Encyclopedia

Buddhist encyclopedia

Korean Sunim sitting by open door.

Life in a Korean Monastery, Jisu Sunim

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At the beginning each practitioner is given a hua-tou, a kind of koan. For example: What is this? I-Mo-Ko? What is this? The idea is to concentrate your entire attention and mind on this one particular koan or hua-tou: What is this? What is this? What is this? It is different from vipassana meditation where the intention is to be aware and solely aware of what is going on. When you eat, you just acknowledge how that feels—approaching the spoon, touching the spoon, feeling the coolness of the handle, and so on. In koan meditation, however, your attention is single-pointedly directed to this question—What is this?—right now. Initially, it is very difficult to concentrate because all kinds of thinking comes up . . . comes up . . . comes up . . . like clouds, or smoke from a chimney…

Dartington Buddha

The Development of Loving-kindness

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Just as the radiance of all the stars does not equal a sixteenth part of the moon’s radiance, but the moon’s radiance surpasses them and shines forth, bright and brilliant, even so, whatever grounds there are for making merit productive of a future birth, all these do not equal a sixteenth part of the mind-release of loving-kindness…

Butterfly on Blue Flowers.

Dreams: The Forest of the Night, by John Aske

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‘I suppose very few of us have passed through even a short period of existence without having noticed the different qualities of dreams. There are those that are evanescent; then there are those that possess you and you can’t shake off; and yet others that may be the urge of your life—its guiding star. Nor can the most superficial fail to observe how dreams and life react on one another.’

Sanskrit-Pali_Faulmann_Gesch_T10.jpg

Satipatthana Sutta

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There is this one way for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrows and griefs, for the going down of sufferings and miseries, for winning the right path, for realizing nibbana, that is to say, the four applications of mindfulness. The Buddha

Guanyin Sideview from the V&A London

Right Livelihood, by Diana St Ruth

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So what differentiates a Right Livelihood business from any other? It has to be the dharma element, a basic code of practice within oneself. It isn’t a question of just saying, ‘Oh, we’re a Buddhist publisher so we’re a Right Livelihood business!’