notes on the Dhamma

Ven. Ānandajoti recently updated his free keyboard input method, there are two of them, here: https://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/download/index.htm I'm using the newer, "long press method", it's amazing. So easy to use, there's absolutely no excuse not to type out pāḷi words correctly from now on. Before, using complicated control-alt combinations, it was tedious, easy to make mistakes, then you had to backspace and fix your mistake, etc. In your mind, each time you thought about typing a pāḷi diacritical, you had to consider, do I really want to spend at least 3 times as much energy (3 strokes instead of 1, much more time and brain power to coordinate hands) risk even way more time making mistakes, or just be lazy and hope people don't assume I'm ignorant or incompetent rather than just busy and don't like wasting time correcting typing  diacritical mistakes?  Now, it's virtually impossible to make a mistake, it takes so little effort, literal...

  Along with shake and bake, I would rate this exercise as one of the most important, because it targets the area modern people build up their worst tension hot spots from sitting too much reading, using computers, thinking, etc. There's a really vicious cycle going on with declining eyes and vision as well. Your vision is getting worse, then you hunch your back and crane your neck forward to get closer to the computer monitor. This adds massive tension and knots to your neck, shoulders, upper back.   Also, people aging into the last quarter of their lives, what do you notice prominently? Lots of seriously hunched backs. Even expert yogis,  taiji masters and qigong masters sometimes I see hunched backs, or if not hunched, they may have good superficial posture but when they move around I can see they have really tight upper back tension. It's from a lifetime of tension built in this upper back area without doing the work to dissolve the built up tension there regular...

  frank k  wrote:  ↑ Mon Feb 21, 2022 8:23 am Meormineisnotreal  wrote:  ↑ Mon Feb 21, 2022 5:47 am ... I'd be curious to see how that japanese system came up with their 9 stages, differing quite a bit from Theravada. Ok, I have prepared some notes & explanations from the Chinese & Japanese system on the asubha practice (just a brief summary). The core of all this came from the commentary made by Chinese Buddhist Master Chih-i 智顗 (538-597), founder of Tiantai School, from his comprehensive treatise on meditation "摩訶止觀" (Mo-ho chih-kuan), The Great Calming and Contemplation (止 is the translation for samatha, 觀 for vipassana, and 摩訶, a transliteration for Maha – great). See also:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohe_Zhiguan (The Master's commentary on this is excruciating long, I'll just input from another author who used his framework and who had also summarized it too). It is called "Kusōzu", (9 appearances) but in front of the nine corpse drawing...

new addition to  🔗📝 ☸Dhamma-anu-passana 🐘: collection of notes KN Iti 39 Desanā: Teaching 39 Desanā sutta Teaching Vuttañhetaṁ bhagavatā vuttamarahatāti me sutaṁ: This was said by the Buddha, the Perfected One: that is what I heard. “Tathāgatassa, bhikkhave, arahato sammāsambuddhassa dve dhammadesanā pariyāyena bhavanti. “monks, the Realized One, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha has two approaches to teaching Dhamma. Katamā dve? What two? ‘Pāpaṁ pāpakato passathā’ti— ‘See evil as evil’— ayaṁ paṭhamā dhammadesanā; this is the first approach to teaching Dhamma. ‘pāpaṁ pāpakato disvā tattha nibbindatha virajjatha vimuccathā’ti— ‘Having seen evil as evil, be disenchanted, dispassionate, and freed from it’— ayaṁ dutiyā dhammadesanā. this is the second approach to teaching Dhamma. Tathāgatassa, bhikkhave, arahato sammāsambuddhassa imā dve dhammadesanā pariyāyena bhavantī”ti. The Realized One, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha has these two approaches to teaching...

Also, it would be good for Sujato to follow his own translation guideline of 'principle of least meaning'. Obviously, eyes can see 'material form', and would retain the consistency with the passages where 'rupa' is explicitly defined as 'material form made up of 4 elements.' By translating 'rupa' as 'vision' for the context of eyes seeing objects, Sujato is violating his 'principle of least meaning' and giving an exclusionary context where rupa would NOT include 'material form', only an immaterial 'vision'.  Also, if he is going to violate his own rules, he should justify it with an essay and provide evidence to support it.   Re: Form or Visions Report Quote Post   by  frank k  »  Sat Feb 19, 2022 8:12 am If Sujato ever clarifies what he means by that, please share. As far as I can tell, his reason for translating it that way, is the same reason Vism. ambiguates the term Rupa to justify making the 4 jhanas into a f...

  'Viveka', Sanskrit dictionary Primary meaning is ‘discrimination’. Other meanings:  (1) true knowledge,  (2) discretion,  (3) right judgement,  (4) the faculty of distinguishing and classifying things according to their real properties’. Wikipedia (sanskrit dictionary entry 'viveka') Viveka (Sanskrit: विवेक, romanized: viveka) is a Sanskrit and Pali term translated into English as discernment or discrimination.[1] According to Rao and Paranjpe, viveka can be explained more fully as: Sense of discrimination; wisdom; discrimination between the real and the unreal, between the self and the non-self, between the permanent and the impermanent; discriminative inquiry; right intuitive discrimination; ever present discrimination between the transient and the permanent.[2]: 348  The Vivekachudamani is an eighth-century Sanskrit poem in dialogue form that addresses the development of viveka. Within the Vedanta tradition, there is also a concept of vichara which is one t...

  Re: Encyclopedia of Buddhism, W. G. Weeraratne Report Quote Post   by  pererahasala  »  Wed Feb 16, 2022 6:22 am You can download the Encyclopedia of Buddhism from the following links Volume 1 -  https://www.buddhasasana.net/cloud/Book ... lume-1.pdf Volume 2 -  https://www.buddhasasana.net/cloud/Book ... lume-2.pdf Volume 3 -  https://www.buddhasasana.net/cloud/Book ... lume-3.pdf Volume 4 -  https://www.buddhasasana.net/cloud/Book ... lume-4.pdf Volume 5 -  https://www.buddhasasana.net/cloud/Book ... lume-5.pdf Volume 6 -  https://www.buddhasasana.net/cloud/Book ... lume-6.pdf Volume 7 -  https://www.buddhasasana.net/cloud/Book ... lume-7.pdf Volume 8 -  https://www.buddhasasana.net/cloud/Book ... lume-8.pdf In case you need printed copies you can get from the Buddha Jayanthi Bookshop, Wijeyarama Mawatha, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka.

 New addition to  🔗 🏦 Bank of Asubha : collection of helpful materials From a friend on Dhammawheel Re: looking for pictures of 9 cemetary contemplations Report Quote Post   by  Meormineisnotreal  »  Thu Feb 17, 2022 3:46 am frank k  wrote:  ↑ Fri Dec 24, 2021 8:38 am share links to good samples please. Here you are, friend, enough medicine to keep you happy and carefree for a while. I have converted most videos into Buddhism, that is, by adding sutta reading, embedded with each video, but for the pictures I have not, there are more than 2000 of them, in the Asubha Pictures folder. Wish you best of luck. P.s. It's worthwhile to look at the exhortation folder, I have collected a lot of writings & Dhammatalks on the issue, you are free to share all of these materials to the good Buddhists who are seeking it. Peace. https://asubhapractice.blogspot.com Youtube Playlist:  Download link:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1f2873 ... N0Tcc...

  Re: Skilful Thoughts of Renunciation Report Quote Post   by  Dhammanando  »  Fri Feb 18, 2022 10:31 pm asahi  wrote:  ↑ Fri Feb 18, 2022 7:59 pm That is commentary explanation . In Pali and Sanskrit the a- and an- prefixes have four main semantic functions: negative, privative, invertive and idiomatic. In other words: (1) not-X, (2) free-from-X / without-X, (3) opposite-of-X, and (4) of unpredictable meaning that needs to be contextually determined.. Examples: 1. Negative: channa, covered; acchanna, not covered. 2. Privative: agha, fault; anagha, free of faults. 3. Invertive: aggava, superior, anaggava, inferior. 4. Idiomatic: manussa, human; amanussa, "non-human", but not any kind of non-human; the word is limited to petas, yakkhas, pisācas and suchlike, and so is often translated as "spirit". Now to come to my point, even if there was no commentary telling us that the a- in abyāpāda and avihiṃsā is an invertive a-, and that abyāpāda therefore means...

the real meaning of the cryptic formula in 4sp satipatthana http://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-real-meaning-of-cryptic-formula-in.html AN 7.83, the only definition of 'Dhamma' that really matters, and examples of why 'dhamma' can't be "mental quality" in many places like 'right effort' https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2021/09/an-783-only-definition-of-dhamma-that.html Dhamme-dhamma-anupassi means seeing 'dhamma as dhamma as it actually is', for the same reason kaya-anupassana is 'seeing body as body as it actually is' rather than common LBT misinterpretations https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2021/12/31asb-asubha-practice-strategy-set.html 2022-feb:  KN Iti 39 concise, great description of how to practice Dhamma anu-passana (the 4th frame of sati'paṭṭhāna) Nearly synonymous  http://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2019/05/dhamma-anu-dhamma-practicing-dhamma-in.html

  Re: AN 4.126 Metta Sutta - Comprehensive meditation practice or in some way deficient? Edit Delete Report Quote Post   by  frank k  »  Tue Feb 15, 2022 4:54 am retrofuturist  wrote:  ↑ Fri Feb 11, 2022 5:30 pm ... So with all that said and done, I'm curious about whether the practice of AN 4.126 alone would be sufficient to take one all the way to arahantship (and thus,  outside  the 31 realms of existence) or whether there is some limitation or deficiency in the above set of instructions that "caps" its potential to the Pure Abodes? I find it interesting that the practice promises "rebirth"... and wonder what is missing for the "end of rebirth"? Is the instruction deficient? I'm happy to hear any thoughts on this subject - doctrinal, experiential, or otherwise. Metta, Paul.  When you read it in conjunction with the previous sutta, AN 4.125, and compare with AN 9.36 which uses the same meditation instruction on seeing emptiness in 11 w...