Thinking is always about something. It is an attempt to categorise. What we experience is seen in the light of past experience. What we have experienced in the past is filtered through the way we look at things, our dispositions (sankhara). That is why thought will not allow us to see things anew. If we want to experience things as they really are, then thought about those things must come to an end. When thinking stops, we must be right there with what is happening…
The Buddha stressed the urgency for change saying that the human situation is like a man whose house is on fire. What was true for the individual then is becoming increasingly true for our collective existence today…
Short film by documentary film maker Brent Huffman. Buddhist archaeological site of Mes Aynak in eastern Afghanistan in June 2011, artefacts, monasteries and more than 200 statues of Buddha…
Historically, the Japanese have considered women to be the proper interpreters of the teaching of the gods. In fact, the first spiritual and political leader of Japan on record was Himiko (or Pimiko), a queen whose authority was based on her religious or magical powers. She was a Shaman who the Chinese chronicles describe as unmarried with a thousand women attendants and one man, and who spent her time with magic and sorcery. She was a mediator between the people and their gods…
The Unborn, the reality beyond birth and death. One of the great teachings of Buddhism. Buddhist talk given at the 2001 Buddhist Publishing Group Summer School. 62 mins
Patience requires us to go beyond the choice between fleeing or fighting. It is the third and most difficult way.
Affectionate awareness starts being a real central value in our lives.
We can see the original principle of existence in the life of a tree, a pebble, snow, the seasons and other forms in nature.
Rather than trying to seek for Buddha or truth (dhamma) in terms of some idea or some doctrinal dogma that we might form around the concepts of Buddha and dhamma, the Buddha pointed to suffering and its cause. By recognising its cause as attachment to desire, we let go. When we let go of the cause, then we realise the cessation of suffering. The Buddha was actually teaching the way of nonsuffering. The Eightfold Path is really the experience of nonsuffering, in the present, in the here-and-now…
Buddhism now 