Born Jeffrey Block (Dec. 10, 1944), now known as Bhikkhu Bodhi [a], is an American Theravada Buddhist scholar-monk, a major inspiration for Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal, educated in California, ordained in Sri Lanka, and now teaching in New York and New Jersey.
Long ago at BPS, Bhikkhu Bodhi authorized our Dharma editor to promote his mail order Buddhist course called The Buddha's Teaching: As It Is, a ten-cassette set he recorded in the basement of the Washington Buddhist Vihara with glossary and notes. To reach a wider audience, we took it online with millions of views, our dhamma-dana.
Block was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1944 to Jewish parents. He grew up in Borough Park, where he attended elementary school P.S. 160 [4] and graduated from New Utrecht High School [5]. He then worked as a door-to-door salesman selling paintbrushes [6].
In 1966, he obtained a B.A. in philosophy from Brooklyn College, where he first encountered Buddhism in books at the bookstore [6]. In 1972, he obtained a doctoral degree (PhD) in philosophy from Claremont Graduate University [7, 8] in Southern California before deciding to move to Asia to ordain as a monk. More
Golden Buddha from ancient Gandhara, modern Afghanistan (from Saving Mes Aynak)
Golden Buddha polished to brilliance in Burma
The Buddhist holiday season has just begun in the Theravada Buddhist world, as the Lent period comes to a close with a culminating ceremony called the Kathina ("Unshakeable") robe offering. It is a kind of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) after the fast rather than before it.
It is said that this is the most meritorious ceremony lay people participate in, generating a great deal of beneficial karma (punya, kusala kamma).
What happened?
The new facilities can hold ~1,000 people
The Buddhist temple (Mindfulness Meditation Center) was never more crowded. Both lots were full with cars overflowing onto the neighboring suburban streets.
Nearly everyone was dressed in white just like at the time of the Buddha. There were giant tents and chairs set up near the bodhi tree (a descendant of the original tree wandering ascetic Siddhartha sat under to become the Buddha, the "Awakened One"). Snack boxes were being given out, and monks were gathering in the hall.
Two Vietnamese Theravada nuns were filming the abbot, who is said to be over 100 years old. Abbot Ahangama Dhammarama may not be a centenarian yet, but he does hold the record for the longest person (more years in robes) than anyone in America. Although he may have committed defeat offenses as some say, he is still credited with the longest ordination period or years of seniority (more than 80).
The nuns gathered around him to take selfies as the monks assembled in the pews before lining up to go outside and take their seats at long tables under a giant tent. They chanted (having chanted until midnight the night before) blessings (parittas). Then the parade (perihera) began on the boulevard in front of the temple complex. We lined up to give offerings (dana) to the monastic who walked by with bowls and robes and large gift bags.
The monastics were then served delicious foods, both hard and soft, and devotees offered them their fill so they could return to their meditation. But this day marks the end of the intensive retreat period ("Lent"), so it was on to the awarding of the ceremonial "durable robe" for the temple's monastic resident who had best adhered to the Discipline in the preceding three months of the Rains.
Note that each temple celebrates on its own schedule throughout the month. It is not a single day event but will go on at different viharas usually on weekends. The celebration day is usually preceded by all night paritta and sutta chanting in Pali (Magadhi), one of the languages the Buddha spoke. It is customary but not mandatory to wear all white.
Knowing Our Festivals 005: KATHINA
International Buddhist flag with Dharma wheel
(HARMONICO) 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗙𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘀: 𝗞𝗔𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗔. Kathina is a Buddhist festival, which comes at the end of the Rains Retreat (Vassa), the three-month rainy season retreat for Theravada Buddhists.
Let’s watch this episode from the KNOWING OUR FESTIVALS series to understand more about the festival.
This looks at Malaysia, but this holiday festival is celebrated around the world in every country with a Theravada Buddhist population (Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, India, Malaysia, Singapore, America, Germany, England, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Australia, Vietnam...)
Penang Harmony Corporation (HARMONICO) would like to thank the Malaysian Buddhist Meditation Centre, Nandaka Vihara, Bukit Mertajam, and Dr. Li Feng for contributing to the production of this video, Oct. 30, 2021.
(Let's Meet Abroad) March 31, 2024: Join us in Bodh Gaya (aka Buddha Gaya), a hidden gem in Bihar, India.🌟🇮🇳 We explore the Mahabodhi ("Great Enlightenment") Temple, walk around the Japanese Great Buddha, and enjoy delicious vegetarian and vegan Tibetan food.
Budh (or bodh) is the root of Buddha ("Enlightened One") and bodhi ("enlightenment, awakening"), and gaya is grove, so this place is Enlightenment Grove or the Place of Awakening.
Bodh Gaya is really worth a visit during any trip to India. We highly recommend hiring an e-rickshaw to get around to all the famous sights. #bihar #india #bodhgaya
00:00 Bodh Gaya in Bihar, India: Center of the Buddhist World
00:35 Marasa Sarovar Premiere, Bodhgaya
01:43 Vegetarian Tibet Om Cafe, Bodh Gaya
04:45 Mahabodhi Temple, Bodh Gaya
07:17 Great Buddha (80 foot) statue, Bodh Gaya
08:58 Exploring Bodh Gaya in Bihar
10:40 Tibet Om Cafe, Bodh Gaya again
12:25 Bihar road trip
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Then, the allegory goes, the wandering ascetic, having eaten and regained his bodily health thanks to the lady Sujata and her maid, wandered on in search of enlightenment. He realized that he had blamed the body for the faults of the mind/heart, punishing it needlessly.
He determined to try another approach, abandoning austerities and self-mortification. What, he wondered, if he were to allow himself the supersensual pleasure of meditative absorption (jhana). Such bliss is blameless. He wondered if this might be the way to awakening.
An inner-knowing came over him that it was. He went to the river to bathe, using his alms bowl to predict if he would succeed. Then he found another tree, having left behind Sujata's banyan.
He entered a wondrous grove and found a marvelous fig tree (Ficus religiosa) under which to sit. There he enjoyed the bliss (piti) of letting go, simply mindful of his in-and-out breathing until it became soft then still, as he entered into single-pointed focus and samadhi, purifying heart/mind.
He remembered past lives and continued to ponder the question that had prompted his spiritual quest: Why do we suffer? He followed the chain of causation (Dependent Origination), realizing that the root of present disappointment and pain (dukkha) was in the past, affecting the present and setting the future.
He broke through the 12-links to understand that, "With this, that comes to be, and without it, it ceases." He understood those factors that had led to everything and saw a means of escape from this round (samsara, simulation) of countless rebirth.
He went back and back through past lives (reappearances, relinkings, rearisings), further exploring all that had happened, with great gratitude for the tree that sheltered him.
Our journey to India
A few years after in San Francisco
Like the video above, we were two Americans traveling through the whirlpool of humanity that is India, she a blond, I blending in. But our Tevas gave us away. Everyone knew we were foreigners and were surprised to find out we were Americans. There were people from all over the world here and extraordinary temples in a little town that represented the whole world. My favorite was not the great Mahabodhi Temple at the center, nor the Sri Lankan vihara, not the Thai wat, nor the Japanese zendo and massive Butso Buddha. It was the wooden Bhutanese shrine room, with woodcut devas on the wall. It was dark and like being in a tiki wood treasure house. What was this? We never knew Bodhgaya, near the Patna Airport, was this jewel. Everyone else it. It was the off-season, but Tibetan monastics were everywhere doing 108,000 prostrations on smooth planks of wood to increase their devotion. Hindus were in control of the walled area around the Bodhi tree, wearing orange and panhandling, exploiting the devotional feelings of pilgrims on entering. We sat next to the stone "throne" slab under which Siddhartha is alleged to have sat. Could it be that very gilded stone? One could imagine this was the exact spot, although there is room for doubt. A monk in Los Angeles I know very well got his Ph.D. in Asia on the archeology of the exact site and the Mahabodhi tower/pagoda cetiya. They were discovered by a British scholar and rebuilt on the site from fragments all around the area. The site had been leveled by Muslim crusaders passing through, cutting down the tree so many honored, thinking that people were praying to it in violation of their religious views. Yet, here it was. We could hardly take in the vicinity and its international air, as we focused on the area around the tree. A sanctuary is more precious for the busy-ness all around.
Just as the Abrahamic faiths keep the "Lord's Day" (which had always been Saturday not Sunday, given the very word Sabbath means "Saturday," like the pagan, pre-Christian, Wiccan, Jewish Shabbat, the holy or rest day for spiritual stuff.
The Buddha could see back in time that this custom was very good and should be continued. He gave it a Buddhist spin -- like previous buddhas, observing the Eight Precepts rather than the ordinary daily Five Precepts, fasting (eating only between dawn and noon), practicing intensive meditation, hearing and studying the Dharma and Discipline, the path to liberation pointed out by the Buddha.
He taught a path-of-practice that includes calm and insight meditation (shamatha, the jhanas, satipatthana, and vipassana). These are the practices of:
The Buddha taught that the fasting day is for "the cleansing of the defiledmind/heart," resulting in inner calm and joy. On this day, Buddhists intensify their practice, deepen their knowledge, and express communal commitment through millennia-old acts of lay-monastic reciprocity. More
Rains Retreat (Vassa) schedule lists weekly Dharma talks and monthly Poya or Lunar Observance Days.
One need not be a wandering ascetic, an austere monastic, a celibate (anagarika), nor a "little nun or monk" (samaneri/samanera) to practice for insight.
It would be nice and could be very helpful to speed things up to fruition, but it is not necessary. That means a normal, ordinary householder (workaday family person with possessions and worldly obligations) can practice what the Buddha taught and advance in this very life. There's no need to wait.
The lunar observance day (Uposatha) is the day to find out. It is observed in Los Angeles at many Theravada Buddhist temples of Southeast Asia. One in particular is the Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara. Instead of practicing weekly, it does so monthly on the full moon day or an approximation of it.
Due to scheduling constraints, September's lunar observance day is being conducted today, Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024, beginning at 8:00 am with a day of scheduled sitting and walking meditations, Dharma talks, lunch, and question and answer periods.
Lunar observances during the three-month Rains Retreat period
We're spiritual seekers in LA looking for Truth
The Rains Retreat continues in Los Angeles, so we trekked over to visit the Mindfulness Meditation Center of the Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara in the suburbs of LA's San Gabriel Valley:
The Center has a vision. It is to bring people to a depth of realization of the Buddha’s path to liberation through direct experience.
Why would anyone be a monk? We should ask.
The Mindfulness Meditation Center – Covina (LABV) is a Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist spiritual center dedicated to the study and practice of Buddhist teachings (Dharma) and meditation (bhavana) and is committed to the possibility of liberation for all beings from pain, disappointment, and unsatisfactoriness (collectively called dukkha or "suffering").
American Col. Henry Olcott in old Sri Lanka
The Center welcomes diverse populations. It supports and encourages the development of compassionate action towards everyone for a community based on the ideals, teachings, and practices in the tradition of Theravada Buddhism.
The Citadel of Sigiriya atop a massive rock in Sri Lanka, once a Buddhist monastery
Maha Moggallana̞, Sri Lanka
Its mission is to provide practitioners with Buddhist teachings to manifest wisdom and compassion in all aspects of life for the benefit of all beings.
It is a spiritual center and a sanctuary dedicated to the study and practice of mindfulness meditation according to the Theravada Buddhist lineage. It provides Los Angeles and neighboring communities with opportunities to practice meditation, study Buddhist teachings, and apply those teachings in the context of daily life.
August's lunar daylong retreat
There are weekly sitting groups, monthly (lunar observance) daylong retreats, and weekly study courses. Invited guest speakers from other Buddhist centers in the United States and around the world supplement the offerings of dedicated local teachers.
The Center supports and encourages compassionate actions locally and globally to help people who are in need of support materially and spiritually around the globe. mindfulnessmeditationcenter.org
David A. Taylor, Tricycle Magazine, Winter 2007; Crystal Q., CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Tough Love Maverick Buddhist monk Khru Ba gives a novice Buddhist monk Thai kickboxing lessons in Northern Thailand, from Buddha's Lost Children.
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Monk on a Mission
Saving the Orphans of Northern Thailand (full doc)
Buddha's Lost Children: full documentary
(Dhamma Source) June 26, 2023: Buddha's Lost Children is a feature-length documentary film about a Thai Theravada Buddhist monk named Phra Khru Bah Neua Chai Kosittowho -- armed only with his Buddhist faith and skills and master Thai kickboxer skills -- wages an inspirational battle to help save orphaned children, fight drug (meth) abuse, and preserve a vanishing way of life. Director: Mark Verkerk. Learn more and support here: buddhaslostchildren.com
Buddha’s Lost Children is a Dutch film about Theravada Buddhist Thailand, directed by Mark Verkerk, EMS Films, 2006.
As the lights go down, the sound of a stream is heard. The first images show a bare-chested man cross-legged on a tall stone spur in the forest, limbering up his arms and neck in what looks like a cross between meditation and martial arts.
His face is calm, but his body wears a wild constellation of tattoos: calligraphy wriggles down his arms, and a winged horse flies across his chest.
The man is a Thai Theravada Buddhist monk. In the next moment, he’s egging on two boys who are kick boxing. “That’s it!” he cries.
“Kick into his neck.”
The documentary Buddha’s Lost Children tells the story of the maverick Buddhist monk and former pro kickboxer Khru Ba and his mission to save forgotten souls at the edge of Thai society — drug-infested communities in the mountainous region of northern Thailand along the Burmese border, near Laos, known as [the drug dealing haven] the Golden Triangle.
“Look at the things they do,” Khru Ba says of the addicted. “Who’ll forgive them? The law of the land doesn’t forgive them, nor does the law of karma....
Only a crazy fool of a monk like me is willing to forgive them.”
The hill-tribe ethnic groups of that region — including the Akha, Karen, Yao, and Lisu — have for much of their history been at the mercy of larger forces: drug barons, corrupt Thai officials, disease, and poverty.
They have always lived at the margins: They dress differently from mainstream Thais, speak in different tongues, and hold animist (rather than Buddhist) beliefs. They don’t fit in.
At Khru Ba’s Golden Horse Monastery, he takes their orphaned and abandoned children under his wing and gives them lessons in, among other things, Buddhist Dharma and Thai kickboxing.
“Thai boxing means having a free heart and body; it means not being enslaved to desire or to drugs,” he tells his novices. “Do you understand?”
The boys shout, “Yes!” The young Buddhist novices ride into a village on horseback, saffron robes flapping in their wake, like a gang in a spaghetti Western.
The ritual of receiving alms food from villagers looks almost like a holdup. Khru Ba shouts out his version of karma: Be good, good things come to you, but “if you’re not good, the [animist] spirits will break your neck.”
Mark Verkerk, the Dutch filmmaker who spent three years making the film, says it is about more than an itinerant monk.
“It was important that the film communicate something universal,” Verkerk said by email, “something people could relate to from other cultures — and there’s nothing more universal than raising kids.”
Khru Ba left his own wife and two children after a close friend’s death and a vivid dream that commanded him to open a Buddhist monastery in the mountains of the far north, where one in five youths who turn up for national service are addicted to cheap Western methamphetamines.
Like a spiritual 007, Khru Ba has special permission from the Supreme Patriarch in Bangkok to use whatever methods he deems necessary to address the problems at the kingdom’s edge.
“He’s the only monk to have found a way to operate in this border region,” says Verkerk.
The film, with cinematography that combines sweeping landscapes and intimate views of the region’s culture, has taken honors at various festivals in Europe and North America, and in August (2007) it had its American theatrical pre-release in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is now available on DVD.
(World of Antiquity) Nov. 4, 2022: This is a deep look at the caves of Barabar and Nagarjuni with an analysis of the conclusions drawn by BAM (Builders of Ancient Mysteries) on the origins of the caves.
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Basics of Indian Rock Cut Architecture:
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On early Buddhist Deccan caves:
https://indianculture.gov.in/ebooks/c...
https://archive.org/details/cavetempl...
https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedit...
Geometry of the Shulba Sutras
http://chaturpata-atharvan-ved.com/sp...
https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/n...
Early Indian gold mining:
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BAM:
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Bhikkhu Bodhi (BAUS); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly BUDDHIST SUMMER SCHOOL
Bhikkhu Bodhi: Introduction to Buddhism, As It Is (3): The True Nature of Existence
(AudioBuddha) The series
lecturer is American Theravada Buddhist scholar-monk Ven. Bodhi, who now resides and teaches at Chuang Yen Monastery (baus.org) in Carmel, Upstate New York. Recorded in the Washington Buddhist Vihara in 1981. Source: Dharma Seed, Sept. 3, 2021.
These audio recordings, books, and videos are for educational purposes only. Public domain. For enquiries or copyright issues, please contact audiobuddho@gmail.com.
Solly Wise, History All Day via MSN; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Officer was hunting a tiger in Mumbai but found an ancient civilization instead
John Smith’s wildest dreams came true in April 1819 when, while exploring the Indian jungle outside of Mumbai (Bombay), he stumbled upon a Buddhist discovery so fascinating it blew his mind. His chance encounter changed the history books and is surely one of the biggest achievements of his life. More
Bhikkhu Bodhi made a choice to first help girls in the developing world (Buddhist Global Relief)
Can a scholar and hermit care about people?
Who says Theravada Buddhist monastics are just in it for themselves -- pursuing their own salvation (realization, enlightenment/awakening, and final nirvana)? They're mistaken.
There's no contradiction in saving oneself -- the only person we can save -- and helping others in every way we can.
Help females first, and thereby help everyone.
It's not only the Bodhisattva Ideal claimed by Mahayana, it's the expression of friendliness, compassion, positive empathy, and equanimity, the Four "Divine Abidings" (Brahma Viharas). Just ask Jewish-American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi, our beloved teacher, the translator (and organizer of many translations) of the classic texts. He saw the need and went beyond the meditation mat, the editorial desk, and the monastic cell to establish Buddhist Global Relief to help alleviate "real world" problems pressing on the needy simply to exist on the human plane.
The Buddha Gautama
We certainly need what the historical Buddha offered, liberation, but he offered much more than most realize. Not only the Dharma (the Path to Freedom, the Middle Way to Liberation, the road to the end of all suffering), he accounted for the present needs of all kinds of beings.
Not everyone is interested in nirvana, nor spirituality, nor the unseen. Most want a better life here and now, a better rebirth hereafter, rearising in the heavens, and he pointed the way to those goals. For the wise, he set out a path of complete liberation (nirodha-moksha), for reaching nirvana in this very life. Perhaps if beings had the necessities of life -- food, shelter, clean water, medicinal products, care, and purpose -- the loftier ideal of spiritual liberation would become very attractive.
(Samaneri Jayasāra - Wisdom of the Masters) This reading is of a talk given to a group of lay meditation practitioners in England on the topic of samadhi at Hampstead Vihara, London, in the late 1970s. It was designed to be listened to as a guided meditation.
The Pali/Sanskrit word samādhi, usually misleadingly translated as “concentration,” is made up of three parts, a verbal root and two prefixes (sam+ā+dhi). The last part, dhi, is a noun form derived from the verbal root dhā, meaning “to put or place.” The prefix ā gives direction and suggests “placing upon,” and the prefix sam [complete] means “gathering or bringing together.” When combined and used in a Buddhist context, these elements add up to the sense of “unifying the mind and placing its awareness upon a particular object.”
Traditional sources also emphasize that the mind focuses on a single (eka) point (agga), and “one-pointedness” (Pali ekaggatā, Sanskrit ekāgratā) is another common way of translating samādhi (Andrew Olendzki).
ABOUT: Ajahn Chah was a Thai Buddhist monk and meditation master. He was an influential teacher of the Buddha Dhamma and a founder of two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition, including Wat Pah Nanachat, the International Forest Monastery for Westerners. He was reputed to be an arahant, a fully enlightened practitioner.
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Where did Silk RoadBuddhism come from? Gandhara or what is now Afghanistan (the home of the Buddha and his extended family, the Indo-Sakas/Scythians known as the Shakyas) or proto-India (Bihar and Magadha, before the formation of modern "India" under Emperor Ashoka, or China, after Buddhism traveled from there and spread out from there?
Dr. Ranajit Pal (ranajitpal.com) would agree that while Buddhism began in what is now India, it co-arose in the Buddha's homeland, what we could call "Shakya Land," around the three seasonal capitals of Kapilavastu (Kabul/Kapil), Bamiyan, and Mes Aynak, all in modern Afghanistan, Central Asia.
Afghanistan, after all, has the largest and some of the oldest Buddhist statues in the world, and the Buddha visited it seven years after his great awakening, returning to his people, many of whom then ordained and either followed him back East or stayed and formed large monastic communities for nuns and monks, practicing in accordance with the Doctrine the Buddha was establishing all around the Gangetic plain and foothills of the Himalayas.
He was not from Nepal, not a Hindu, not a member of the formal caste system but a "warrior" and therefore labelled a kshatriya in accordance with the Brahmin priests and their Vedas ("Knowledge Books") and view of the four varnas or categories of social obligations (duty, dharma) one is necessarily born into, with the Brahmins placing themselves on top.
But the administrators, the warrior-nobles or Aryans reckoned themselves in accordance with this imposed system, in the vicinity of the remains of the once great Indus Valley Civilization. Gandhara in Indo-Pakistan (with Taxila or Takkasila as its capital) is ancient even by that time, according to Buddhist sources (Jāt. 96).
Tash Rabat is a well-preserved 15th century stone caravanserai in At Bashy District, Naryn Province, Kyrgyzstan. It is located at an altitude of 3,200 meters (10,500 feet).
Research:
As early as 1888, Russian traveler Dr. Nicolay Lvovich Zeland suggested that it was originally a Nestorian or Buddhist monastery.
Research undertaken at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s by the Institute of History of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences [mistakenly*] concluded that Tash Rabat was originally built as a Nestorian monastery in the 10th century, although no Christian artifacts were ever found during excavations. More
*Later it was determined to be a Buddhist monastery as all inscriptions, artifacts, and references were found to be Buddhist in nature.
This was further supported by the fact that its inhabitants were Buddhist during the period of its construction (Khudyakov, Ju. (2009). Таш Рабат - Караван-сарай или замок [Tash Rabat - caravanserai or temple]. Priroda (in Russian). Russian Academy of Sciences (6): 55. Retrieved 2 May 2014).
[Its hollowed stupa and Mongolian-style compound, with yurts to weather the Central Asian snow and grassland, certainly appears more Buddhist than later Christian traditions influenced by Buddhist monasticism. It might have been both, built up for both purposes, as Russian Christian Nicolas Notovitch found at Hemis Gompa in his travels through Buddhist Tibet/India, Ladakh, where Jesus (Christ) of Nazareth had stayed and trained. See more at Jesus in India and in particular the works of Holger Kersten.]
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