A Dhamma rain shower – Mahamevnawa
2300 years ago emperor Ashoka‘s son, a Buddhist monk by the name of Mahinda, was sent to Sri Lanka to propagate the Buddha’s message to the people of Sri Lanka. He met the king, who happened to be on a…
Category: vipassana
To Nirvana in 5 sentences
One evening about two weeks ago I picked up the Samyutta Nikaya and stumbled over a short sutta which mesmerized me for the next two weeks. It is one of those short yet deep suttas which makes the Samyutta Nikaya…
A thera’s ancient remarks on vipassanā
In addition to an earlier post on Ven. Malunkyaputta‘s most interesting analysis of vipassanā meditation (right in front of the Buddha) which clarified what “bare awareness” actually boils down to in terms of meditation practice there is another beautiful personal…
Anussati – Sinking away from the wet in a stream of life
Practical ideas on anussati, sati and apilapanā. Today I would like to invite you to a short experiment. It is going to be very simple. Here is the experiment: Think of a random number, for instance “1325”. Now close your…
The Heretic Sage
Many of you already know about my deep gratitude towards Ven. Ñāṇananda who I consider to be one of the greatest living Dhamma and Meditation masters. If anything you ever read on this blog might have helped you, all that…
Three Levels Of Observation
Comparing Buddhist techniques of observing (vipassana) we can distinguish three approaches: The first one defines itself as merely “observing what is” in a supposedly neutral fashion. Various traditions define this to be simple a “looking at what is happening” without…
Understanding Vipassanā
Is the practice of vipassanā the application of viriya (energy), sati (mindfulness), samadhi (concentration) but only when it generates wisdom (paññā), more specifically ñāṇadassana (knowing and seeing)? Introduction The Sutta-Pitaka has a couple of texts which are not the word…
Seeing the Seeing of the Disappearing disappear
One may wonder why and how the modern vipassana movement was revived a little bit more than a century ago in Burma. When we look back at the history of Theravada countries in the 19th century, many of these countries…
No opinion
The Pali language has a very interesting verb called “maññati”. Or rather the way the Buddha uses this verb is very intriguing. It is related to our English “to mean” or German “meinen”. It can be translated in a variety…
In search of the (original?) Oxen!
…sounds like Zen, might be Zen, but is no Zen? Hidden within in the scholastic bodies of ancient Theravadin commentarial literature dwell gems of wisdom taught by ancient Masters of Buddhist meditation. One such beautiful little gem, an allegory, really needs some…