Skip to main content

EBT meditation with 7 awakening factors, vs. Mahayana emptiness of joy and merit

 

Re: Did you break a precept? Did you make a mistake? MN 61 can help you!!

Post by frank k » 

Assaji wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 6:46 am...
It's also great to rejoice in whatever skilful actions of yours:

That's one of the main points of the 7 awakening factors #2-4 that aren't obvious from reading the bare sutta translation:
2. dharma investigation
3. viriya - vigorously and repeatedly doing 1 and 2 (sati, and dhamma vicaya) in conjunction with right effort
4. piti and pamojja - the rapture and rejoicing of having purified mind and virtue from repeatedly doing 1-3

And it's also one of the big problems with mahayana Buddhism.
Their teaching on 'emptiness' and 'no merit' (emptiness of merit) encourages people to NOT rejoice in their virtuous activity because it decreases the merit when they attach ego and pride to their virtue. So they consciously try not to remember and think about good they've done. Then when they do zazen, they sit there trying to empty their mind, with no fuel for piti and sukha, then get restless or bored. The 'evolution' of Buddhism.

In EBT on the contrary, reflecting and rejoicing on good one has done is the fuel for piti, pamojja, sukha, vitakka, vicara, samadhi, jhana.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Advice to younger meditators on jhāna, sex, porn, masturbation

Someone asked: Is porn considered harmful sexual.activity? I don't have a sex life because I don't have a partner and I don't wish to engage in casual sex so I use porn to quench the biological urge to orgasm. I can't see that's it's harmful because nobody is being forced into it. The actors are all paid well and claim to enjoy it etc. The only harm I can see is that it's so accessible these days on smart devices and so children may access it but I believe that this is the parents responsibility to not allow unsupervised use of devices etc. Views? Frankk response: In another thread, you asked about pleasant sensations and jhāna.  I'm guessing you're young, so here's some important advice you won't get from suttas   if you're serious about jhāna.  (since monastics are already celibate by rule)   If you want to attain stable and higher jhānas,   celibacy and noble silence to the best of your ability are the feedstock and prerequiste to tha...

SN 48.40 Ven. Thanissaro comments on Ven. Sunyo's analysis

This was Ven. Sunyo's analysis of SN 48.40: https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2024/05/exciting-news-honest-ebt-scholars-like.html And here is Ven. Thanissaro's response to that analysis: I think there’s a better way to tackle the issue of SN 48:40 than by appealing to the oldest layers of commentarial literature. That way is to point out that SN 48:40, as we have it, doesn’t pass the test in DN 16 for determining what’s genuine Dhamma and what’s not. There the standard is, not the authority of the person who’s claiming to report the Buddha’s teachings, but whether the teachings he’s reporting are actually in accordance with the principles of the Dhamma that you know. So the simple fact that those who have passed the Buddha’s teachings down to us say that a particular passage is what the Buddha actually taught is not sufficient grounds for accepting it. In the case of the jhānas—the point at issue here— we have to take as our guide the standard formula for the jhānas, a...

1min. video: Dalai Lama kissing boy and asking him to suck his tongue

To give more context, this is a public event,  * everyone knows cameras are rolling  *  it's a room full of children * the boy's mom is standing off camera a few feet away watching all of this * the boy initiated contact, he had already had a hug with Dalai Lama earlier and then asked Dalai Lama for another hug which triggered this segment  17 min. video showing what happened before that 1 min. clip and after, with some explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT0qey5Ts78 16min talk from Ajahn Acalo with his thoughts on Dalai Lama kissing boy, relevance to Bhikkhu monastic code, sexual predators in religion in general, and how celibate monastics deal with sexual energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2m0TcUib0 The child's comments about the incident in a filmed interview later https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/world-news/2023/04/18/643eba5d46163ffc078b457c.html The child: It's a great experience It was amazing to meet His Holiness and I think it's a great ex...