The king and the holy one
Or: How to recognize an enlightened being. Again, this sounds like a Zen story. But it is not. It is from the early days of Buddhist practice when Sri Lanka (in this case) was full of “Living Buddhist Masters”. Enjoy…
Author Archives: theravadin
CST4 – additional dictionary resources
Frank Snow has made his newly developed Chatta Sangayana Tipitaka v.4 very accessible, especially when it comes to the dictionary. Here you can find a zip archive containing Buddhadatta’s Concise Pali-English and English-Pali dictionary in the correct format for the…
Ksana – Pali Canon Search Engine & Reader
Update, March 2026: A modern command-line successor to Ksana is now available — see Tipitaka Search: A Modern CLI Tool for the Pali Canon for a zero-dependency Python tool that searches the entire Tipitaka including commentaries and sub-commentaries. Even if…
no virtue – no meditation?
Why did the Buddha emphasize, over and over again, the necessity to keep the 5 basic precepts PURE in order to progress in meditation? Keep them for a couple of days while meditating and you will know! Nothing helps to…
Vitakka & Vicara – What do they mean?
Vitakka and vicara — applied and sustained thought — are the two mental factors that carry the meditator into the first jhana. A close reading of the Pali Canon reveals their exact meaning and how to use them in anapanasati practice.
Remembering previous lives
Please add to the list of Prof. Ian Stevenson, Dr. Jim Tucker, Dr. Raymond Moody, Francis Story and Thomas Shroder one other name: I found Prof. Erlendur Haraldsson’s website this afternoon. Have a look at these three cases from Lebanon:…
Bahiya’s Bodhi
Do you have a favorite passage in the Suttapitaka?… Difficult question, there are so many gems. But this one is really special, IMHO. It’s a Zen master’s dream come true in the Pali canon: ‘Tasmātiha te, bāhiya, evaṃ sikkhitabbaṃ –…
4 and 8
How do the 4 jhanas and 4 arupa jhanas relate? You could say that the 4 arupa jhanas are a “modification on the topic” of the fourth jhana or a “variation on the same theme.” They bear its characteristics but…
As a Buddhist. Why meditate?
Some people face these questions: My day-to-day life doesn’t allow me to meditate at all. I have the feeling that I do not progress in my meditation. The retreat was fine, but now all the calmness and serenity is fading…
Knowing the Unknown
Found this very nice Chinese film about the story of Bodhidharma: Bodhidharma (11 parts) The legend of Bodhidharma is a wonderful founding story for Zen a la Chan a la Dhyana a la “Jhana Buddhism”. But in the time of…