notes on the Dhamma

Following Ajahn Brahm's walking meditation instructions is like this: So many problems, I'll just address a few of the major ones Ajahn Brahm's walking meditation instructions (from his 2024 book Journey to the Heart of the Lotus) Walking meditation can be beautiful and powerful, but please don’t use walking meditation for contemplation.  Some people do that, and it’s a mistake.  They’re walking backwards and forwards and trying to contemplate the Four Noble Truths, or Dependent Origination, or some other deep Dhamma. There’s a sutta called the ‘Paṁsudhovakasutta’, o r ‘The Panner’ (AN 3.101) , which talks about the obstacles to getting enlightened.  These include thoughts about family, reputation and so on.  It then talks about a lingering obstacle that you have to get through to experience the samādhi, which will bring you to enlightenment.  It’s dhammavitakka or thinking about the Dhamma!  When I first mentioned that, some of the monks argued that this w...

  For the 2nd of 4 categories of right effort, the one for abandoning (pahāna), The first 3 types of thoughts that should be abandoned,  are the 3 opposites of right resolve: thoughts of sensuality, ill will, harming. What about the 4th category, that serves as a catch all? The 3 wrong resolves correspond to the first 2 of 5 hindrances. So this last category represents all 5 hindrances,  as well as any other miscellaneous evil unskillful Dharma not covered by 5 hindrances. Similar to how first line of the first jhāna formula first mentions sensuality,  and then just a category "unskillful dharmas". [2.4 thoughts of evil un-skillful Dharmas] uppannuppanne pāpake akusale dhamme At the very moment a monk notices a thought of evil un-skillful Dharmas arising, nādhivāseti he does not tolerate it. pajahati He abandons it. vinodeti He removes it. byantīkaroti He destroys it. anabhāvaṃ gameti; He annihilates [that thought of evil unskillful Dharma]. [The abandoning of the 4 ...

Internal 31asb🧟‍ related:  a-subha 🧟‍ External related: 🔗 🏦 Bank of Asubha : 31asb asubha practice strategy: set a calendar alert to change your pc desktop background image once a week December 20, 2021 31asb: asubha. There are 31 body parts in EBT Theravada Pali, not 32. July 30, 2019 subha is skin deep: a collection of pictures. (part of safe asubha practice edition) August 05, 2021 What meditation practice(s) are encompassed by 'asubha' (non-beautiful)? January 01, 2020 31asb: where's the brain? 💩🧠 July 31, 2019 STED 31asb: 31 flavors of asubha April 13, 2019 vitakka and vicara in 31asb body parts and simultaneous first jhana February 23, 2020

internal      Goldcraft 9.1 – Nine meditative attainments, 4 jhānas and 5 formless dimensions  External Buddha & Formless Attainments, standard 4 jhāna formula and formless attainments existed way before the Buddha February 03, 2025 What does it mean to have or not have direct meditative experience? January 30, 2025 What is ubhato-bhāga-vimuttā: [an arahant] liberated both ways? February 06, 2024 AN 9.36 has perfect parallel in Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma, dharma-skandha-pāda-śāstra 阿毘達磨法薀足論 May 31, 2024 Ven Sunyo (Ajahn Brahm disciple) uses eel wriggling, red herrings to try to explain why first jhāna is a formless attainment June 19, 2023 translate this line from MN 69 commentary, on definition of a-rūpa October 11, 2020 🔗📝 collection of notes on āneñja (imperturbable) 🔗📝 collection of notes for kāya-sakkhi = 'eyewitness', kāyena phusitvā = 'eyewitness' (lit. touched with the 'body') KN Pe section describing defects of four jhānas and formless attainments...

Dogen asked on suttacentral ( Buddha & Formless Attainments ): I’ve seen several times people questioning the validity of Formless Attainments (ayatanas, arupa jhanas) because Buddha mentions being unable to achieve enlightenment with his teachers’ tutelage. I think a reading consistent with rest of the canon is to understand this matter as the difference between wrong immersion and right immersion. The part in question is found in MN26: 'This teaching doesn’t lead to disillusionment, dispassion, cessation, peace, insight, awakening, and extinguishment. It only leads as far as rebirth in the dimension of nothingness.’ It does not fulfill the requirements of the “noble quest”. ‘nāyaṁ dhammo nibbidāya na virāgāya na nirodhāya na upasamāya na abhiññāya na sambodhāya na nibbānāya saṁvattati, yāvadeva ākiñcaññāyatanūpapattiyā’ti. This is not a critic of Formless Attainments; it’s a critique of Alara Kalama’s dhamma. Suttas make a clear distinction of right and wrong samadhi, ...

Blogger's email subscription support broke a few years ago, I think I finally found an ad free, quality 3rd party solution. The oldest known giant sequoia is 3,266 years old (It was already hundreds of years old when the Buddha was alive!)  Email subscribe My substack is free, just like the Dhamma. I'm not asking for paid subscribers there. Basically using the free services of substack as an email subscriber manager. Links to new free posts from this blog site delivered to your email address: click this link to subscribe: https://lucid24.substack.com/ Technical details My EBT blog, https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/ runs on the free google blogger platform, using feedburner to create the RSS feed. A few years ago, google stopped supporting the blogger email subscription option. So now you have to use a 3rd party like mailchimp, to manage those. Sendfox was recommended, the free version is probably sufficient for my subscriber base. However, sendfox traffic is so high, I ca...

"My brain literally exploded." "My mind was literally blown." I was taught these two definitions for "literal" and "figurative" in grade school, explained nicely here by Miles N. Fowler, Copy editor, coll. newspaper, Pi Delta Epsilon (Journalism) People will get a word into their heads and use it more than they should,  to the point where they are misusing it. I don’t know why, but why have so many people, for so long,  used the word “literally” incorrectly? “A wasp came flying at me, and it was literally as big as a house!” No, it was literally closer to one inch long,  but it might have seemed much bigger at close range.  (Fear causes the mind to exaggerate.) The word “literally” should only be used to describe reality.  It does not mean that something is only found in poetry (literature). It is never “literally raining cats and dogs.”  That would mean that furry creatures were actually falling from the sky.  The correct way of saying that woul...

Intro to article by frankk: The question explored is technical,  so I introduce with a few lines explaining why you should read it: (... cut and paste from my analysis after Sujato's translation and footnote...) And that's why when Sudheera asked that question on suttacentral, Sujato, Brahmali, or any of the other scores of  Bhikkhus on suttacentral didn't answer  (as of the time of this blog article). They don't want to incriminate themselves, and hope the problem just goes away. Or if anyone dares to point out the truth of their corrupt translation and interpretation, those users conveniently get censored, or banned permanently from suttacentral.  Sudheera asked on suttacentral: https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/what-does-it-mean-to-have-or-not-have-direct-meditative-experience/37804 I find in suttas subject two terms.  Just curious what’s the difference? (then they quote Sujato's sutta passage from MN 70 and footnote, which have serious wrong views)  ...

  yesterday, Part 1: SN 35.245: Ajahn Brahm doesn't know the difference between jhāna, samatha, vipassana Part 2: Ajahn Brahm's "stillness" (samatha)  is a brainless warrior working in conjunction with the wise minister (vipassana/insight) assaulted by 5 hindrances Samatha is supposed to work seamlessly with vipassana,  but Ajahn Brahm's samatha is a totally dysfunctional and useless teammate. When vipassana is pointing out the 5 hindrances and asking samatha to remove them, Ajahn Brahm's samatha just does this: And so, in Ajahn Brahm world, jhāna is completely worthless. The 5 demons (hindrances) overtake vipassana, and samatha is just standing by idle in the stillness of a frozen stupor. In the Buddha's genuine EBT samatha, vipassana, jhāna The four jhāna formula contains both samatha and vipassana. The samatha aspect is the nutriment of passaddhi (the pacification awakening factor that precedes samādhi in 7 awakening factors), The vipassana aspect of jh...

  From a thread on suttacentral , someone asked which sutta contains simile of warrior and minister A. Brahm used. Another user located it in SN 35.245, from Brahm's book.  The simile actually comes from commentary to that sutta, not from the sutta itself. I highlight some of Brahm's erroneous analysis below. From Ajahn Brahm’s Mindfulness Bliss and Beyond To emphasize that jhāna is essential for deep insight,  the Buddha taught the simile of the two messengers.  The main elements of the simile are found in the Kiṃsuka Sutta (SN 35.245) and told in detail in the commentary.  Here, I will paraphrase the simile. An emperor was preparing his son in the skills of governing.  To give the young prince direct experience, he appointed him viceroy over a small state just within the borders of the empire.  He granted his son all the powers of a king and sent him off to learn how to rule. Some months later, a delegation of leading citizens from that state came to...