notes on the Dhamma

(1) Two minute video, 'Fluffy' the hero cat saves old man's life Summary of above video and details of how V&V, S&S, dhamma vicaya were evident. cat's name is 'fluffy.'  whenever the old man's cell phone rang, he'd talk to his cat and say, "ring a ding, fluffy." So the cat knew that phrase of speech/vaca was a ringing cell phone. old man fell in shower and couldn't move for 16 hours. He knew he'd be dead if  he couldn't call for help. So in last ditch effort, he calls out to his cat, "ring a ding, fluffy." 5 minutes later, the cat had pushed the phone off the counter and moved it to where the old man could reach the phone and call for help, saving his life. Obviously the cat had sati, remembering that the vocalized speech vaca "ring a ding, fluffy" was associated with ringing cell phone. The cat had sampajano and dhammavicaya, lucidly discerning how that memory could be used to help the old man, and under...

subscribe now, or miss out on all the fun. Announcing 🎙️audtip🔊‍ 2021 spring season podcasts - at least 10 minutes of new content generated every week. Anyone know how to get blogger to show text within posts containing html links in a more obvious style? Right now by default hyperlinks tend to be invisible. You have to hover a mouse cursor over thee link to change color. Must be totally invisible for mobile users. Just another sad case of form over function (aesthetic pretty appearance of not having underlined hyperlinks). 

Friend asked about my sleeping setup, correctly guessing that I have some optimal minimalist arrangement. In east asia, where it was super hot,  I did experiment for some time with just sleeping on basically a slightly elevated bedframe with no mattress, just sleeping on the flat wooden surface.  It's not as uncomfortable as it might sound, except for part of the lower back spinal vertebrae that would bruise and hurt.  I sleep lying on my back for about 4 hours, from 10pm through 2am (AN 3.16). I had experimented with lion posture on side, but it tended to cut off circulation to my right arm, right hand, right finger would get hang nail from decreased circulation, and also a pain developed on part of my muscle that took years to go away. So I keep the lion posture for naps, but the main 4 hour sleep I lie on my back. To deal with the lower back spinal pressure point, I started using a thin foam tile about 1ft x 1ft square x a few cm thick. Then I was fine. The neck would ...

A new entry added to our wiki archive of rebirth stories: https://archive.org/details/stories-of-rebirth   (friend send me this lightly edited email) This is a youtube video where a son films the dying hours of his father. He sings 'amazing grace' to help guide him to a better place. You can see the spirit leave, in the form of a small ball of light near the belly at 4:33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thSSg1sQHUw It looks like he might have gone to the ghost realm based on where the orb was coming out (near abdomen). (one hour later rewatching the video): Looking at it again, it seems like the orb came out in front of the bed and not the abdomen.   The first orb is on the top right at 1:43. 4:33 orb seems to came out of the lower back or buttuck.   5:11 orb went left quickly from lower center left 5:29 orb went up quickly on right I once heard a monk say that there are so many Americans going to the ghost realm as people don't know how to dedicate merits to t...

  Isn't "re-becoming" a better word to use than 'rebirth'? https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/44052/is-it-right-to-use-the-term-rebirth-in-the-buddhist-context (user on forum asks:) Is it right to use the term rebirth in the Buddhist context? As I delve into the Buddhist literature deeper and deeper, particularly the Theravāda sutta literature, I am getting convinced more and more that when we use the term ‘rebirth’, and more so, the grosser English equivalents like ‘metempsychosis’ and ‘re-incarnation’, to signify what the Buddha talked about when he referred to the apparent continuity of the ‘life process’ after death, we are getting it all wrong. I have till now also been unable to find the equivalent of the Vedic term ‘Punarjanma’, which is used so very profusely in the Brāhmanic literature like the Upaniṣads and the...

  I highlight the particularly interesting/gruesome parts in yellow. NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/ravi-zacharias-sexual-abuse.html excerpts: The influential evangelist Ravi Zacharias, who died last spring, engaged in “sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse, and rape,” according to a report released on Thursday by the global evangelical organization he founded. ... When Mr. Zacharias died of cancer in May at age 74, he was one of the most revered evangelists in the United States. Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at his memorial service in Atlanta, calling him “a man of faith who could rightly handle the word of truth like few others in our time” and comparing him to Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis. ... Though the report adds shocking new details, accounts of Mr. Zacharias’s sexual misconduct had arisen in recent years. In 2017, he settled a lawsuit with a Canadian couple whom he had accused of attempting to extort him over intimate text messages he had excha...

  Vangīsa Thera :  Arahant famous for skill in spontaneous verse and poetry. February 14th is Saint Vangisa Day to fortify yourself against the toxic energy surrounding St. Valentine’s day excerpt from https://worldstrides.com/blog/2017/02/6-valentines-day-traditions-around-the-world/ 6 Valentine's Day Traditions Around the World Across the United States and around the world, February 14 marks a day of celebration of St. Valentine. The legend of St. Valentine is shrouded in mystery. The Catholic Church recognizes at least three saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend says Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided single men made better soldiers than those with families, he outlawed marriage. Valentine continued to perform marriages in secret, causing Claudius to order he be put to death. Other stories suggest Valentine was killed for attempting to help Christians escape Roman prisons...

I've started an archive here: 🔗 archive.org collection of published rebirth stores https://archive.org/details/stories-of-rebirth To submit a story of rebirth to add to the archive page above,  post a link to the story on one of the forums listed at the bottom of this article, and tag frank's username on that forum, or contact frank through a private message in   contact info . The first contribution gives a good example of the kind of stories we're looking for, very rich in interesting details, can be corroborated by many witnesses, not likely to be random or a coincidence:  PHRA BUA AND NOVICE LEE-AM    short summary: 16 yr old novice monk remembers immediate past life as a monk where he died of fatal illness along with 3 other monks. After death, he witnessed large group of people called away to go to bad rebirths, and saw one lady with good karma ascend a water vehicle and rise to a heavenly realm. He was given the option to go to heavenly realm, or ba...

  One of the benefits of brahmacariya is a strong immune system. This 116-year-old French nun, has survived two world wars, spanish flu pandemic, and covid 19. She was symptomless on covid 19, didn't even know she had it, sign of a strong immune system. On the other end of the spectrum, many young people in their twenties have died of covid 19. She ordained around age 40 after world war 2. Living the holy life for almost 80 years. This reminds me of the bakkula sutta: ● MN 124 - 🔗🔊 6m, Bakkula [Bākula] : name of monk: ordained for 80 years, never once had a perception of lust or ill will.   What Bakkula did in the sutta, sounds pretty far fetched, ordaining at age 80, and then living another 80 years. But as the nun shows, ordaining at age 40 and living another 80 years in good health is pretty feasible, especially considering Bakkula was a doctor and health conscious.  I suspect Bakkula was probably something like 60 yrs old, and ordained for 60 years, or some...

  Re: What does this terms form satipatthana means? Edit Delete Report Quote Post   by  frank k  »  Tue Feb 09, 2021 8:54 am David ceballos  wrote:  ↑ Tue Feb 09, 2021 7:38 am I’ve been reading the satipatthana sutta and I can’t understand this terms from cittānupassana part: A) expansive mind B)unexpansive mind ... MN 127 (search for "mahagg") https://lucid24.org/mn/mn127/index.html#flink-4 explains that it's gradually expanding the area of your awareness from a small spatial area within your internal body, and gradually increasing the radius to the size of a tree, town, country, universe, etc. Other suttas in the MN 120's also explain it that way, I think in sunnata sutta. As for an-uttara (unexcelled), that's referring to an arahant mind, uttara (excelled) refers to a mind that is excellent but still has more excellence to accomplish before it's reach the perfection of anu-uttara. Can't think of a sutta reference offhand. Anyone?

If you search around for images of the Buddha, you find things like this: Super big ears, long luxurious hair with a brahmin top knot far beyond his own vinaya rules which limit hair length to about one inch in length. Even when he's practicing the austerity of starving himself to death, he makes sure to keep his long luxurious hair for what reason? Who knows? He can abandon and  risk  body and life in search of enlightenment, but can't seem to relinquish his long hair.     or you have images like this, where he has pine cone tumor shooting out of the top of his head. According to Vism. followers, who believe Jataka tales are literally true: (They believe the Buddha never has to cut his hair. It's two inches long, curly, and stays permanently at that length) https://americanmonk.org/the-real-buddha-statues/ excerpt: In contrast, the correct Buddha images should have the following qualities: The hair will look like small snail-like curls There will be a literal b...