Dharma Wheel

I believe somewhere there is a viral video on YouTube where an Australian reporter unsuccessfully tries to tell a joke with this punchline to the Dalai Lama. The joke goes like this: how does the Dalai Lama order a pizza? The answer: 'make me one with everything'. Although the journalist is laughing...

There are a few things to consider in approaching this question. What is the function Of alaya vijnana? What does it do? The term is often translated as “storehouse consciousness” but what is the reason for storing? Or, a better way to ask that is, “how are the contents stored in the vijnana to be ...

The Buddhas do not wash away unwholesome deeds with water, Nor do they remove the sufferings of beings with their hands, Nor do they transplant their own realization into others. It is by teaching the truth of suchness that they liberate (beings). https://images.app.goo.gl/2MFRG3oJWhAW96B88 [/img] h...

actually, I've never heard anyone say that Hitler had good intentions. In fact his whole program --- all his policies and his message --- were based on self-pity, namely that ge had been hard done by and unappreciated his whoke life, as had Germany. Self-pity is a very powerful emotion. It allows yo...

I find the story very interesting because the man in the story is alienated from his own mind, as if he is looking upon himself from a distance. In meditation we seek this sort of lucidity, this sort of distant objectivity, sans car crash though lol (French added for effect). The mind is not collect...

Yes, you have expressed it well. I believe cause and effect are one in Buddhism, like the analogy of the simultaneous seeding and blossoming of the lotus. In relativity, whether events are linear or simultaneous depends on our point if view. There is no correct or incorrect or authoritative point of...

Yes, the self is locked in time and space, without which it would be unable to constitute itself...

I have been reading about a theory in astrophysics to the effect that there is no such thing as time. A solution to the problem of time has been proposed by a British astrophysicist who explains that the easiest way to account for time is that it does not exist at all, except in our minds. What we e...

Sunyata = inevitability of change Dependent Origination: the momentum of impermanence You can't reduce Shunyata and Dependent Origination to mere impermanence. Something else, or some other aspect of reality, is said in both of them. You could try to illustrate dependent origination with a figure o...

Etienne Lamotte thinks that Buddha probably spoke several languages, he has some proof of this. Lamotte further mentions a canonical source where Buddha speaks a dravidian language, i.e. a non-aryan or aboriginal-indian language. T. W. Rhys Davids says in his book Buddhist India , that writing exis...

no one gets my sense of humor hehe i guess it is too dry.

i was referring to my generalization...

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Actually, everyone (including myself) has been quite dismissive about the TED talker who claims that every stimulus imprints itself upon our body, but i suddenly recall one of my favorite TV series, The Mentalist who deceives people into thinking he has psychic powers, thanks exactly to this phenome...

This is the youtube video i alluded to when i spoke of a vipassana cult: https://youtu.be/c5_VUIXbJrU You can skip through a lot of it ---it is quite long--- but quite creepy when he relates how his Swedish friend didn't make it out --- the viewer is left to infer that he was turned into Soylent Gre...

I heard a very pithy explanation of the difference between Mahayana and Theravada: Theravada = what the Buddha wrote. Mahayana = what the Buddha did. Buddha didn't write anything. There is a good explantion of Indian culture at the time of Buddha, and in chapter VII why the sutras were not written ...

Hello, I am a relatively new practitioner and have been doing zazen/shamata and following some Tibetan Buddhist teachings. I know I will most likely remain a lay practitioner, and because of this I will need to make a living. I struggle greatly to find a professional path. I keep getting advised to...

Yes she is correct in the context of the depth of her vipassana which might be based on and initiated by these premises/beliefs: 1. there are external stimuli 2. body and mind are different which entails that 3. either the process of experience starts in body or starts in mind 4. the body being mat...

i understand now, ok.

so the stimulus and body/mind are in fact interconnected --- gotcha.

She comes more from the materialist point of view, consciously or unconsciously she believes in mind-body dualism. She's not wrong in a limited context, but these are pretty surafec-y insights. You can gain much greater somatic awareness for sure through meditation, that is about all she really sai...

... her main takeaway was that she realized that a human being does not react to external stimuli but in fact external stimuli are received by our bodies and we react to the resulting physical stimulation, not to the outside phenomenological world. vipassana allows us to realize this dynamic. She g...

I just heard an interesting Ted Talk on vipassana meditation (https://youtu.be/ixu4Kd5R1DI ) The talk focuses on one aspect of vipassana, and it was this aspect that led her to enter much deeper into Buddhism. At a young age she had gone on a vipassana meditation retreat in Nepal. As is the case wit...