You can listen to Ajahn's talk on our Audio Section HERE
and you can watch the debate on our Video Section HERE
Friday, 25 March 2016
How Things Come Together
Last night a couple of us from the West Wight Sangha made our regular trip over to Newport to join the Soto Zen group for their Thursday evening meeting. As usual I took along a recorded Dharma talk for us all to listen to, in this case it was "The Ultimate Question" by Ajahn Brahmali. On previous evenings we had spent some time discussing Stephen Batchelor's latest book "After Buddhism" so it was a joy to find that when I was looking for a photo of Ajahn Brahmali I also came across a videoed debate between Stephen Batchelor and Ajahn Brahmali on the relevance of the early Buddhist texts for the modern world at an event hosted by Melbourne Insight Meditation Group.
You can listen to Ajahn's talk on our Audio Section HERE
and you can watch the debate on our Video Section HERE
"After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age" by Stephen Batchelor is available from Amazon.
You can listen to Ajahn's talk on our Audio Section HERE
and you can watch the debate on our Video Section HERE
Tuesday, 22 March 2016
FULL MOON - Responsibility
By ourselves we do evil
and by ourselves we are made impure.
By ourselves we avoid evil,
and by ourselves we are made pure.
The matter of purity is our own responsibility.
No other can take responsibility for us.
Dhammapada 165
It can be quite a wake-up call when we begin to accept that we alone are really responsible for ourselves; nobody else is. Perhaps we secretly prefer the idea that our family is always going to be there for us, or the welfare state, or some celestial being. Of course, hopefully we do have companions who will befriend and support us as we go through life. But that is different from their being ultimately responsible for us. The Buddha warned against those disabling notions that undermine our trust in the law of kamma. He encouraged us to find what it takes to accept full responsibility for our actions of body, speech and mind and to be careful. One of the rewards of doing so is self-respect.
and by ourselves we are made impure.
By ourselves we avoid evil,
and by ourselves we are made pure.
The matter of purity is our own responsibility.
No other can take responsibility for us.
Dhammapada 165
Monday, 21 March 2016
Some Buddhist Poems for World Poetry Day
Today is World Poetry Day.
One of the main objectives of the Day is to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities.
The observance of World Poetry Day is also meant to encourage a return to the oral tradition of poetry recitals, to promote the teaching of poetry, to restore a dialogue between poetry and the other arts such as theatre, dance, music and painting, and to support small publishers and create an attractive image of poetry in the media, so that the art of poetry will no longer be considered an outdated form of art, but one which enables society as a whole to regain and assert its identity.
One of the main objectives of the Day is to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities.
The observance of World Poetry Day is also meant to encourage a return to the oral tradition of poetry recitals, to promote the teaching of poetry, to restore a dialogue between poetry and the other arts such as theatre, dance, music and painting, and to support small publishers and create an attractive image of poetry in the media, so that the art of poetry will no longer be considered an outdated form of art, but one which enables society as a whole to regain and assert its identity.
TODAY
This day is a special day, it is yours.
Yesterday slipped away, it cannot be filled anymore with meaning.
About tomorrow nothing is known.
But this day, today, is yours, make use of it.
Today you can make someone happy.
Today you can help another.
This day is a special day, it is yours.
Vijaya Samarawickama
Shrine Room
Shrine Room
I have no shrine room
There are no flowers
There is no smell of incense burning in the room
There are no candles flickering gently
No meditation stool
No other bodies positioned round me
There is just me
What do I have?
I have a bed beneath me
I have my breath coming in, flowing out
And some, at least, awareness
I have pain in my body
And the cool detachment of moments of mindfulness
May that be enough
May I be well, may I be happy
May I be free from suffering
May I be at peace
Wendy Stern
(Wendy is a Buddhist and poet living in Bristol, in the west of England. For many years she has been completely bedridden, and her poetry therefore comes from this unusual perspective.)
Butsumon - The Gate of the Buddha
Before the mountain and by grace
of nature
I was allowed to realise "Oh!
I am only a child!"
Tendered by spruce and birds
I saw without my usual defences
and endless thinking I know
anything or everything
coming between me
and creation.
Myochi Roko Sherry Chayat
Wednesday, 9 March 2016
NEW MOON - Like and Dislike
One who has ceasedfrom following like and dislike,
who is cooled,
who is not swayed
by worldly conditions
- I call a great being.
Dhammapada 418
It is not the sense objects that create problems for us, it is our being swayed by them. The Buddha and the great realized beings all lived in the same material world as we do, but remained undisturbed. The beautiful and the not-beautiful were experienced, but without giving rise to suffering. Because they knew the reality of the world, inner and outer, they stayed cool, unintimidated, free. They were free to experience preferences without moving, either for or against.
Monday, 7 March 2016
Which Country is the Most Generous?
So here's an interesting one, which country is the most generous? Well if you're going to just measure the amount of money given it's fairly obvious that the richer, bigger and more populous a country is the more it can potentially give so the good people at the Charities Aid Foundation produced the World Giving Index (WGI) by asking people which of the following three charitable acts they had undertaken in the past month:
Helped a stranger, or someone they didn’t know who needed help?
Donated money to a charity?
Volunteered their time to an organisation?
So who was it? Well the UK came 6th and the USA came second........... but the winner was Myanmar!
Despite political turmoil and its position as a developing country, Myanmar remains at No. 1 (it was joint first with the U.S. last year). It comes top for both donating money (92% gave some cash) and volunteering (half of the population give their time). Indeed, almost as many Myanmarese volunteered as Brazilians, despite being a quarter of the size in terms of population.
This is the first time a country has come first for two out of the three aspects of giving since 2010. Myanmar’s commitment to Theravada Buddhism is most likely to be the driving force behind these high levels – around 89% of Myanmarese follow the religion and give little but often – and there are more monks here than in any other Buddhist country.
Helped a stranger, or someone they didn’t know who needed help?
Donated money to a charity?
Volunteered their time to an organisation?
So who was it? Well the UK came 6th and the USA came second........... but the winner was Myanmar!
Despite political turmoil and its position as a developing country, Myanmar remains at No. 1 (it was joint first with the U.S. last year). It comes top for both donating money (92% gave some cash) and volunteering (half of the population give their time). Indeed, almost as many Myanmarese volunteered as Brazilians, despite being a quarter of the size in terms of population.
This is the first time a country has come first for two out of the three aspects of giving since 2010. Myanmar’s commitment to Theravada Buddhism is most likely to be the driving force behind these high levels – around 89% of Myanmarese follow the religion and give little but often – and there are more monks here than in any other Buddhist country.
Sunday, 28 February 2016
Look Who's NOT Supporting Trump!
Picture taken at an election rally for Ted Cruz who is Donald Trumps main rival for the Republican nomination to stand for the American presidency.
Thursday, 25 February 2016
Buddha by Karen Armstrong
I receive a daily email from Delanceyplace.com which is a brief excerpt or quote that they view as interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context. There is no theme, except that most excerpts will come from a non-fiction work, mainly works of history, are occasionally controversial, and hopefully have a more universal relevance than simply the subject of the book from which they came.
Today's piece is about the Buddha. (We already have the quoted book in our Sangha library and I can Thoroughly recommend it).
Today's selection -- from Buddha by Karen Armstrong. After practicing the asceticism of the holy men of his time and reflecting on a formative 'Nirvana' moment he had years before under a rose-apple tree, Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha rejects pure asceticism for a middle way:
"Since he had left home six years before, Gotama had been fighting his human nature and crushing its every impulse. He had come to distrust any kind of pleasure. But, he now asked himself, why should he be afraid of the type of joy he had experienced on that long-ago afternoon? That pure delight had had nothing to do with greedy craving or sensual desire. Some joyful experiences could actually lead to an abandonment of egotism and to the achievement of an exalted yogic state. ...
Aesthetic Buddha
"He had, of course, already been behaving along these lines by observing the 'five prohibition's' which had forbidden such 'unhelpful' (akusala) activities as violence, lying, stealing, intoxication, and sex. But now, he realized, this was not enough. He must cultivate the positive attitudes that were the opposite of these five restraints. Later, he would say that a person seeking enlightenment must be 'energetic, resolute and persevering' in pursuing those 'helpful,' 'wholesome' or 'skillful' (kusala) states that would promote spiritual health. Ahimsa (harmlessness) could only take one part of the way; instead of simply avoiding violence, an aspirant must behave gently and kindly to everything and everyone; he must cultivate thoughts of loving-kindness to counter any incipient feelings of ill will. It was very important not to tell lies, but it was also crucial to engage in 'right talk' and make sure that whatever you said was worth saying: 'reasoned, accurate, clear and beneficial.' Besides refraining from stealing, a bhikkhu should positively rejoice in taking whatever alms he was given, expressing no personal preference, and should take delight in possessing the bare minimum. The yogins had always maintained that avoiding the five prohibitions would lead to 'infinite happiness,' but by deliberately cultivating these positive states of mind, such exstasis could surely be redoubled. Once this 'skillful' behavior became so habitual that it was second nature, the aspirant, Gotama believed, would 'feel within himself a pure joy,' similar to if not identical with the bliss that he had felt as a boy under the rose-apple tree. ...
"Gotama was developing what he called a 'Middle Way,' which shunned physical and emotional self-indulgence on the one hand, and extreme asceticism (which could be just as destructive) on the other."
Today's piece is about the Buddha. (We already have the quoted book in our Sangha library and I can Thoroughly recommend it).
Today's selection -- from Buddha by Karen Armstrong. After practicing the asceticism of the holy men of his time and reflecting on a formative 'Nirvana' moment he had years before under a rose-apple tree, Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha rejects pure asceticism for a middle way:
"Since he had left home six years before, Gotama had been fighting his human nature and crushing its every impulse. He had come to distrust any kind of pleasure. But, he now asked himself, why should he be afraid of the type of joy he had experienced on that long-ago afternoon? That pure delight had had nothing to do with greedy craving or sensual desire. Some joyful experiences could actually lead to an abandonment of egotism and to the achievement of an exalted yogic state. ...
Aesthetic Buddha
Buddha of the middle way
"He had, of course, already been behaving along these lines by observing the 'five prohibition's' which had forbidden such 'unhelpful' (akusala) activities as violence, lying, stealing, intoxication, and sex. But now, he realized, this was not enough. He must cultivate the positive attitudes that were the opposite of these five restraints. Later, he would say that a person seeking enlightenment must be 'energetic, resolute and persevering' in pursuing those 'helpful,' 'wholesome' or 'skillful' (kusala) states that would promote spiritual health. Ahimsa (harmlessness) could only take one part of the way; instead of simply avoiding violence, an aspirant must behave gently and kindly to everything and everyone; he must cultivate thoughts of loving-kindness to counter any incipient feelings of ill will. It was very important not to tell lies, but it was also crucial to engage in 'right talk' and make sure that whatever you said was worth saying: 'reasoned, accurate, clear and beneficial.' Besides refraining from stealing, a bhikkhu should positively rejoice in taking whatever alms he was given, expressing no personal preference, and should take delight in possessing the bare minimum. The yogins had always maintained that avoiding the five prohibitions would lead to 'infinite happiness,' but by deliberately cultivating these positive states of mind, such exstasis could surely be redoubled. Once this 'skillful' behavior became so habitual that it was second nature, the aspirant, Gotama believed, would 'feel within himself a pure joy,' similar to if not identical with the bliss that he had felt as a boy under the rose-apple tree. ...
"Gotama was developing what he called a 'Middle Way,' which shunned physical and emotional self-indulgence on the one hand, and extreme asceticism (which could be just as destructive) on the other."
Monday, 22 February 2016
FULL MOON - Purification
Gradually, gradually, a moment at a time,
the wise remove their own impurities
as a goldsmith removes the dross.
Dhammapada 239
Purifying gold, until it is completely free from dross, requires tremendous heat, takes a considerable amount of time and calls for great patience. The Buddha praised modesty as a supportive virtue on the spiritual journey, because he knew that when we get caught up in excessive enthusiasm we make mistakes. If we are not willing to patiently endure the discomfort of heat and frustration in our practice, we won't progress very far. Similarly, if we fail to invest adequate time, our other good efforts could be wasted. Purification doesn't proceed according to our preferences.
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