Surfing on the Wave of Bliss
Imagine you being a surfer. Even if you have never actually surfed, just imagine for a moment standing in the ocean, close to the beach, holding your board in both your hands, looking out at the sea, watching the waves….
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The Yoga Sutra: a handbook on Buddhist meditation?
Take a classic text of Hinduism, the revered Yogasutra (approx. 200 BCE (2)) and compare its semantics and vocabulary to the Buddhist canonical texts. Such a comparison will make it pretty obvious that the author of the Yoga Sutra was…
I stayed asleep while you were here
All over the Pali canon we can find a frequent recurring pattern in the Buddha’s instruction. First the Buddha would describe a problem – very often he would analyse what that particular problem might cause. Eventually he would offer a…
Benford’s Law and the “Self”-Deception in the Cognitive Process
If you happen to be interested in Math, you may know about Benford’s Law and how it was recently “solved”**. The fascinating part of this little story is how close the problem and its solution are related to the idea…
The Essence
‘‘Ayaṃ loko santāpajāto, This world is filled with sorrow[1] Phassa-pareto rogaṃ vadati attato; Overcome by (sense-)“contact”, it calls a disease its “self” [2] Yena yena hi maññati In what ever terms they imagine it Tato taṃ hoti aññathā. Thereby it…
The Two Pilgrims
From the “Arahant stories” collection: Once, it is said, two Brahmins sat together in the north Indian city of Patna in a hall and listened to the praise of the virtues of Nāga the elder, a monk from Kālavallimaṇḍapa*. When they…
A leak in your Dhamma boat
Recently, in our local Dhamma study group, we had a look at Kāma Sutta (it’s the older Buddhist version of the Kāma Sutra and besides being much shorter its content is diametrically opposed to the more famous worldy Hindu version…
Thoughts as silent sounds
Here is how it works: Our mind is an empty wrapper. It can encapsulate any of our five senses and replay them. It is like an echo chamber. That’s why thoughts are in essence sense-less. They can contain (better: reflect)…
(yoniso) manasi karotha
One of the most essential terms used by the Buddha in reference to developing wisdom and pointing out the path to Nibbana is the Pali verb “manasi karoti” especially in the phrase yoniso manasi karoti. It is so essential to…
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…