The Buddha is often called Shakyamuni, which means: the sage of the Shakyas. Shakyas were a tribal people, who had a small oligarchic republic in what is now Nepal and Northern India. Siddhartha Gautama was the son of, what we in our days, I suppose,
Read more…Pratyaya = Ways of conditioning the mind.
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We’ve been talking recently about how the mind is conditioned and we have established: The mind is conditioned by its object. But this is not the only way the mind is conditioned. The mind is also conditio
Read more…Today is the 4th of July. In America, this is celebrated as Independence Day; and in Britain, today, this is the day that the government has chosen for a lifting of lockdown. Probably not a co-incidence, these two items, since the British prime minis
Read more…In Mahayana Buddhism we have the principle of the Trikaya Nature of Buddha. Tri-kaya means literally: three bodies; or you could say: three manifestations of Buddha.
I’d like to try to explain in this teaching a little because it is very central to t
Read more…In the last couple of podcasts, I’ve presented different ways of using the pratyaya that the mind is conditioned by its object; and I have presented this from a psychological perspective. So, I’d like to say a little bit now about this same set of pr
Read more…Here is where you find Dharmavidya's podcasts on the skandhas:
I heard a story on the BBC about how K-Pop fans are emerging as a socio-political force. If you have a large number of people who co-ordinate their efforts, you can thereby influence what trends on social media; and this in turn influences what is in
Read more…Here is the latest podcast, following the occasional podcasts on the skandhas.
This one concerns samskara, the fourth skandha.
Other terms mentioned:
- aniccā = impermanence
- dukkha = affliction
- anatma = non-self
- avidya = not-seeing, ignoran
I’ve been listening to the news from America and I watched a man being interviewed and he was talking about the scene which, I am sure, many of you have seen a film-clip of, where a black man is lying on the ground with his hands handcuffed behind hi
Read more…Mary is with her boyfriend Tom. They’re at a restaurant. Mary is telling Tom about some curtains that she has seen in a shop that she wants to buy. Tom is trying to listen to Mary but he finds that his mind keeps wandering to the next-door table. At
Read more…In the last couple of podcasts, I’ve been talking about the pratyaya of object relation: the principle that the mind is conditioned by its object; and one of the sub-principles that came out of this was, that if you change the object, you change the
Read more…I’d like to say some more about the pratyaya that the mind is conditioned by its object and I’d like to say something about how this relates to spiritual practice, therapy, and spiritual cultivation.
Mind is conditioned by its object – so it is impor
Read more…The mind is conditioned by its object. This is one of the fundamental principles of Buddhist psychology. The mind is conditioned in many ways. These ways of conditioning the mind are called pratyaya.
So, there are many pratyayas and one of the most i
Read more…There is some really important common ground between spiritual practice and art. In fact, one could possibly say that spiritual practice is the ultimate art. Just as we have music and painting and poetry and various forms of art, each of which has a
Read more…Here is a poem in the Tanka style by one of my favourite Japanese poets: Saigyo.
A single pine tree
grows in the hollow –
and I thought
I was the only one
without a friend.
The name Saigyo means “westward journey” and in the symbolism of Buddhism we
Read more…There is an old story, you may have heard it, called
The Story Of The Perfect Heart
Once upon a time, in a certain place, there was a competition for the perfect heart. Various people entered the competition. Each one opened his body and showed his h
Read more…In the early 1980s I left my work in Government Social Services and set up a small counselling centre. There, Jenny Biancardi and I saw clients and ran courses. We also travelled all over the country giving trainings to nurses and social workers. We
Read more…My parents took me to Cyrus when I was three years old; so, I spent most of my very early formative years on the island. I remember it as a rather idyllic period, despite the fact that towards the end of that time there were many political troubles d
Read more…In August there will be an on-line ceremony for admittance to the Amida Shu and Order. This will also be a time when anybody who has not taken refuge but wishes to can do so and also when anyone who has taken refuge in the past and wishes to reaffir
Read more…A correspondent has written to me about the sudden death of a close friend. In this time of the virus we are all, in a certain way, surrounded by death. And sometimes those close to us die, but in a time like this it often isn’t practical to go to th
Read more…