Posts Tagged ‘clinging’
Why We Can't Have Nice Things
We all like nice things, but our pursuit of them has important drawbacks. We’ll look at some of those here, as well as evidence of a transmission fluid leak that I’ve been dealing with for the past year. Oh well.
Read MoreWhat Is Dependent Arising?
By Linda Blanchard I said that dependent arising is both very simple, and very complex, but always helpful, and worth the effort to understand. Let me start with the very simple. It Really Is Simple Dependent arising says that we come into the world with certain drives that cause us to build a view of…
Read MoreMeditating with Muse
As soon as I saw the first ads for Muse, the “brain-sensing headband” that provides users with feedback during meditation, I felt both intrigued and conflicted. After all, you don’t need a $300 electronic gadget to meditate. Would this be just one more mindfulness commodity, another plaything to become attached to? Would it be useful?…
Read MoreThe Importance of How We Translate: The End of Suffering
How readers understand Buddhism depends a great deal on how it is presented to us. This should be obvious. Though Buddhism teaches us to see for ourselves whether what we learn applies to our lives, how we practice, and what we look for when we practice is going to be affected by how…
Read MoreThe Footman's Snicker
Go: get a piece of paper. Write down your four favorite possessions. Write down your four favorite pastimes. Write down the four parts of your body you like the best. Write down the four people you care for most. Write down your four best personality traits. Go ahead. Do it now, then come back. I’ll…
Read MoreA Secular Understanding of Dependent Origination: #9 Clinging
There are these four kinds of clinging: clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rituals and observances, and clinging to a doctrine of self. — MN 9 translated by Bhikkhus Nanamoli and Bodhi The word translated as “clinging” is “upadana” and it actually makes reference to fuel — another form of nutriment, or food…
Read MoreA Secular Understanding of Dependent Arising: Table of Contents
Americans seem to use “dependent origination” as the most common translation of paticca samuppada, but I don’t think we’re talking about “origination” so much as about what is arising, so I prefer “dependent arising”. (For the sake of search engines, I used “dependent origination” in the title of each blogpost, but a rose by any…
Read MoreWeekly Practice (Clinging & Craving)
Over the past few weeks, we focused on exploring how the feeling of me, mine, and I arise from the five aggregates: body, feeling tone, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. Each of these arise as a part of the human condition. In fact, they’ve been necessary to our evolution as a species. Without a feeling of I, you might not bother to feed yourself.
The problems of the aggregates comes from not recognizing them as the processes that go into the making of a perception of self, not recognizing that these are impermanent, and the focus for this week, how we cling to them and crave for more.
Read MoreFour Truths, Four Vows
This is another in my series of discussions of ideas Stephen Batchelor has been presenting in dharma talks since late 2010. You can hear them at dharmaseed.org. One of the attractive ideas to come out of Stephen Batchelor’s recent teaching is a mapping of the Four Noble Truths onto the Four Bodhisattva Vows of the…
Read MorePop Quiz: What Is Dependent Arising?
Dependent Arising (paṭicca samuppāda, also known as Dependent Origination, Interdependent Arising, &c) is of special interest to me. The other day while I was browsing various online forums, I found a monk expressing amazement that anyone could think it was about — well, I’m not going to say what he was amazed by, but suffice…
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