By Paul and Susan Fleischman | 3/20/2022
As a spring-fed pond wells up with water from its cool depths,
and also receives rain from above
sent by the rain-god from time to time,
so that the rain from above and the spring water from below
mingle,
this pond will become washed through and radiant with fresh
water.
By Manish Chopra | 3/20/2022
I lunched quickly and went back to my room to think through a few
questions I intended to ask at 12:30 pm after the formal Q&A session
open to all students was over, as I had prearranged a private meeting
through the server managing the course. I headed up eagerly to the
Dhamma Hall at 12:20 pm so I might get an extra minute or two with him
in case he wasn’t meeting with another student and I could also catch
the tail end of the official Q&A period.
By Andrée François | 3/5/2022
By Pierre Robert | 3/5/2022
When I was a child I believed, as did many my age, that carrying a
rabbit's foot in my pocket had the power to bring me luck. I never left
home without my precious lucky charm, and I would close my eyes while
rubbing the fetish, hoping that my latest wish would come true. This
ritual was not unlike the fervour I put into my evening prayers,
kneeling with my hands folded: "God, please let me have a new pair of
skates for Christmas!" or "God, please don't let my mother find out I
broke her mirror!"
At some point I had to face the fact that my
prayers were rarely answered, and so the rabbit's foot eventually ended
its career at the bottom of a trash can along with my declaration: "That
thing doesn’t work!"
By Annandhi Chandrasekaran | 3/5/2022
My mind races and rides
through its maze byzantine
as it reads the blogs and views
of people on the news.
By Aleksei Gomez | 2/20/2022
By Manish Chopra | 2/20/2022
I reflected on all the positive benefits that I had drawn with only a
week of employing the Vipassana technique and how seismically my
mindset and behavioral orientation was tilting in a new and positive
direction. I then started to think about what it would be like when I
returned to my life as a consultant, with clients and colleagues, and
with my friends and family who had all known and experienced me
previously in a certain way.
A case in point—I had come to a
fairly informed conclusion that I would find it easy to give up alcohol
because I had discovered that my preexisting logical basis to consume it
to relax the mind was flawed at its core, if I was also to believe that
continuous happiness can only be achieved through a highly vigilant and
equanimous mind, which runs counter to consuming substances that can
overpower or numb the senses. I reckoned most of my family wouldn’t mind
my resolve to abstain from drinking, but certain friends, colleagues
and clients might find it more than a bit odd and potentially
off-putting or anti-social in its appeal.
By Danel Cove | 2/20/2022
The Buddha's inheritance
is enlightenment's imminence
in a lineage of eminence
and unequaled benevolence.
The path that he represents
is walked in full confidence
by disciples of excellence
beyond all comparisons.
By Christine Joly | 2/6/2022
By Kory Goldberg | 2/6/2022
Driving along
what could barely be called a road, a group of children and teens noticed
us—some waved exuberantly; most looked astonished. The occasional motor bike, scooter,
or jeep might pass through here from time-to-time, but a van filled with a
dozen people from around the world was certainly a first for them. When the
not-quite road came to an end, we all hopped out, excited to stretch our legs
and start our walk through this exquisite valley and up the mountain side to
the Pigeon’s Cave, a remote haunt that the Buddha used to retreat to from
time-to-time.
By Manish Chopra | 2/6/2022
I
had been impressed with the teaching methods thus far: explaining theory after
self-observed experimentation, progressive learning, preparing the mind for
complex tasks through acceleration of mental faculties, the totally immersive
nature of the program, among various other subtle aspects like the unidirectional,
clock-wise garden walks to avoid eye contact with other students. This impression led me to trust
that there must be some deep rationale for surprising us with having to make a
determination to achieve a fairly audacious and seemingly impossible goal. If I
had known something like this would be expected of us by this stage in the
program, I would have built up my resolve by achieving a smaller goal like
sitting in the same position for at least half an hour in previous days.
By Patrick Given-Wilson | 1/22/2022
By David Cohen | 1/22/2022
It can be overwhelming to think about the unfairness of life, the
complexity of its problems, the impossibility of solutions, and the
ignorance, irrationality, pettiness and selfishness of humans, myself
included. But it helps to remember Vipassana centers, places that do makessense. Places that seem too good to be true. Unrealistic. A system, an
environment, an organization that I would never
believe to be true without first-hand experience.
By John Geraets | 1/22/2022
Dedication: I think of Webu’s sick-bed inside his dwelling, the renovated
meditation hut next door that we could share. Beyond a devotional exercise,
which is present, the following explores an underlying feeling of strangeness,
or perhaps it’s an unfamiliarity that doesn’t feel strange, or unpleasant to
experience. It reaches into a gratitude that wants to be precisely expressed.
By Patrick Given-Wilson | 1/14/2022
By Luke Matthews | 1/14/2022
In
January 1973, at the Burmese Vihāra in the village of Bodh Gayā,
Goenkaji conducted a nine-day course after his annual self-course. In
those days the Vihāra consisted of a walled compound containing a main,
two-story, concrete building for the few monks who resided there,
workers' quarters and kitchen, a dozen or so brick-and-thatch huts, and a
cowshed.
By Bonnie Gal | 1/14/2022
It hurts.
It hurts to confront myself.
It’s not rainbows and butterflies.
There are parts of me that I don’t want to look at…that I’ve protected…that I hide from the world and from myself.
By Andrée François | 12/30/2021
By Bhikkhu Anālayo | 12/30/2021
Perhaps
the most central aspect of the Buddha’s teaching is insight into the
absence of a permanent self anywhere in subjective experience. In
addition to the philosophical perspective of denying the existence of a
permanent entity, important practical dimensions are the countering of
self-centered conceit and of a tendency to appropriate ideas or objects
as “mine” through possessiveness and clinging. The three dimensions of
the teaching on not self that emerge in this way are conveniently
expressed in a standard phrase found repeatedly in the early discourses,
according to which one should contemplate any aspect of subjective
experience as not being “mine,” not being what “I am,” and not being a
“self.”[1] Contemplating any aspect of subjective experience in this way can target craving, conceit, and mistaken views in turn.
By Halina Sobrado Wydrzycka | 12/30/2021
Pull down the blind, tune out the time. Sitting hour after hour, from
4:30 in the morning until 9:00 o'clock at night. In silence. One day,
two days, three days...
I sit, get up, stretch, sit, repeat. I
observe the mind, coming and going. I recognize myself running away from
the inevitable. I nod off the accumulated fatigue of the previous
months. I procrastinate, postponing concentration with thoughts,
thoughts, thoughts. I know the process well (or so I think), and still
the mind plays tricks.
By Pierre Robert | 12/15/2021
Geneticists tell us that cows and humans share about 80 per cent of
their genes. Two eyes, two ears, a nose, lungs, liver, a heart, etc.
Moreover—because of genetics—both have something else in common: they
ruminate.
The cow brings up food already swallowed to chew it again, while humans bring up long-gone events, to chew them again.
Over
millennia, the cow has slowly developed this ability, which has
contributed to her very survival. Grazing too long in an open meadow, in
danger, she has cultivated the ability to minimally chew grass and
swallow it quickly, and then regurgitate and rechew it calmly later, out
of the sun and away from predators.
Biologists call this intelligence. Can we say the same about humans?
By Andrée François | 12/14/2021
By RSM | 12/7/2021
Aching,
Shaking,
Backbreaking.
Tranquilly sensed but, Painstaking.
By S.N. Goenka | 12/5/2021
By the late nineteen fifties, the Indian community in Burma was
divided. There were those who were sure they saw the handwriting on the
wall. Being convinced that sooner or later a socialist regime would be
installed, these people reasoned
By Pierluigi Confalonieri | 12/5/2021
DHAMMA MAHI - August 1988
The first two courses at Dhamma Mahi
in Louesme, France, were conducted by Goenka and managed by Gerhard and
me (Pierluigi). The courses were hosted in a big white tent where about a
hundred students participated in each course. In the second course,
there were approximately 30 Italian students. Probably the influence of
an Italian manager with 30 Italian students gave Goenka a particular
idea.
