A correspondent recently wrote to me as follows:
"When you talk to me about grief you never say stuff like 'This is all just a figment of your deluded conditioning. Grief isn’t real. Well, it’s only real in relative terms anyway. If you could just
Read more…A view that I encounter repeatedly in Buddhist circles is the notion that in order to be enlightened one needs to have a correct idea of… emptiness, interbeing, oneness, the real nature of Amida, nonduality… you name it.
One is told that when one full
I recently read an article that argued that (a) there is no necessary relationship between meditation and mysticism and that (b) the purpose of meditation is purely the cultivation of positive moral traits. Given in support of this was the observatio
Read more…The attempt to fit Buddhism into the secular, technical, reductionist mindset of modernity often has the effect of turning the matter on its head. Thus, we now find Western schools of practice – I hesitate to call them schools of Buddhism – in which
Read more…Each school of Buddhism has its favoured texts and its favoured practices. Thus, for instance, the Soto Zen Shu favours the Diamond and Heart Sutras, (and was once based on the Lankavatara) and emphasises the practice of zazen, while the Pureland sch
Read more…Here is a list of seventeen major forms of conditioning that shape our lives. Included are the factors that tend to keep us trapped in samsara and also those that make an escape possible.
Root Relation This refers to the presence in or absence from t
Read more…Mindfulness is remembrance of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This is most easily done by saying and hearing the Buddha's name. Hence the practice of reciting the name has become widespread in the Buddhist world. Reciting the name when something happens,
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