Quoting the Buddha is a popular internet pastime. However, quotes out of context aren’t much help to anyone, so here’s a brief commentary on the Buddha’s supposed charter for non-dogmatic free enquiry, the ‘Kalama Sutta’ (AN 3.65)…
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The Noble Search sutta offers some excellent Dhamma lessons and also mentions a few incidents in the Buddha’s life that are found nowhere else in the Sutta Pitaka.
War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death… The world’s troubles never cease – an uncomfortable truth graphically illustrated by the 24/7 litany of horror stories being broadcast by global media corporations in all formats. The bad news is, there are no magic bullet solutions. The good news is, there are skilful behaviours for maintaining resilience and calmness…
I find the absence of mental disturbance that sometimes happens during meditation to be a pleasant experience. Sometimes I can induce it by visualising the spaciousness of open moorland or the vast interior of a medieval cathedral, for example. A useful insight arising from such deep concentration is the conditionality of the tranquillity…
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Previously I wrote about desire from the viewpoint of personal experience. [1] Here I attempt a more detailed explanation of how and why I train to let go desire…
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The compatibility of Buddhism and science was being argued during the Victorian period. More recently this idea has been popularised by writers like Fritjoff Capra (who wrote a book – The Tao of Physics – on how Western science and Eastern religions were apparently converging), and former monk Stephen Batchelor (who argued the case for a socially engaged, secular western Buddhism free from its cultural and religious accretions in Buddhism Without Beliefs.) In this post I explain why I no longer regard Buddhism and western science as compatible…
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Buddhism is a religion of self-help. The teachings traditionally ascribed to Siddhattha Gotama, the “historical Buddha”, are concerned primarily with ending existential angst and attaining liberation from the endless and painful cycle of death and rebirth. The Buddha claimed to have attained liberation by his own efforts and was able therefore to point the way for others to do the same…
