Dec 25, 2022
In Part 1 I defined what I mean by “worldly pleasure,” and then discussed five drawbacks of such pleasure as described in Buddhist teachings, and in our own experience. In this episode I talk about how - if we can engage worldly things with the mind that sees impermanence - we are not only inoculated against the...
Dec 25, 2022
Traditionally, the ideal of Buddhism is the renunciate monastic who forgoes worldly pleasures because they are fleeting and distract us from practice. How should a serious practitioner relate to worldly pleasures if they’re not living a renunciate lifestyle? Is it possible to fully enjoy the pleasures in our lives...
Dec 16, 2022
Why aren't we just all born enlightened and avoid suffering? Or, we could ask: Why are human beings the way they are? Why did they evolve to cause so much suffering for themselves and others? If we all have Buddha-Nature, why isn’t that manifest from the beginning, and why does it get obscured so completely? Why is...
Dec 1, 2022
On the meditation seat and off, we may experience significant insights - realizations that shift our perceptions of ourselves and world, and help relieve suffering. Insights may be sudden or gradual, major or minor, but we naturally want to be able to hold on them instead of forgetting them and going back to our...
Nov 23, 2022
I explore how - for some of us - explaining, dismissing, or justifying the story of the Buddha’s resistance to ordaining women (told in the Gotami Sutta) does not completely neutralize the discouraging effect of this story’s presence in the Buddhist canon. I then discuss how we can relate to this story without...