNED, priests just broke the new rule the way they had always been breaking the rule against chastity (avowed celibacy), doing it in secret with child victims, fellow homosexuals, or visiting housewives. It has been more or less an open secret for centuries. So "secret" is it that corruption and homosexuality among cardinals and bishops -- who are priests with more responsibilities -- sets the example for younger "seminarians," which is what s*men-loaded cadets at the Catholic training schools call themselves and what they are called by other fellow gay-active trainees.
A wonderful book exposing the wholesale policy, not aberration, of these practices was published in Italian and has been translated into English. South Park mocked it in a wonderful episode about a good priest from the town going to Rome and finding out it's the norm. It's like that saying about police officers. "Nine out of ten officers make the other one look bad." In other words, the majority of hypocrites make the precious few sincere ones look bad. And the few good ones give cover and respectability to the many wolves in sheep's clothing. But this is not about Catholic corruption, or corruption among Jews, Evangelical Protestants, Western Hare Krishna devotees, or anybody else. This is about the dark and disgusting side of Theravada monastics.
A recent bust of many Sri Lankan novices and monks bringing potent cannabis into Sri Lanka through the international airport has not yet been resolves. Were they simply duped into acting as "mules" (carrying the pot in secret trap doors in their suitcases to benefit the donor who sent them on holiday to Thailand to pick up the massive shipment), or were they in on it and partaking of the intoxicant?
The solution is clear but not simple. The sangha as a united body needs to reinstitute the existing procedures on the books for expelling "defeated" monks and wayward "ascetics" for the good of the Buddha's dispensation (Śāsana) and the long life of the uncorrupted Dhamma (Dharma) in the world. It is not so important that one man falls due to greed, hatred/fear, or delusion and becomes a hypocrite, one taking advantage of a monastic career. What is important is that such hypocrites end up taking the whole sangha and eventually the whole Dhamma (Buddhist Teaching) in the world. The Monastic Disciplinary Rules exist in the Vinaya Pitaka, which is one of three massive collections of works on the three distinct divisions of the Pali canon (conventional sutras, monastic discipline, and the Doctrine in ultimate terms: Suttas, Vinaya, Abhidhamma).
There is still time to be upstanding.
There comes a time... the Yellow-Necks, "monks" who do not live by the rules but who at least study and learn the Dhamma without much putting it into practice. Are we arrived at that time?
“In future times, Ānanda, there will be members of this clan who are ‘yellow-necks,’ immoral, of evil character. People will give gifts to those immoral persons for the sake of the Sangha. Even then, I say, an offering made to the Sangha is incalculable, immeasurable. And I say that in no way is a gift to a person individually ever more fruitful than an offering made to the Sangha [as a whole]” (Dakkhiṇāvibhaṅga Sutta, MN 142) dhammawheel.com
The disparaging term "yellow-necks" comes from, in the future, those defeated (parajika) "monks" wearing not full robes but a yellow, orange, red, or saffron scrap of a robe around their neck or wrist to signify their status as members of the sangha.
The monastic rules have also been translated into English by the American monk in the Thai Forest Tradition Thanissaro Bhikkhu, an abbot near San Diego, California (watmetta.org).
Ven. Thanissaro is a cantankerous old monk whom, we were told in Thailand, was driven out of Thailand and back to America due to monastic politics. It seems he served his ailing teacher, who might have left him, a farang ("foreigner"), in charge, but the local Thai monks waiting their turn to ascend in the monastery weren't going to stand for that. This may have made him bitter, but he has suffered from malaria for so long that it is difficult to discern the roots eating at this prodigious but hopelessly idiosyncratic translator of Thai and Pali. But his voice is nice, like a pilot for the big airlines, and people not in the know seem to like his warped take on things. We recommend Bhikkhu Bodhi for classic, well-rounded, and well-supported translations. Tan Jeff is nice enough to explain himself sometimes, but he is sorely lacking in providing the Pali term he is aberrantly translating into his own misleading glossary of terms. Please do better, sir, but thank you for all your work. We have known young men who tried to be monastics at Wat Metta who, finding the abbot insufferable, have left to better pastures, usually the idyllic Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
I was traveling as a vegan through India which, while mostly Hindu, at that time had about 100 million Muslims. (It now has 200 million or more).
I came to a strangely barren outdoor marketplace made of stone and clay. I watched from a distance as a bad smell of BBQ wafted through the air like an accident. Imagine the smell of burning plastic, upholstery, oil, textiles, and diesel fumes.
Men began to congregate, each at their own stall with animals, mainly sheep, lambs, or goats in tow. I blended in, holding still, just observing. And I began to realize these were butchers, killing animals by slicing their throats, beheading them, draining their blood, separating their corpses into portions, and piling bloody flesh on the stall tops for sale.
Shoppers, Muslims following their religion to eat the dead and Hindus violating theirs by buying carcasses (and therefore paying butchers to kill) for consumption, which is at odds with ahimsa ("nonharming"), were gathering.
The Dharmic religions enjoin humans to abstain from killing and from encouraging anyone else to kill. Butchers are encouraged to slaughter when people pay them to do it. Am I blameless for eating meat? It would be as if the Mafia godfather were to say, "I've never killed anybody" when he has hired and directed men to kill by paying them to do so. Is he blameless or as blameworthy as those Mafia men for all those killings? Butchers, paid for yesterday's killing, kill for tomorrow in full expectation that there is money to be made by those not doing the dirty work.
The flies. The dirty hands. The dust and pollution of uncovered stalls. The floors of stalls were a sheen of blood. There was some baying of the young sheep.
The men all seemed very nice, not yelling or argumentative, all in their workaday mode, thinking nothing wrong with slaughtering and selling in unhygienic conditions.
A modern human family walking on all fours?
Then, thinking of karma, I saw it. No one seemed to pay any mind, but I could not wrap my head around what people must be thinking they were seeing and why it was so. People probably go along to get along by not thinking.
An Ulas family member or distant relative, walking on all fours through the blood slats, was going from stall-to-stall begging. He had a Muslim cap like the others and clogs (rope and wood sandals) on his feet, which gave the appearance and sound of cloven hooves, as he ambled from butcher to butcher, who pitied him (or wanted him to move on).
They have him a few coins (backsheesh) or slivers of red flesh. To explain it to myself, I imagined that this man -- in a past life or earlier in this one -- was a butcher like them but then went crazy and decided to go on all four like a dog-duty ascetic.
But he was no ascetic, not one to do penance or tapas (fiery austerities), not Hindu or a member of one of the Dharmic religions. Yet, by his concurrent good deeds, possibly giving to beggars, he managed to gain rebirth in this world (on the human plane) rather than The Downfall (niraya), the worlds of woe that result from killing living beings and other cruelties.
Karma is such that the way it works out is not only strange but incomprehensible, one of the Four Imponderables. It is possible, particularly in this world of mixed karma (skillful and unskillful deeds), that one form of karma interferes with the other. Killers are not always immediately reborn in perdition.
It is possible by good karma (keeping the Five or Eight Precepts) that merit is made that counters unskillful actions for a time. The result of killing animals is not that one will one time be killed or reborn in hell but that it will happen again and again and those mental impulsions (javanas) formed in the doing come to fruition by conditioning a rebirth. One act (good or bad) has exponential karmic-results (vipaka, phala), ripening like fruit.
The man walked like a tall, skinny cow from booth to booth. The butchers gave charity. And he moved on to work the whole marketplace. I turned in disbelief, gobsmacked, and saw a girl selling piles of colorful powder dyes. It is not clear in what, ubiquitous plastic bags or wrapped in yesterday's newspaper. The piles were perfect and very likely synthetic and she seemed miserable to be there.
Then the smell hit me again and I saw smoke. It was a kind of hibachi, and an old Muslim man was placing something on the sooty grill. The smoke did not seem to bother the miserable salesgirl, but from a farther distance, it sure bothered me.
The man smiled at me, seeing my camera. I approached slowly and got close enough to discern what was burning. It was a pile of small heads of recently living lambs. It is the strangest thing to see a beheaded face separated from its torso, disconnected from its neck. The eyes were gently closed and I felt sure they might open at any moment. Was he cooking their brains in the skulls?
Surely, this was butcher offal (trash). What was he doing? I came to understand that he was singing the hair off to sell the heads for buyers to eat the face. Like a dog gnawing on a bone for marrow and gristle, scraps of remaining tendon, the smear of blood or scent of flesh, someone would buy this.
Price? 5 cents (It's hard to do the arithmetic conversion with moving exchange rates, and this was a long time ago when the US greenback fetched about 40 rupees). The man kindly smiled at me. All the men were nice, seemed nice, seemed well adjusted to their task, with wives and families at home, well-fed with lots of dead meat. India is a kaleidoscope. I thought that man an anomaly. But here is a whole family:
Family that walks on all fours have 'undone the last three million years of evolution'
Story by Harriet Brewis, Indy 100, 8/27/24
The skin on the palms of their hands is as thick as it is on their feet (60 Minutes AUS/Indy 100).
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All families have their own quirks and habits, but one group of relatives has such a distinct trait that scientists have branded them a total anomaly of the human species.
I told you, Darwin. - No, Wallace, I already knew.
The Ulas family has been the subject of evolutionary fascination for years after they were discovered in a remote village in Turkey walking on all fours. Back in the early 2000s, a scientific paper was published on five of the Ulas siblings and their strange bear crawl-style of movement, with experts divided over the cause of the anomaly.
In the years following the paper’s publication, evolutionary psychologist Prof. Nicholas Humphrey of the London School of Economics (LSE) travelled to Turkey to meet with the extraordinary family.
Alfred Wallace, the unfamous father of evolution
The Ulas mother and father had a staggering 18 children. However, of these, only six were born with quadrupedalism (walking on all fours), which has never been seen before in modern adult humans.
“I never expected that even under the most extraordinary scientific fantasy that modern human beings could return to an animal state,” Prof. Humphrey told 60 Minutes Australia, which made a documentary about the family back in 2018.
“The thing which marks us off from the rest of the animal world is the fact that we’re the species which walks on two legs and holds our heads high in the air,” he added. More
Three members of the Berkeley Zen Centersangha (spiritual community) received "lay ordination" (Zaike Tokudo) from Sojun Weitsman Roshi and Hozan Senauke Sensei in the summer of 2017.
Such commitment to practice is possible in Mahayana Buddhism, particularly in the Japanese tradition practiced in the United States.
This ceremony takes place once a year at BZC and is a significant rite of passage for each participant and for the whole sangha.
This is a talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Friday, May 14, 2021, by Hozan Alan Senauke. AUDIO: Listen to an audio-only version of this talk: Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed. Subscribe to The Berkeley Zen Center Podcast: RSS.
ABOUT: Hozan Alan Senauke: Sensei began practicing at BZC on Dwight Way and later established his practice as a student of Sojun Roshi in the early 1980s. He was ordained as a Zen priest at BZC in 1989, receiving Dharma Transmission from Sojun at Tassajara Zen Center in 1998. After serving as tanto (head of practice) and then as vice-abbot at BZC, Hozan was installed as abbot in January of 2021. More
MSN.com; Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Los Angeles has a pioneering cook in Rahel, who offers gluten-free vegan Ethiopian delicacies.
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I pray as I begin then I let go as my meditation.
Most Americans think Mardi Gras is a party, but it's actually a holy day during Holy Week, and its purpose is to put the brakes on meat eating. Three of the world's four largest religions know it's bad -- for health and for morals -- but that attitude has been thrown out over time. Buddhism (including the one billion uncounted Buddhists in communist China) and Hinduism remember the harm, whereas Christian/Catholicism and Islam seem to have forgotten. But Lent is the reminder. Only, now, most of us ignore it. Ethiopian Christiansremember, as do monastics and people attempting to purify themselves by prayer -- not the common petitionary kind so much as other more effective forms (such as The Isaiah Effect: Decoding the Lost Science of Prayer and Prophecy rediscovered by Gregg Braden).
I didn't mean to kill animals. I'm taking it back.
Glittering green beads descend from balconies, costumed and topless crowds line parade routes, and jazz music fills the air — yep, you guessed it: Mardi Gras is here!
Otherwise known as "Fat Tuesday," this celebration draws scores of people to New Orleans, USA, every year for one big party.
Even if one can't make it to The Big Easy, one can join the festivities by dressing up in dazzling Carnival costumes, decorating the home in purple, green, and gold, or preparing a spread of traditional Mardi Gras food.
Just the flavors of the Carnival season are enough to keep many coming back for more: boils and étouffée, powdered beignets and po'boy sandwiches, and king cakes with tiny baby figurines hidden inside -- all largely unhealthy (albeit beloved) garbage.
And if the latter seems like an odd tradition, there's plenty more where that came from! The history of Mardi Gras and its customs is a much bigger story than anyone thinks.
Carnival means "remove meat" (Latin carnevale), and it's part of the tradition of abstaining from animal flesh for 40 days. It's been practiced in Christian Ethiopia for millennia. The Roman Empire was no different, except in lustily building up to the fasting from flesh part. Today, Fat Tuesday, is when one eats up all the things (usually in pancake form) one does not want in the kitchen for the next 40 days.
What about fish? No way! That's an animal
For example, did you know why it always falls on the Tuesday before the start of Lent? Or why exactly it's called Fat Tuesday? To answer these questions and more, read ahead for the history of Mardi Gras and why it's celebrated. More: msn.com
(Buddhist Insights @ Empty Cloud) Sangha Panel: Samādhi (stillness, calm, concentration) and vipassana (insight, wisdom, liberating-knowledge) are two topics of utmost importance in early Buddhism.
This panel was streamed live on April 5, 2023. The Sangha ("Monastic Community") at Empty Cloud discusses samādhi and vipassana, which can be taken up in earnest every week on the lunar observance or uposatha day. This was highly recommended by the historical Buddha -- daily practice with weekly intensive practice, staying overnight in the monastery to make a concerted effort at attainments in calm and insight, book understanding and actual firsthand practice.
Western Theravada nun Ayya Soma (Buddhist Insights @ Empty Cloud Monastery, New Jersey, streamed live on August 26, 2022); CC Liu, Ananda, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Hey, Gays, come to New Jersey! We celebrate complete nonheteronormative diversity!
Wisdom Quarterly covered it years ago, focusing on the academic anthology entitled Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender (1991, edited by the prolific author Prof. Jose Ignacio Cabezon) with an excellent Theravada contribution by Prof. Donald Lopez, Ph.D.
How are LGBTQIA+ identities viewed in Buddhism? How might one understand anatta (the teaching of all things being impersonal and not-self) in the context of transgender life stories?
The Buddha didn't judge. Why would we?
In this talk, Italian-American Theravada Buddhist nun Ayya Soma (who may have been bisexual, lesbian, questioning, gender-fluid, and/or a tomboy prior to ordination and is a celibate now) shares some reflections based on early Buddhist texts from those schools that preceded the major reformed or universalist Mahayana school (a syncretic Brahminical/Hindu tradition).
This valuable academic work, edited by University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) Professor of Tibetan Buddhism Jose Ignacio Cabezon, Ph.D., has garnered a 5.0 out of 5 stars (with 5 ratings).
The compilation explores historical, textual, and social questions relating to the position and experience of women and gay people in the Buddhist world from India and Tibet to Sri Lanka, China, and Japan.
It focuses on four key areas:
(BACK COVER)
Buddhist history,
contemporary culture,
Buddhist symbols, and
homosexuality.
It also covers Buddhism's entire history, from its origins to the present day. The result of original and innovative research, the editor offers new perspectives on the history of the attitudes toward, and of the self-perception of, women in both ancient and modern Buddhist societies.
UC Santa Barbara Prof. Jose Ignacio Cabezon
Prof. Cabezon explores key social issues such as abortion and examines the use of rhetoric and symbols in Buddhist texts and cultures.
This anthology discusses the neglected subject of Buddhism and homosexuality.
"It fills an important gap in the field -- a serious, textually close reading of gender's influence on Buddhist thought and vice versa." - Anne Klein
Gender panel at Empty Cloud Monastery
The unbearable nervous laughter of [gay?] Ayya Soma and Ven. Suddhaso
Imagine the infamous Noah Levine (recovering American drug addict and author of Dharma Punx/Against the Stream plus founder of a for-profit recovery center in Hollywood, sued out of his position as any kind of Dharma leader but still hustling to have a center). Now imagine him as a monk who has not committed sexual misconduct crimes or harmed many people around him, all full of tattoos and a shiny bald head. What is left is a kind of Ajahn Sujato (not the Australian Buddhist translator formerly known as Anthony Best of SuttaCentral.net fame) or Graham with his thick accent and scruffy appearance. Ten years a Theravada monk in the Thai tradition makes him a thera or "elder." So bravo that he survived parajika ("defeat") free, clean, having overcome drugs like crack! Home of The New Day Sangha| Dharma Outreach
Here is a rare documentary about Ajahn Chah's Thai meditation center for Westerners, the "International Forest Monastery" (Wat Pah Nanachat) in Ubon Ratchathani, Northeast Thailand from True Little Monk: The Wisdom Training Program for Novices.
There are two kinds of suffering....become free.
Westerners are generally in a hurry. So they experience greater extremes of happiness and suffering. The fact that they have much defilement (kilesā) can be a source of wisdom later on.
To live the lay life and practice Dharma (Pali Dhamma), one must be in the world but must rise and remain above it. Virtue (sīla), which begins with the basic Five Precepts, is the all-important parent of all good things.
It is for removing all wrong from the mind/heart, removing that which causes agitation and distress. When these basic things are gone, the heart/mind will always be in a state of serene mental coherence (samādhi).
At first, the basic thing is to make virtue really firm. Practice formal meditation when there is the opportunity. Sometimes it will be good, sometimes not. Don’t worry about it, just continue.
If doubts arise, just realize that they, like everything else in the mind, are impermanent.
From this base, mental coherence (samādhi) will come, but not yet wisdom. One must watch the mind at work -- see like and dislike arising from sense contact [with the pleasant and unpleasant things], and not attach to or reject them.
Let’s not be anxious for results or sudden progress. An infant first crawls then learns to walk then to run.
When one is fully grown and able to run, one can travel half way around the world to Thailand [to practice in forest meditation centers like Wat Pah Nanachat].
What's "love" got to do with it? With what? With "purification and purity" (visuddhi).
For a monk or nun who has undertaken additional training rules to gain enlightenment and liberation from all suffering most expediently, celibacy (brahmacariya) is incumbent on such a practitioner, meaning a "supreme" (chaste) or "pure" life.
A lay-practitioner who observes the Eight Precepts also takes a temporary vow of chastity (full abstention from sex). The highest aim and purpose of this is, according to MN 29, "unshakable deliverance of mind" (akuppā ceto-vimutti). But purity is not celibacy.
Celibacy is a means to actual purity, to purification of the mind/heart of all craving.
[WQ: Rather than abstaining from sex, a lay practitioners always abstains from sexual misconduct (kamesu micchacara), that is, harming anyone (even oneself) for the sake of one's own sensual pursuits. But this term "sexual misconduct" is much misunderstood and mistranslated according to our Western (Judeo-Christian) biases. Fortunately, the Buddha defined it exactly as avoiding having sex with the ten forbidden types of people (other's spouses, people under the protection of others, those unable to consent, and so on). Let us strive, then, to at least live by a simplified rule of avoiding doing harm as we pursue having sex.]
Those who become enlightened to the first three stages can still have sex. Not only that, according to the Ratana Sutra, there are only five things they cannot do, as doing so would entail a painful result that is no longer possible for them.
But I'm in the mood! - Tell it to the sign.
It may even be possible after the fourth and final stage, but it is traditionally explained that at that point one has gone beyond.
One has gone altogether beyond the necessary and sufficient sensual desire and lust that acts as motivation. One has escaped the former traps of craving and clinging to the unsatisfactory, which applies to all things.
The Seven Stages of Purification (satta-visuddhi) form the outline of The Path to Freedom (Vimuttimagga) as well as Buddhaghosa's monumental work, The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), which is based on the former work and likely the product of the same author under the name Araha Upatissa.
The only place in the Pali canon where these seven kinds of purification are mentioned is in "The Simile of the Stagecoach" (MN 24, see The Path to Deliverance, by Ven. Nyanatiloka, §64), where their purpose and goal are illustrated.
There it is said that the real and ultimate goal does not consist of purification of virtue, or of mind, or of view, and so on, but in enlightenment and full release. Now just as one mounts the first coach and travels to the second coach, then mounts the second coach and travels with it to the third coach, and so on, in exactly the same way the goal of:
How will I cross over to "the further shore," freedom from all suffering, nirvana?
(I) "Purification of virtue consists of the fourfold purity of virtue (catu-pārisuddhi-sīla), namely, restraint with regard to the Disciplinary Code (pātimokkhasamvara-sīla),sense-restraint(indriysamvara-sīla),purity of livelihood (ājīvapārisuddhi-sīla), virtue with regard to the Four Requisites (paccaya-sannissita-sīla)"(The Path of Purification, Vis.M. XVIII).
On these four terms, see sīla. In the case of a layperson, it entails the observance of whatever rules (five or more precepts) one has taken upon oneself.
(II) "Purification of mind is a name for the eight attainments (i.e., eight meditative absorptions), as well as for neighborhood-concentration (upacāra-samādhi;see samādhi)" (ibid.)
(III) "By purification of viewis meant the understanding, in accordance with reality, of mind and body (nāma-rūpa)... which is founded on nondelusion (wisdom) as base and which in manifold ways determines mind and body after overcoming all belief in a personality (attā, self, ego)" (ibid.) [To understand how and why there is no personality, self, ego, see anatta.] More
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