Listen to the Suttas! – Audio Recordings of English Translations of the Pali Canon Suttas

Listen to the Suttas! Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtTMiZHe8419vKGsORMb1ow/videos   Example Video: The Sammaditthi Sutta (The Discourse on Right View, MN 9)   For those who have difficulty with written text (or Pali), there are few quality, widely-available audio recordings of English language translations of the Pali Canon Suttas. Our own Community Director, Jennifer Hawkins, who developed…

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Practice Circle: Cultivating Compassion

This is to be done by one skilled in aims Who wants to break through To the state of peace: . . . As a mother would risk her life To protect her child, her only child, Even so should one cultivate a limitless heart With regard to all beings. Khuddakapatha 9, trns Thanissaro Bhikkhu…

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What 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…

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Yes, Dependent Origination Can Be Saved

This post is going to get personal. It can’t be helped. I’ve looked for some other way to write it, but there isn’t one in which I can be straightforward and tell the truth. I’m not going to attack anyone. I might — oh, okay, I will — argue against methods and conclusions, though. But…

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Pali Intensive Course Offered Online

There are some exciting things happening in the world of Buddhist studies. There is one in particular I’m familiar with that I thought you might like to know about, because – especially at this moment in time – you don’t need to be either a monastic or a student at a university, or a big…

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Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation: A Review

Having experienced for myself the difficulty of understanding Gotama’s teachings on both compassion and emptiness based on a reading of the Nikaya texts, I was excited to see Anālayo’s new book, Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation. The book comes out in print in October 2015, but is available now in a Kindle edition.…

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The Snake: Translating Ancient Verses

Note: This post is shorter than it looks. Skip the large section of Notes if you wish. The challenge posed by an ancient verse like “The Snake” is that, even for its original audience, a great deal is left unsaid. Even if you lived in a time when you and everyone around you knew that…

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Two Sides to the Lion's Roar

In his books on the ‘scientific Buddha’, Buddhist Studies professor Donald Lopez picks apart the notion that the Buddha was particularly friendly to modern notions of science. One central portion of his argument involves a citation from the Majjhima Nikāya version of the Mahāsīhanāda Sutta (MN 12). This is the famous “Greater Discourse on the Lion’s Roar”.…

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At Naḷakapāna: Did the Buddha "Scheme to Deceive"?

A couple of weeks ago I attended a lecture by jhana-expert Leigh Brasington where he brought up the Naḷakapāna Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya 68; the linked translation is from Bhikkhuni Upalavanna, I use Ñaṇamoli/Bodhi). Brasington cited it as an example of where the Buddha may have opened the kimono a bit on some of his claimed supernormal…

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