Practice Circle: Right Intention, Right Speech

Others may use these five modes of speech when speaking to you — speech that is timely or untimely, true or false, gentle or harsh, with a good or a harmful motive, and with a loving heart or hostility. In this way, monks, you should train yourselves: ‘Neither shall our minds be affected by this,…

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Directing Wholesome Intentions (Right Intention)

In Part 1 of the Eightfold path, I wrote about Seeing into Experience: Right View. In this article, Part 2, we’ll explore the next factor of the path, Directing Wholesome Intentions: Right Intention. Like Right View, Right Intentions isn’t something to explore and learn in isolation, but it touches on all other aspects of the path and everyday life.

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New Year Resolutions Buddhist Style

Much of Buddhist practice focuses on mindfulness in the here and now, but as 2012 approaches many of us look at the year ahead. Mr. Gotama said not to fixate on the past or future, and we all know from experience how that can get you lost in a mental ball of string. But intention…

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The Ethics of Impermanence

At the end of his very useful and somewhat demanding book,  The Bodhisattva’s Brain, philosopher Owen Flanagan poses a dilemma: . . . I still do not see, despite trying to see for many years, why understanding the impermanence of everything including myself makes a life of maximal compassion more rational than a life of…

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Four 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…

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A Mala Prayer

*~*~* The first time I am aware that I met another Buddhist, I met several.  There was the man who would become my teacher, Dennis, who was quietly organizing a visit from some Tibetan lamas and the monks accompanying them. There may have been more Buddhists among those of us who had arrived to hear…

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The Path – Reworded for Modern Practitioners

I was never comfortable with the wording in the Eightfold Path. The word Right xx always felt like it implied following of dogma rather than an action packed plan. Because Buddhism relies so heavily on practice and observation, I felt each part of the path was better reworded for me with verbs, and action statements.…

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