Posts Tagged ‘dhamma’

An outline of the step-by-step path to purification outlined in the Tipitaka and expanded upon in the treatise called the Visuddhimagga, especially as it pertains to meditation practice.

“In sooth to every man that’s born
A hatchet grows within his mouth
Wherewith the fool whene’er he speaks
And speaks amiss, doth cut himself.”
– AN 10

Talk last night went quite well, I think… listen here:

Four Noble Truths at Grenada Hills Center For Spiritual Living
The center is in Grenada Hills (as if I know where that is…) and here’s their website:
http://www.cslgh.com/
Sounds like they might invite me back; I’d be happy to return, it’s a place with very good energy and nice, [...]

And then we turned on the Thai version of Angulimala for my pre-teen protoges, and I realized that it is a perfect example of how forgiveness and redemption takes place for evil doers in Buddhism. Hope you appreciate this little cut-and-paste preview of the 90-min movie (I’ve fixed the horrid subtitles):

More fun with Buddhist Monasticism.
So I really did think a bit about the whole woman ordination thing while in the forests of Thailand… here’s some more thoughts:

It seems pretty clear in my mind that we (men monks) shouldn’t be eager to ordain women; it doesn’t say much of an ascetic that he turns around and [...]

Back at Wat Thai of Los Angeles; good to be back home.
A little sick, so all keep this short… just thought I’d post my yearly offering of holiday carols for the third year in a row.  I’ve given it its own page now:
http://yuttadhammo.sirimangalo.org/articles/buddhist-christmas-carols/
Enjoy, mindfully.

Easily done by the good is good; good by the evil is hard to do. – Vinaya
Evil by the evil is easily done; evil by the noble is hard to do. – Vinaya
Goals slip by for a fool who blindly follows the stars. – Jaataka
Touched by pleasure or by pain, the wise express no highs [...]

I really don’t have enough time to do justice to this topic, and probably should have known better than to stick my nose into it so close to a trip abroad, but hopefully I can just close up here with a few points that I’ve come up with, maybe right, maybe wrong.
First, some points in [...]

http://wanderingdhamma.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/comparing-international-meditation-centers-wat-chom-tong-wat-rampoeng-and-wat-prathat-doi-suthep/
A pretty good, unbiased description of all three Int’l meditation centres in Chiang Mai under Ajaan Tong… having taught at all three, I’d say it’s pretty accurate, though I would question some of the background information like “the technique of Wat Rampoeng is the same as Ajahn Tong had established it before he left. [...]

Insomnia is really one of the easiest things to cure with meditation; the cure is to forget the nonsense that says you must fall asleep. Actually, from a meditation point of view, it would be great if you could stay awake all the time so you could meditate. It is actually quite refreshing [...]