Acharya Sujatin (temple host)

Dharmavidya:

THE GOAL

Most people have little or no idea about the goal of Buddhism. When I realised this, I published the book “Not Everything is Impermanent”. Most people said, “But I thought that Buddhism taught that everything is impermanent.” Only those who really knew Buddhism said, “Yes, of course, nirvana is not impermane…[Read more]

Dharmavidya, on his Eleusis network:

Dragons also take refuge in Amida Buddha. The dragons are proud of their role as defenders of the Dharma. They roar around on their motorbikes and scare off ghosts, demons and anyone who seems to represent a threat. However, all these threats only exist in the relative world of conditions. Amida is the Buddha…[Read more]

SHARING: SOME INITIAL POINTS

Recently I was involved in a discussion about “oneness”. Clearly, to some people in the Buddhist world, oneness is a big number. However, it is not always that clear what people mean by this idea and it may be that different people take it to have different implications. Nonetheless, this particular discussion hel…[Read more]

Dharmavidya writes:

This morning my homily to the dragons was on kindness. After all, dragons must learn kindness too and they have their special contribution. The Dharma is not just about kind folk remaining kind nor just nice people being nice. Buddha nature will always be so in any case. Nor is it about beings changing their nature, really. It…[Read more]

Much of what I have learnt as Buddhism over the years appears to be topsy-turvy. Although there is a well established idea of what Buddhism is, this is deceptive. There is a hidden meaning within Buddhism that most do not see. The hidden meaning is more obvious than the commonly accepted one, but as people are blind, they do not see what is…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

EMPTINESS

Buddhism talks a good deal about shunyata, emptiness. What is this emptiness? The earliest Buddhist texts provide a psychology of what we could call the point mind – a mind without content. Our modern (and later Buddhist) psychologies speak a lot about the content of the mind and much therapy and education is devoted to…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

I could have called this ZT Skills, but I don’t like the idea of reducing therapy to a set of skills, as though you could build it up like a set of lego bricks. Rather it is an art. To play music you might need certain abilities with a keyboard or set of strings, but good music is not primarily technical in that way. It requires a f…[Read more]

Buddhist Psychology has what we in the West might call behavioural, cognitive, humanistic and analytical aspects all together in a single system. In other words, it deals with all aspects of the process of internalising experience and turning it into future action. This is called the skandha cycle about which I have written elsewhere.

This makes…[Read more]

In Buddhist psychology, the aim is somewhat different from most Western psychology. The latter aims to make the person self-assertive, self-sufficient, self-esteeming, and even self-entitled. This is expressed in such phrases such as “You deserve it,” “You’re worth it,” and “Be in control of your life,” This is not the Buddhist way. Buddhist psyc…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

Buddha came from a “yellow” race, Jesus and Mahommet from a “brown” one. Nobody who claims to follow in the footsteps of these great teachers should be making decisions based on a hierarchy of skin colour. They didn’t. They gave teachings that were universal and gave openly to all.

That there are powerful countries in the world tha…[Read more]

Dharmavidya writes:

BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY

On the one hand, Buddhism is a broad church or umbrella under which many diverse ideas and methods can cluster. Currently there are many popular methods that have some Buddhist connection. Thus we have mindfulness, qi gong, and reiki, and there are a range of derivatives such as mindfulness-based stress…[Read more]

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT MEDITATION
We should ask ourselves, what is meditation, really? Meditation is surely not sitting still and silent while one’s mind wanders all over, even if, from time to time, one achieves some self-consciousness of what is happening. Indeed, one must question whether any kind of self-conscious can really be a Buddhist g…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

I am often asked how one can select a good teacher. How is one to know if somebody is genuine or not? This seems to be a big worry for some people. They are wary of being tricked. For Western people to give up even a smidgen of their independence is such a big thing they may want cast iron guarantees in advance. Unfortunately there…[Read more]