Pariyatti

The Jewel in Mumbai by Bikram Dandiya "The Global Vipassana Pagoda in Mumbai was built to mark the birth centenary year of Sayagyi U Ba Khin, the Burmese Dhamma teacher of Shri Satya Narayan Goenkaji. The monument is built in the Myanmar style of the Shwedagon pagoda, as a token of gratitude to that country where the essence of the Buddha’s teachings was maintained in its pristine purity, and from where it is now spreading throughout India, and via India to the rest of the world. Our Dhamma teacher Shri S.N. Goenkaji became the vehicle to make this happen. He was also our inspiring guide for every important aspect of this building project. Tremendous volition and effort went into the building of this staggering monument and it is interesting and educative to explore the journey. "Mr. Bikram Dandiya has beautifully chronicled some of these experiences in his booklet, “The Jewel in Mumbai”, the story of the making of the crystal bud atop the Global Vipassana Pagoda. Although his story concentrate

A Journey into Buddhism by Elizabeth J. A. Harris . "The themes of the talks are rooted in my journey, as a Christian, into Buddhism. In the mid-1980s I felt the need to ’let go’ of my own religious conditioning to enter the world of another faith. It grew from a conviction that people with an interest in religion should not remain imprisoned within one framework but should explore others. The choice of Buddhism and Sri Lanka was a natural one for me. Buddhism’s emphasis on meditation and non-violence touched my own interests as a Christian, and a visit to Sri Lanka in 1984 had left me with the feeling that my link with the island was not finished. I originally intended to be in Sri Lanka for one year. One year, however, became seven and a half, from 1986 until 1993. My aim throughout was not only to study Buddhism but to practise it. I did not consider myself involved in ’interfaith dialogue’ although I’m sure some perceived my actions in this way. I wanted to enter Buddhism on its own terms, as a human b

Deconstructing Constructions: The Role of Saṅkhārā in the Buddha’s Discourses by Bhikkhu Bodhi . In this paper I intend to explore the Pāli term saṅkhārā, one of the pivotal concepts in the Buddha’s discourses. The Pāli word has such a rich gamut of meanings that merely to draw them out into the open sheds a flood of light on the Buddha’s understanding of reality. The word occurs in a variety of contexts that are subtly and intricately interwoven. To explore their contextual meanings and track down their interconnections will reveal the rigor of the Buddha’s philosophical vision and the coherence of his teaching in expressing that vision in language and concepts. narrated by Jonathan Nelson 2024 50 minutes 48 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (25MB) Audio copyright, 2024 Pariyatti Investigating the Dhamma as a book and eBook can be found at https://store.pariyatti.org/investigating-the-dhamma. More by Bhikkhu Bodhi. View more books a

Your Best Friend: And Other Essays by M. B. Werapitiya. "To understand ourselves, we must live with ourselves and know all about ourselves. The mind for that matter is flickering, fickle, difficult to guard and control and flutters like a fish taken out of its watery abode and thrown upon the land. Somebody causes you hurt and although the aggressor has disappeared from sight, the hurt grows within you and every so often keeps surfacing with an overpowering intensity to give you a warp. Then again, you see something that has captured your attention and your mind has instantly photographed it from every conceivable angle with a see-through lens, developed it in your mental dark-room, brought out the prints and enlargements with the skill of an expert cameraman and processor rolled into one. Similarly, all the sense faculties and the mind are of high sensitivity and respond to anything and everything exciting. If the degree of excitement is not sufficiently satisfying, you step it up with the use of drugs, in

Part 6 - Expanding Into New Frontiers from 'What Does Mindfulness Really Mean' by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Mindfulness has traveled a long way from its homeland in northeast India. It has journeyed to the island of Sri Lanka, the river basins of southeast Asia, the mountain monasteries of China, Korea, and Japan, and the hermitages of the Himalayan kingdoms. But the last lap of its journey is without parallel. Today Buddhist meditation has been lifted from its traditional setting in Buddhist doctrine and faith and transplanted in a secularized culture bent on pragmatic results. Here it is finding new accommodations in urban meditation centers and even in busy hospitals, pain clinics, and treatment centers. Its teachers and practitioners are more likely to wear street clothing or white coats than ochre robes; they are more likely to hold degrees in medicine and psychology than in Buddhist philosophy and scripture. Meditation is bei

Part 5 - Clear Comprehension from 'What Does Mindfulness Really Mean' by Bhikkhu Bodhi. While I said just before that clear comprehension plays a more prominent role in the contemplation of experiential phenomena, the refrain on right mindfulness shows that clear comprehension has been present to some degree all along. The formula describes clear comprehension as a constant entering each exercise virtually from the start. Whether contemplating the body, feelings, states of mind, or experiential phenomena, the meditator dwells “ardent, clearly comprehending, and mindful.” narrated by Jonathan Nelson 2023 5 minutes 55 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (3MB) Audio copyright, 2023 Pariyatti 'Investigating the Dhamma' as a book and eBook can be found at https://store.pariyatti.org/investigating

Part 4 - What the Suttas Say from 'What Does Mindfulness Really Mean' by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Nevertheless, despite my reservations about the use of “bare attention” as an alternative expression for sati, if we consider how mindfulness is to be practiced in the system laid down in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, we can find considerable support for the idea that the initial task of sati is to “keep to a bare registering of the facts observed” as free as possible from distorting conceptual elaborations. The problem, as I see it, is not with conceptualization itself, but with conceptualization that ascribes erroneous attributes to the objects and the experiential act itself. An experiential event can be viewed as a field distributed between two poles, the objective datum and the subjective act that cognizes it. Ordinarily, on account of the spontaneous functioning of unenlightened consciousness, this polarity is reified into a sharp duality of subject and object. The subjective pole seems to coalesce into a subst

Part 3 - Mindfulness and Bare Attention from 'What Does Mindfulness Really Mean' by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Many commentators who teach and practice in the contemporary vipassana movement have sought to convey the experiential flavor of mindfulness by means of the expression “bare attention.” With certain reservations (which I will discuss), I believe this characterization is acceptable if understood as a procedural directive for cultivating mindfulness in accordance with certain methods. It helps a novice meditator who has newly embarked on this unfamiliar enterprise get a grip on the appropriate way to observe the phenomenal field. The purpose of the expression would then be seen as pragmatic rather than doctrinal, as pedagogical rather than definitive. narrated by Jonathan Nelson 2023 21 minutes 56 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (10.7MB) Audi

Part 2 - The Meaning of Sati from 'What Does Mindfulness Really Mean' by Bhikkhu Bodhi. A problem in hermeneutics, with intimate bearings on the actual practice of meditation, concerns the exact meaning of the word sati both in general and in relation to Buddhist contemplative activity. We take the rendering “mindfulness” so much for granted that we rarely inquire into the precise nuances of the English term, let alone the meaning of the original Pāli word it represents and the adequacy of the former as a rendering for the latter. The word “mindfulness” is itself so vague and elastic that it serves almost as a cipher into which we can read virtually anything we want. Hence we seldom recognize that the word was chosen as a rendering for sati at a particular point in time, after other terms had been tried and found inadequate. narrated by Jonathan Nelson 2023 23 minutes 50 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support

Part 1 - Mindfulness in the Buddhist Path from 'What Does Mindfulness Really Mean' by Bhikkhu Bodhi . The entry of systematic mindfulness practice into the fields of stress reduction and psychotherapy has dramatically altered modern medicine’s perspectives on our capacity to regulate and overcome our human vulnerabilities. Mindfulness made its debut as a therapeutic discipline in 1979, when Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced his program of “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Since then its use to reduce pain and stress has been adopted by hundreds of medical centers, hospitals, and clinics around the world. The application of mindfulness in clinical settings has spread beyond stress reduction to psychotherapy, where it has proven a potent tool for helping patients deal with such conditions as depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. narrated by Jonathan Nelson 2023 12 minutes 20 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support th

Sangha at the Crossroads by Bhikkhu Bodhi "In this article I want to focus on one particular constituency of Buddhists in present day Sri Lanka, the Bhikkhu Sangha, the Order of Monks. I intend to examine, though briefly, the problems it faces and its prospects for the future. This task is especially critical because of the central role the Sangha plays in guiding the destiny of the Sāsana, and it is clear that if the Sangha does not learn to deal with the momentous forces inundating present-day society, the future will see it increasingly relegated to the sidelines...." This is a Pariyatti audiobook of the essay "Sangha at the Crossroads" from the book Facing the Future: Four Essays on the Social Relevance of Buddhism by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Narrated by Shelina Hetherington 2023 38 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Download Audio (19 MB) Audiobook copyright, 2023 Pariyatti View Facing the Future: Four Essays on the Social Relevance of Buddhism by Bhikkhu Bodhi at BPS. View more books and audio resources

The Changing Face of Buddhism by Bhikkhu Bodhi "If Buddhism is failing to penetrate deep into the hearts of those who profess it as their faith, we have to ask ourselves why, and to ask what can be done to reverse present trends. I would like to approach these questions by first asking what role Buddhism is intended to play in our lives in the first place. I will deal with this question by distinguishing two aspects of Buddhism both stemming from the Buddha’s original teaching. I shall call these the liberative and the accommodative strands of the Dhamma...." This is a Pariyatti audiobook of the essay "The Changing Face of Buddhism" from the book Facing the Future: Four Essays on the Social Relevance of Buddhism by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Narrated by Shelina Hetherington 2023 30 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Download Audio (15 MB) Audiobook copyright, 2023 Pariyatti View Facing the Future: Four Essays on the Social Relevance of Buddhism by Bhikkhu Bodhi at BPS. View more books and audio resources availa

A Buddhist Approach to Economic and Social Development by Bhikkhu Bodhi "The notion of economic and social development has today become the rallying call of politicians, business leaders, and policy planners clear across the globe. This notion thus exercises a tremendous influence on the lives of all human beings, both at the personal level and as a determinant of social policy. Although the Buddhist texts prescribe certain principles to guide human beings in their economic and social activities, the notions of economic and social development that dominate current policy formulation have no precise parallels in earlier epochs. Thus to give adequate treatment to our topic it is not enough merely to listen to the canonical texts. Rather, we must draw out the implications of such ideas as economic and social development in their bearings on present-day social policy. Then we must use the profound perspectives offered us by the Dhamma as a tool for evaluating them and judging their worth." This is a Pariyatti

A Buddhist Social Ethic for the New Century by Bhikkhu Bodhi . "In Theravada Buddhist circles during the past few decades a debate has repeatedly erupted over the question whether or not jhāna is necessary to attain the “paths and fruits,” that is, the four graded stages of enlightenment. The debate has been sparked off by the rise to prominence of the various systems of insight meditation that have become popular both in Asia and the West, especially among lay Buddhists. Those who advocate such systems of meditation contend that the paths and fruits can be attained by developing insight (vipassanā) without a foundation of jhāna. If we use the Buddha’s teachings as a lens to examine the corporate economic system and its offshoot, the consumerist culture, we will see that it is ultimately detrimental to the well-being of both its masters and servants alike. Drawing upon the tools of Buddhist analysis, let us briefly sketch the inner dynamics of this system. We see in the first instance that such a social ord

The Jhānas and the Lay Disciple According to the Pāli Suttas by Bhikkhu Bodhi. "In Theravada Buddhist circles during the past few decades a debate has repeatedly erupted over the question whether or not jhāna is necessary to attain the “paths and fruits,” that is, the four graded stages of enlightenment. The debate has been sparked off by the rise to prominence of the various systems of insight meditation that have become popular both in Asia and the West, especially among lay Buddhists. Those who advocate such systems of meditation contend that the paths and fruits can be attained by developing insight (vipassanā) without a foundation of jhāna...." This is a Pariyatti audiobook of the essay "The Jhānas and the Lay Disciple According to the Pāli Canon" from the book Investigating the Dhamma by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Narrated by Jonathan Nelson 2023 1 hours 16 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Download Audio (36 MB) Audiobook copyright, 2023 Pariyatti View I

Story 98 from 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' by Ian McCrorie. There is an old story about a young seeker who asks the abbot of a nearby monastery for guidance on how to become enlightened. The abbot declines his request but sends him to a shoemaker in a nearby village. The abbot assures him that the shoemaker will help him achieve enlightenment. The young seeker went to find the shoemaker, with one caveat from the abbot: “Learn everything you can from the shoemaker, but don't ask him anything spiritual.”... narrated by Ian McCrorie 2023 12 minutes 28 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (6.4MB) Audio copyright, 2023 Pariyatti 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' as a book and eBook can be found at https://store.pariyatti.org/a-lifetime-doing-nothing. More by Ian McCrorie. View more books and aud

Story 97 from 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' by Ian McCrorie. How long will it take to be enlightened? This is such a firstworld question. We want the truth and we want it now, to paraphrase Jim Morrison. There is no answer to that question, because it is the wrong question. And what’s more, enlightenment is not simply an answer, similar to the woman in Saks Fifth Avenue who asked how much the fur coat cost in the window who was told, “Madam, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Nevertheless, let’s respond with the truth rather than attempting an answer to the wrong question.... narrated by Ian McCrorie 2023 4 minutes 41 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (2.7MB) Audio copyright, 2023 Pariyatti 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' as a book and eBook can be found at https://store.pariyat

Story 96 from 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' by Ian McCrorie. My teacher in India eventually attracted so many students that he began to appoint assistants to lead retreats on their own. I began assisting him in 1996 and soon was made a senior assistant teacher. I led ten-day retreats throughout Canada, the United States, England, Myanmar, and India. I especially enjoyed addressing the many issues my students faced, most of whom were dealing with the daily shock of seeing into the skittishness of their minds for the first time. I was on a mission to spread the teachings, I had status and prestige within the community of meditators, and my personal practice was strong. How my life had changed!... narrated by Ian McCrorie 2023 5 minutes 54 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (3.3MB)

Story 95 from 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' by Ian McCrorie. Doing non-doing is a long path and is not always straightforward. To understand what you need to do and why and how is relatively easy, and in this regard I hope this little book has been a help. However, old habit patterns, especially latent tendencies, are pernicious. You may continue to be sidetracked by their beguiling beckoning to react. You may succumb from time to time. You may find the process hopeless. You may get frustrated. These reactions are also old habit patterns. It is as if you are at a masked ball, dancing with many different partners, all of whom keep exchanging their masks with each other. Still, do not give up. Have faith.... narrated by Ian McCrorie 2023 5 minutes 54 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (3.3MB

Story 94 from 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' by Ian McCrorie. With the death of a loved one, a grieving period is important, as is understanding how the mind works and how doing nothing with clear comprehension does not eliminate the grief. Once again, grieving is a natural condition of the mind. It is neither good nor bad. Some may be tempted to put on a happy face to demonstrate the powers of meditation. They can keep up the façade for a while. In time the effort to remain calm peters out. The suppressed grief returns in a myriad of ways later in life, when perhaps you cannot see a direct correlation between what you are presently dealing with and the death of someone close some months or even years before.... narrated by Ian McCrorie 2023 3 minutes 30 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (