FULL MOON – Tuesday 17th December 2013

Beyond Control

Those who cease
setting up like against dislike,
who are cooled,
who are not swayed 
by worldly conditions - 
these I call great beings.

Dhammapada v. 418

Liking and disliking can happen so quickly, we feel we have no control over them. Somebody
says something pleasant and we find we like them. Another person says something hurtful and we dislike them. It might be true that we can't stop liking and disliking arising, but if we slow down a little, we might notice we do have a choice; whether or not to follow them – whether or not to make a ‘me’ out of them. When awareness is well established, liking and disliking can be seen as movement taking place in a larger reality. What is that reality?

With Metta,
Bhikkhu Munindo

Buddhist Principles as Christmas Gifts

The following is taken from an excellent  article by Robert De Filippis on de-commercialising christmas and restoring the simple joy of living.

Buddhist principles as Christmas gifts to restore the joy of life to the Christmas season......................

The first principle is dependent origination, or we do not create ourselves. This is particularly difficult for the western mind, because individuality is a primary value in the West. But as I have written many times, individuality is an optical delusion of the ego.

The Buddha's awakening to the interconnected nature of life is foundational to the rest of his philosophy and can provide us much needed grounding in tempting times like these.

This awareness helps us to let go of grasping and craving, helps us not to reduce everything in the world to our own personal desires and fears, thereby justifying our acquisitive culture of consumption. Helps us deny our compulsion to waste the joy of the moment to acquire more and more of what we really don't need for the future. Helps stop our rushing headlong into the destruction of the web of life on this planet to exploit every ounce of our natural resources to produce trinkets and toys for our amusement. We can only do these things in the absence of awareness of how our lives are dependent on and interconnected to the rest of life on this planet.

Another principle is that we don't need to be "motivated by fear, attachment, hatred, jealousy, pride" because we are interconnected. We can celebrate the successes and mourn the losses of others. They are our successes and losses.

And the next principle is about action, "to bring into being a way in which you, as a member of this interconnectedness of life can think about, speak, act, work" to make it better for all: the real gift of Christmas.

Another useful teaching during the Christmas season is the "Buddha's emphasis on the cultivation of mindfulness regarding the specificity of experience. That's the aim of a kind of meditation. It is to be fully present to what is taking place right now." And what better reason than the realisation that NOW is where your life is happening: Not in regrets about the past or worries about the future.

Only by paying attention to the now of what Christmas has become do we see the suffering it causes by promising happiness, peace and satisfaction with the acquisition of material goods. We can find parallels in the commercialisation of Christmas, in how we allow the retail industry, our culture of acquisition and our society of conformance to tell us how to celebrate this holiday.

May you resist the temptations and have the intended joy of life contained in the Christmas mythology.

Robert De Filippis

New Dictionary of Buddhism Published

Thus read the first defined words in the new "The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism". Robert E. Buswell Jr., a distinguished professor of Buddhist studies in UCLA's College of Letters and Science, and Donald S. Lopez Jr., a distinguished university professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have compiled the most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of Buddhism ever produced in English.

More than a decade in the making, the dictionary also includes a chronicle of relevant
historical periods (empires, dynasties and kingdoms) and a timeline of Buddhism from the sixth century B.C. to the 21st century. Eight maps show both the Buddhist cosmological realms and the many Buddhist regions, marking the major cities, important monasteries, sacred places and pilgrimage routes spanning geographical sites in India, China, Japan, Korea and Tibet. The dictionary also includes an appendix of the many doctrinal lists that have proliferated in Buddhist materials, from the "one vehicle" to the one-hundred dharmas of the Yogacara school.

"We've gone back and asked, 'If you were looking at Chinese or Japanese or Tibetan Buddhism, what are the concepts, the places, the people, the texts that you should really know,'" said Lopez. "That was one of the questions we asked when deciding what terms to put in the dictionary. Even with more than a million words, there were still many things we could not include."

You can order your copy from Amazon for £27.87.

A Quote That I Like

The Ultimate Bliss

Blissful is solitude

for one who’s content,
who has heard the Dhamma,
who sees.
Blissful is non-affliction
with regard for the world,
restraint for living beings.
Blissful is dispassion
with regard for the world,
the overcoming of sensuality.
But the subduing of the conceit “I am”—
That is truly
the ultimate bliss.

The Buddha, Muccalinda Sutta, Ud 2.1.

NEW MOON – Monday 2nd December 2013

The Teacher

Disciples of the Buddha 
are fully awake 
dwelling both day and night 
in contemplation of the Awakened One.

Dhammapada v. 296

We can admire our Teacher, the Buddha, without abandoning who and what we are right now.
There are those who, when invited to dwell in contemplation of the spiritual master, betray themselves in their attempts to imitate another. The Buddha didn’t want us to ignore who we feel ourselves to be and pretend to be somebody else; rather he encouraged an open-hearted, clear-minded receptivity of ‘this’ person, here and now, including all of our limitations and obsessions. Taking on a new set of conditioned habits in an attempt to be free from suffering is not liberation, it is abdication. In practice we include all of ourselves in a vast field of awareness, free of discrimination and bias, and in so doing offer all of ourselves in service to Dhamma.

With Metta,
Bhikkhu Munindo

Bible Fiction - Texas Text Book Ban

Here's a couple of stories from the States.........

Retailer Costco has apologised for labelling copies of the Bible “fiction” at a store near Los Angeles. A local pastor saw the bibles while looking for a gift for his wife.

Some tweeters vowed to boycott Costco, setting up the hashtag #BoycottCostco. Others said they saw nothing wrong with the label and applauded Costco’s labelling. In the end, Costco apologised and said it fixed the problem, which it said was an accident. (So what did they re-label it as?)

Meanwhile in Texas committees of volunteer reviewers — some nominated by creationists who are current and former Board of Education members — raised objections to some of the new text books that were to be used in the state's schools.  As a result there will be no new Biology textbooks, because they all cover the subject of Evolution................  (non-fiction)!

Buddha's Birth Earlier than Previously Thought

When was the Buddha born? Until recently opinion dated his death to between 486 and 483 BCE or, according to some, between 411 and 400 BCE, at a symposium on this question held in 1988, the majority of those who presented definite opinions gave dates within 20 years either side of 400 BCE for the Buddha's death.

However, the discovery of a 2,600-year-old simple wooden shrine surrounding the ancient tree in Nepal to which the Buddha's mother clung as she gave birth looks set to revolutionise the understanding of the origins of one of the world's major religions.

Archaeologists digging beneath the sacred Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini have uncovered the first physical evidence to enable them to accurately date the nativity of Prince Siddhartha Gautama whose teachings are now followed by half a billion believers.

The extraordinary find suggests that the very earliest devotees -some 600 years before Christ - were vegetarian and eschewed material wealth in favour of spirituality as laid down by the prince who abandoned his high rank to seek out the path to Enlightenment.

A vast brick temple, which also predates the earliest known Buddhist structures, found at the same place suggests that the emerging religion enjoyed a wealthy benefactor before its adoption by the Emperor Asoka whose empire spread across most of the Indian sub-continent.

Professor Robin Coningham of Durham University, who co-led the international investigation with Kosh Prasad Acharya of the Pashupati Area Development Trust in Nepal, said: "This find completely resets what we are dealing with in terms of early Buddhist practice."

The failure to discover any physical evidence prior to a sandstone pillar laid by Asoka in 249BC marking the birth spot during- his visit, has long sown doubt over the chronology.

Doctor Who - the Buddhist Connection

On Saturday the BBC showed the 50th aniverserary edition of Doctor Who, "The Day of the Doctor". Over the years there have been quite a few Buddhist references in Dr Who, regeneration maybe? .............

At times religion has been addressed directly. For example, 1970s producer Barry Letts, a practicing Buddhist, worked ideas from Buddhism into the show's narrative: witness Jon Pertwee sharing a version of the Mumonkan's sixth Zen Koan with companion Jo Grant in the 1972 episode The Time Monster. In this story, the Doctor tells Jo of a Time Lord 'guru' who influenced him as a boy. The story the Doctor tells Jo, about climbing a hillside and his guru pointing to a flower, is based on a story from Buddhist text the Mumonkan, where the Buddha holds up a flower and Mahakasyapa understands Zen in that moment. Buddhist themes are explored again in the Third Doctor's final serial, Planet of the Spiders.

(Mumonkan - Case 6: Buddha Twirls a Flower

When Buddha was in Grdhrakuta mountain he turned a flower in his fingers and held in before his listeners. Every one was silent. Only Maha-Kashapa smiled at this revelation, although he tried to control the lines of his face.

Buddha said: "I have the eye of the true teaching, the heart of Nirvana, the true aspect of non-form, and the ineffable stride of Dharma. It is not expressed by words, but especially transmitted beyond teaching. This teaching I have given to Maha-Kashapa.'

Mumon's Comment:

Golden-faced Guatama thought he could cheat anyone. He made the good listeners as bad, and sold dog meat under the sign of mutton. And he himself thought it was wonderful. What if all the audience had laughed together? How could he have transmitted the teaching? And again, if Maha-Kashapa had not smiled, how could he have transmitted the teaching? If he says that realization can be transmitted, he is like the city slicker that cheats the country dub, and if he says it cannot be transmitted, why does he approve of Maha-Kashapa?

At the turning of a flower,
The snake (his disguise) shows his tail.
Maha-Kashapa smiles, 
Every monk does not know what to do.)


When Jon Pertwee regenerated into Tom Baker, elements of the episode were set in a Buddhist meditation centre, with a fellow Time Lord clandestinely living as a Buddhist monk in close attendance.

These themes continued in later episodes, for example in Christopher Bailey's Kinda in 1982 and in Snakedance in 1983 where once again the episodes were strongly hinged on Buddhist mythology. Kinda focuses on escaping the Wheel of Time and characters are named after Buddhist concepts such as Anatta (not-self), Anicca (impermanence) and Dukkha (suffering).