Exploring the interface between Buddhist teachings, meditation techniques, academic Buddhist Studies, and the practical application of them into our lives as lay Buddhists
I don’t often stop to give much thought to the fact that the word Buddha means ‘awakened one’, which obviously gives us the term awakening and the recurrent theme in Buddhist practice of waking up. We can take this to imply that perhaps we are otherwise dreaming. What is it that we are dreaming about though? … Continue reading Dreaming and Waking Up
It may come as a surprise to some people, but despite its reputation for pessimism and nihilism, Buddhism is a practice that requires joy, although it might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about grinding out a tough retreat. In one sutta we even find evidence that the Buddha’s … Continue reading Joy and Practice
The question of fabrications and intention has stayed on my radar since I wrote last week’s blog post, and I thought it might be good to delve into the subject a bit more because I have found it to be very supportive for my meditation practice. Fabrications are not all bad, it turns out. The … Continue reading Making the Breath
I was listening to a talk by a Dhamma friend about intention this week, which opened up to me what a complex issue it could be. The road to hell is paved with good intentions as the saying goes, and as a child I was told that this saying pointed to our inability to understand … Continue reading Intending to Intend
As Westerners we are constantly bombarded with the message that whatever we have isn’t good enough and that we need something more. This was something that came up in the post I wrote last week about some of the more challenging Buddhist teachings being held back from Western students for a range of reasons. This … Continue reading Insufficiency and Self
This week I have been inspired by something Ajahn Amaro said in a talk given at Stanford University [1] about his concerns that Western teachers not giving their students challenging teachings because they are unpopular, or hard to sell. He told an interesting story about the time that Ajahn Chah gave some teaching at the … Continue reading A Kind Stab to the Heart
Last week I was looking at the difficulty of letting go of our habit of taking our thoughts seriously, and this eventually led me to think about whether there was a function in practices like metta, that goes beyond the worthy attitudes that they cultivate. Does metta have a wider role in the development of … Continue reading Better With Metta
Last week I was exploring the possibility that many of us may inadvertently self-therapize in our meditation sessions by not realising that we are focusing on the contents of our thoughts instead of treating thoughts as merely another phenomenon in our sensory experience. This week I continue exploring the theme that this opens up, this … Continue reading The Mind in the Mirror
Do you ever have moments when you wonder if you are actually meditating ‘properly’? It certainly isn't uncommon for people to occasionally speculate about their own technique; after all there is no way for anyone else to give you a second opinion on what is going on inside your own head, being a meditator requires … Continue reading Are You Really Meditating?
Faith can be a surprisingly contentious issue in Buddhist practice, surprising in the amount of resistance that it can generate despite the fact that faith is regarded as one of the qualities and factors that are essential to our progress. But how are we to understand the purpose of faith and open ourselves up to … Continue reading Faith and Doubt
Kalyana Mitta 