Gautama Buddha: Man or God?

By Stephen Schettini | November 12, 2011

Vishvapani Blomfield’s Gautama Buddha: The Life and Teachings of the Awakened One is one of a new breed of Buddha biographies. For centuries there was really only one. Ashvaghosha’s epic poem Buddhacarita (Acts of the Buddha), written some three hundred years after the Buddha’s death, paints the Buddha myth familiar to generations of Buddhists. A…

Buddhism Before the Theravada (Audio, John Peacock) & Comments

By Dana Nourie | November 5, 2011

I’ve listened to the first audio recording of a series of six talks called Buddhism Before the Theravada, speaker John Peacock, held at the Insight Meditation Center. This talk is fascinating! John Peacock gives a really great history of the times Gotama lived in, and additionally he relates the importance of that history as context…

The Four Truths (Stephen Batchelor)

By Dana Nourie | October 21, 2011

This is the fourth of a series of seven talks from the Study Retreat that interweaves reflections on Siddhattha Gotama’s life, with critical interpretations of his teachings as recorded in the Pali Canon. In this fourth (and also in the third) talk we examine the content of his first sermon.

Letting Go of the Raft

By Linda Blanchard | September 3, 2011

*~*~* “I shall show you how the Dhamma is similar to a raft, being for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping…” *~*~* [MN 22.13 All translations of the sutta in this post are by Bhikkhu Bodhi] *~*~* The Buddha’s simile of the raft gets a lot of use lately…

Basic Teachings of the Buddha

By Dana Nourie | July 22, 2011

I’ve just finished reading Basic Teachings of the Buddha by Glenn Wallis for the second time, and I must say I really like this book. In fact, I wish I had had it years ago when I first started my exploration into Buddhism. I will be referring to this book in years to come. So…

What is Dukkha?

By Mark Knickelbine | June 21, 2011

This is the first of a series of posts in which I hope to explore ideas Stephen Batchelor discussed in a series of dharma talks in Fall 2010. You can hear them at dharmaseed.org. What is the First Noble Truth? If you’re deep enough in the Buddhist weeds to be reading this, you will probably…