Bhikkhu Cintita

Category: Dharma

  • Q&A w/BC: Moments of insight

    Anne:

    Can you describe in writing one of your most powerful experiences during meditation?

    BC:

    There is a tendency for modern practitioners to seek after dramatic, unanticipated, immediately life-altering experiences, to which they can attribute either awakening itself, a glimpse of awakening, or a less defined but nonetheless “mystical” experience. Some practitioners are obsessed with achieving such experiences. That might be what you are expecting me to have had, Anne. Seeking such experiences is craving, and certainly detrimental to practice. Accordingly, I try to discourage attributing too much importance to the wonder of such experiences. Though they will occur, the Buddha seems to have had little no or interest in the drama of such experiences, while giving attention to the growing sense of well-being that comes with successful practice to surpass mundane pleasure. We do not practice in order to have dramatic experiences, we practice in order to develop wisdom (as a support for virtue). In the process, however, we do come to see the world in radically different ways. Sometimes we cannot help but be astonished by what we see.

    The experiences I’m referring to are sudden moments of insight associated with wisdom contemplation, in which something that was previously unclear becomes clear. Within the early Buddhist context, they occur particularly in Dhamma investigation (satipaṭṭhāna, vipassanā) within a meditative state (jhāna or samādhi). My book Rethinking Satipaṭṭhāna describes the mechanics of this practice, including what I am about to relate. Outside of the Buddhist context, insight experiences can also arise spontaneously, I suspect especially in children, where they can be disorienting and frightening in the absence of any preparation. In any case, they come suddenly, like a spark but occasionally like a lightning strike. They seem to bubble up from the unconscious mind, then make us want to shout, “Aha!” “Aha” experiences also come with with a conviction, almost a certainty, that one has seen into some deep truth.

    However, the insight experience is typically at best poorly explained in conceptual terms. It is a product of intuition. Concepts generally do not do justice to the experience itself. Tejaniya Sayadaw, a Burmese meditation teacher, gives an example of an insight he once had as a meditation student. The best he could describe it conceptually was, “You can smell only with the nose.” Excited, he told other monks about this great insight, but they all laughed at him. He finally went to his teacher, who acknowledged the depth of this insight, but advised, “When you have an insight, don’t tell the other monks about it. They will think you are crazy.”

    Common broad themes in these experiences are impermanence, non-self, the falling away of the distinction between subjective and objective experience, the nature and depth of suffering, and the mental constructedness of what we presume to be an independent reality“ out there.” The Buddha takes great pains to prime us for insights into such realms through his various Dhamma teachings. Being bound to language, he does this in conceptual terms. Many teachers and scholars accordingly take these conceptual teachings as philosophy, valuable in themselves. In fact, the Buddha’s concern seems to be limited to inducing the practitioner to be able to experience these teachings directly and non-conceptually. He expresses this achievement as “dwelling, having touched X with the body.” We do this through contemplation (in jhāna!) and discovering what the Buddha is talking about in our own experience, making it our own. Aha!

    The closest simple and readily available analogy I’ve found in the mundane world is “Magic Eye” images, 2D patterns that when stared at suddenly (aha) reveal content that appears in 3D. I recommend that beginning practitioners play around with these (I’ve acquired a couple of books of such images for both our Austin and Minnesota libraries). A similar, even simpler effect is found in staring at a Neker’s cube:

    Is the marked corner the closest to you, or the furthest from you? Once the mind has snapped into one interpretation, most people have difficulty snapping into the alternative interpretation. Discovering the alternative is then bound to produce an “aha” experience. One would think that the more firmly the mind is fixed on one interpretation, the more dramatic the discovery of the other will be. One might furthermore even conclude that the more open-minded one is, the more astonishing their insight experiences will be, if and when they eventually do occur.

    One of my favorite wisdom practices is contemplation of the five aggregates, a teaching that leads to insight into the inseparability of mind from the objective, independent world “out there.” Effectively, it teaches the constructedness of reality. (Modern quantum physics seems to have become a precisely focused continuation of this exercise, beginning with the split beam experiment.) Once over twenty years ago I was sitting zazen many hours each day at Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery in the California coastal mountains, where I lived for almost a year and a half. One is unlikely to learn the five aggregates in Zen, since one is given only vague ideas of what to look for in meditation, most importantly “emptiness” and “non-duality,” with little explanation. Zen takes pride in being a tradition “beyond words and letters,” which in my experience seems to have the effect that insights are few and far between, but it is a whopper if and when one happens to occur.

    I must have had a very fixed idea at this time about the reality of an objective, independent world “out there,” for on this occasion something seemed to snap. I left the meditation hall and felt the world had shifted. I looked up at the tall mountains all around and saw clearly that I was in them and they were in me. There was no separation. I took a walk up the hill up to Suzuki Roshi’s burial sight and spent some time dwelling there in what I had touched. Then suddenly, after about 4 or 5 hours, I snapped back, and couldn’t recover my new interpretation of the world, only a vivid memory of it. I knew I should label the experience “non-duality,” but the label seemed meaningless in view the depth of the experience itself. It was only years later, when I was grounded in the Buddha’s teachings, that I could understand the various experiential facets of this little drama, and even begin explain it conceptually, to the satisfaction of philosophers, but inadequately from the perspective of practitioners. If I had started with the Buddha’s more detailed teachings, I think the drama would have been distributed over many smaller moments of insight.

  • Q&A w/BC: What are fabrications/formations (sankharas)?

    QUESTION, another important one from Celsa:

    Studying the Paticca-samuppada- Vibhaṅgasutta, and reading a couple of translations, I have a hard time understanding the concepts of “consciousness”, “fabrications” “contact” and “becoming”. B Sujatto, calls “fabrications”, choices. I find that word clearer, but how do we go from a choice to consciousness? Or better yet, what is considered ‘consciousness’ in this context? Can you give me an example of a real-life process where the development of dependency from one to the next step is shown?

    ANSWER

    The answer to your question is easier than you might suspect. Let me begin with an example per your request: if you see two round spots on a larger round surface maybe with a parallel line below, you see a face. The word sankhāra means literally ‘put together,’ and that’s exactly what you are doing in this case. Sankhara might also be translated as ‘conceptualization.’ We build up (fabricate) the world as we experience it through conceptualizations, layer upon layer. And our experience of the world is consciousness (notice, for the Buddha consciousness is something we make, not something that we simply show up for). Think of sankharas as the bricks out of which consciousness is built. Each brick is a small conceptualization, a putting together with other bricks to fabricate a larger whole. That’s it!

    Why does Sujato translate sankharas as choices? We fabricate not only our perception of the world (consciousness), but also our plans for action in the world. They are built up conceptually before we physically act. For the Buddha, there is little difference: they are conceptual fabrications. We think of our plans for action as the result of many choices, but actually our perceptions of the world are also choices. We can perceive otherwise, and if we look very carefully at the way we perceive, we see that it is full of biases, particularly biases that reflect our personal interests. We can choose otherwise (which is what the Dhamma is all about). A self-centered person perceives the world differently than a selfless person, they have a different form of consciousness.

    Now, kamma means ‘action’ in Pali. The Buddha refined this to mean ‘intentional action,’ which is action made on the basis of choice (rather than by accident, for instance). The Buddha then extended this beyond bodily and verbal actions, to mental actions as well. That is, by planning to do something we are already producing kamma. So he refined the meaning of kamma further to mean simply ‘intention,’ which is ‘choice.’ But if our perceptions are intentional as well, then they are instances of kamma. The upshot seems to be that sankhara = kamma. Though I am not aware that the Buddha equated them in this way, the words are used pretty much interchangeably. Kamma is more common in the domain of ethics, and sankhara in the domain of wisdom. But we talk about sankharas of body, speech and mind, as we do for kamma.

    An important aspect of kamma or sankhara is that they become habituated into dispositions, that is, we gain habit patterns in our conceptualizations or choices, and we each have a unique sets of dispositions as a result. In fact acquiring skills is all about improving dispositions, and our entire Buddhist practice is about developing wholesome dispositions. Both kamma and sankhara can refer to particular conceptual fabrications performed right now, or to the dispositions that underlie those choices. We talk about ‘old kamma’ vs. ‘new kamma.’

    The transition from sankharas to consciousness in dependent coarising has been interpreted in two ways. The first is just as I have explained. The second is that it describes the process of rebirth. Our dispositions define who we are individually (including where we are in our practice). On the second interpretation, at death our dispositions from the previous life are all bundled up into a special kind of consciousness, that travels–zap– to the mother’s womb at conception. The second is consistent with the account of sakharas given here, but not with the general account of consciousness in the early texts. There consciousness is always a momentary event, a flash of fabrication. The choice between the first and second interpretation effects how the subsequent links are interpreted: name and form, the sense spheres, and contact.

    — After hearing my answer Celsa added, “So, consciousness is making sense of the reality as we are able to perceive it, conceptualize it and interact with, right? That’s why is so unique for every person. As stupid it may be, one very simple thing that had me reflect on this has been why I like to have cleanliness and order, and other people don’t seem to see the need for them.”

    You’ve got it. I started out as one of the other kind of persons, but the effect of wholesome Buddhist practice on my kammic dispositions has made me more like you.

    By the way, there is now a handy submission for at my new site: https://cintita.org/blog/ . However, the post will still show up on my old site, and in your mailbox.

  • Q&A w/BC: Is Theravada Buddhism less developed than Mahayana Buddhism?

    QUESTION from Claudia: What is the key difference(s) between Theravada and Mahayana traditions? Why is Theravada called the lesser vehicle? Someone said recently that Theravada school was less developed than the Mahayana because it did not go to advanced states of mind-developing.

    ANSWER from BC: The Buddhist world is generally divided into two major schools, the Mahayana (great vehicle), and the Hinayana (small vehicle). These terms originated with the rise of the Mahayana to distinguish them from the other school, and it has become widely considered impolite to call someone “Hinayana.” But I’ll use the terms here. Roughly 65% of Buddhists today are affiliated with Mahayana. The rest belong to the Theravada school to which I belong.

    The Mahayana was an innovative movement that grew in India in the first millennium. Before that time Buddhism had differentiated into many geographically and (as a result) somewhat doctrinally dispersed sects, which with time blended back together. Of the early sects only Theravada has kept its identity, certainly because of its early isolation in Sri Lanka, from whence it spread into SE Asia. Traditionally the doctrinally distinct Mahayana is considered to have developed from the early Mahasanghika sect in eastern India. It may have had more than a single point of origin, but Mahayana became over the centuries a pan-Buddhist movement. Within any sect, region, or monastery you might have found some Mahayanists and some Hinayanists living together and getting along happily, as pilgrims from China were surprised to find. Mahayana was even influential in the Theravada sect at one time but later died out.

    Mahayana was the innovator, and emphasized three main things that distinguished it from the older Hinayana: (1) the status of the Buddha as not as a normal human, but as a kind of cosmic being, something along the Jesus model. (2) The higher ideal by which instead of awakening to escape the cycle of rebirth, it is more praiseworthy to forego awakening in order to be reborn with all of the virtue and compassion that will have come with high practice attainments. Why squander all that virtue on awakening, when you can use it to help make the world a better place in future lifetimes? A Bodhisattva is someone who follows this path. This is why the Dalai Lama has been reborn fourteen traceable times. (3) The idea of emptiness, that nothing in the world exists from its own side, but only through human conceptualization.

    I think (1) reflects the general need of people to embellish. It’s pretty much harmless, and may encourage wholeheartedness in Buddhist practice. (2) is actually present and respected in Theravada, apparently as a remnant of the early Mahayana influence on Theravada. I think it is beautiful way to frame one’s own Buddhist practice, even for those who disbelieve in rebirth. (3) is a very significant factor in wisdom practice, and insight meditation. The Buddha taught emptiness, but predicted that it would be the first of his teachings to be forgotten. The Mahayana emphasis may be a revival of this teaching, but it is not taught in Mahayana quite the way the Buddha taught it.

    There are other doctrinal divides in current Buddhism aside from Mahayana-Hinayana. Mahayana has many subschools with doctrinal differences, and some schools that might be considered Dhamma-lite. Tibetans consider themselves to be Mahayanists, but adhere also to what they consider to be an even higher teaching: Vajrayana, influenced historically by Hindu Tantra in Kashmir. I do not know enough about Tibetan Buddhism to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Vajrayana enhancement, but this might be the source of the “advanced states of mind development” that Claudia’s interlocutor mentioned. Alternatively, she might be like many practitioners who regard whatever school they belong to as “the best.”

    I should add a word for those who are dismayed that Buddhists don’t always agree on Dhamma. First, the core purpose of Dhamma is found throughout the Buddhist world: practice aimed at developing human character in its twin aspects of virtue and wisdom through behavioral and contemplative training aided by deep control of mental faculties, aimed at awakening. Second, the Buddha anticipated variation and innovation: he defined the Dhamma not as what he personally taught, but as that which achieves that purpose.

    Two interesting follow-up questions would be: (1) Is Theravada really Hinayana? (2) Was the Buddha a Hinayanist or a Mahayanist?

    Please reply to keep the conversation going with relevant knowledge, insights or follow questions. Or pose a new question be emailing BC directly at bhikkhu.cintita@gmail.com.

  • Announcement: we’re moving soon

    As part of the revitalization of this site, we’ve been remodeling it. We will soon be active at https://cintita.org/ , possibly within a week. The subscriber list and blog submissions will be moved, hopefully without any disruptions. It’ll be real artsy. You can visit it now; just don’t trip over anything or lean against any wet paint.

  • Q&A w/BC: Is it useless to try to fix the world’s problems?

    Question from Celsa

    Because this world and our life is ‘suffering’, there is no hope that the suffering will go away, and it’s useless to try to fix the world’s problems. Of course, the obvious solution would be that every person becomes virtuous and behaves in a moral way, so suffering can decrease. This is not feasible at a mass level, so maybe humanity is hopeless? and there is no way out, except individually? Why is it so hard to surrender desire, doubt, anger, etc. Aren’t the 5 hindrances our very inherent makeup? And if one eliminates them, one ceases to exist? Isn’t Desire the very motive of existence, keeping us eating and reproducing? Does Buddhism say that human life is absurd?

    Response from BC

    Celsa, I’m sorry to hear so much despair, and I know most people feel this way at this stage in history (or any other stage). Let me try to put the role of Buddhism in all this into perspective to show how Buddhist practice helps make the world a better place and the individual more fulfilled.

    Let’s start with the issue of our inherent makeup. You’ve probably heard the following little story.

    An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

    The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

    The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

    This really says that we have two incompatible inherent makeups; this is the human dilemma. The Buddha never spoke in these terms, but notice that the qualities of the two wolves correspond almost precisely to what to Buddha regards as unskillful/unwholesome kamma, and skillful/wholesome kamma respectfully, so I’ll run with it. In fact, the Buddha has a lot to say about the psychological differences between the two wolves. Dependent coarising is an apt description of how the evil wolf’s mind works. (I have a bit of trouble picturing a good wolf. Maybe a highly domesticated collie like Lassie counts as a wolf.)

    It seems like the evil wolves are getting plenty to eat these days, certainly among public figures and the powerful. Our individualistic, “Greed is good” culture favors evil wolves (not all cultures do). However most religious traditions, if they have not been corrupted, favor good wolves. Buddhism unambiguously favors feeding the good wolf. For the Buddha that is the one inherent human makeup that counts, and that must be developed and cultivated.

    Most people think when the evil wolf is in charge it is good for “me,” but bad for others, when the good wolf is in change it is good for others, but bad for “me,” so they try to balance the two: “If I give to them, there is less for ‘me.’ Mostly I care about ‘my’ happiness, but I am not indifferent to theirs.” They feed both wolves, maybe the evil wolf a bit more.

    For the Buddha, this balance makes no sense at all, for a well-fed good wolf is always far far happier than a well-fed evil wolf. The reason is that each wolf experiences a different kind of happiness: for the evil wolf happiness is mundane, based on sense pleasures, fleeting and unreliable. For the good wolf it is supramundane, is based on contributing to greater things including others, just accumulates, and leads to a fulfilling, meaningful life well lived. Only the good wolf can be fulfilled spiritually. This is the fruit of good kamma, that many in our hyper-individualistic culture fail to recognize.

    How does Buddhist practice therefore make the world a better place?

    The adept Buddhist brings ceaseless benefit to those around him or her, though compassionate action, though cooperation in group pursuits, through harmonizing with them, through example and teaching. This is our inherent nature, the one worth developing and cultivating, the one concerned with something greater than the individual self, in that it includes others.

    It may be frustrating that the world overall does not seem to improve, but that is just “all or nothing” thinking. Helping a few others is huge in itself. Contributing the to the frustration is that we commonly do not see the far-reaching consequences of our influence, but they there. (I can think of various people whom I barely knew who have no idea of the influence they had on my life, like the odd Polish man in a suit and carrying a briefcase that I picked up hitchhiking in Corte Madera, California over fifty years ago, with whom I had a conversation about languages, and who recommended a book for me to read, before I dropped him off.) It is best to practice in small communities of like-minded people, where we can actually see the world getting a bit better, at least in one place, and where we are working together with others to accomplish this. Community was essential in the Buddha’s thinking.

    But even if the world does not become a better place, or we fail to see it, we individually will live much more fulfilling, meaningful lives for having dedicated our practice to something greater than ourselves, to living as good wolves according to the standards of Dhamma.

    In summary, yes Buddhism does say that human life is absurd. But Buddhism knows how to make it sane, just not for everybody all at once.

  • Q&A w/BC: How do we repackage Buddhism to make it simple, relevant and compelling for young people?

    QUESTION from Gerry Trione:

    Bhante, As you probably know, there are about 700 million Buddhists around the world, most of whom are in Asia. There are an estimated 3-4 million in the US, but most of whom are Asian, leaving only about 600,000 “westerner” Buddhists; far less than 1% of the population. I know from personal experience that Buddhism is essentially unknown or misunderstood with Americans. Moreover, the prospect of US as a fertile ground for religious Buddhism is becoming more tenuous as young people are taught in school and social media that there is no “god” and anyone who follows a religion is a loser. The result of turning away from religion is the loss of moral and ethical guidelines on how to live a wholesome life. This is why we have such a high rate of drug and alcohol use, and psychological problems. Over 60 million people in the US have psychological problems, and over 50 million have drug addictions. And, its getting worse.

    The question is: Why is Buddhism, the proven best means to end mental suffering, so hard for young people to grasp?

    ANSWER from BC

    Gerry, Thanks for this important question. I agree with you: the modern world needs Buddhism, because Buddhism is almost the opposite of what ails modern culture: its hyper-individualism, its consumerism, its commercialism, its secularism, and so. But exactly this this is what makes Buddhism difficult to grasp for modern people. Buddhism is not an easy-answer guide to life, except in some of its regional, primarily devotional “folk” manifestations, which are simply going to seem strange to westerners.

    Partly as a way to popularize Buddhism, many modern teachers westernize or pare down Buddhism. I daresay that much of what is taught as Buddhism by western teachers is not of Asian origin at all, but is a continuation of currents of western thought that can be traced through the early Protestant Reformation, through Romanticism, American Transcendentalism, psychoanalysis, and probably through the beatnik and hippy countercultures. Buddhism is being significantly co-opted by modern culture, rendering it unable to squarely oppose those aspects of modernism that are most vexing. David McMahan’s book, the Making of Buddhist Modernism, offers a fascinating discussion of this issue.

    Of course, modern people are always going to see Buddhism through a modern lens. The challenge is to do this without distorting the Buddha’s original intent. East Asians certainly do not conceptualize Buddhism the way Indians did, yet the managed to preserve the functionality of early Buddhism well. Much of my own efforts center around presenting “Early Buddhist for Modern Buddhists” (which I’ve made the name of this web site) without distorting the intention of the earliest sources.

    I don’t have a clear answer on how best to promote Buddhism in the west. I’m doing my best. The commercial culture seems to overrun everything. The number of monks in Thailand, for instance, has fallen by 50% in 20 years, apparently because of the growing influence of modernity. Taiwan, on the other hand, continues to sustain very strong Buddhist and Taoist traditions in spite of its modernity. I’d like to know how they do it. I doubt that we will manage a sweeping Buddhist movement, say, in the USA. What we might accomplish is small communities here and there that are dedicated to living sanely according to the Dhammic principles, much as the artifacts of civilization were preserved in the monasteries of the Middle Ages.

    MORE DISCUSSION from Gerry

    The answer is the primary message of Buddhism, to end suffering, is not being communicated to the masses. It is obscured and eclipsed by a larger focus on the more mystical concepts of rebirth, merit, realms, devas, and the supernatural. The elegance of Buddhism from my perspective, having studied psychology in undergrad, is the close resemblance to psychology of the 4 Noble Truths. Namely, suffering, or “psychic irritants” exist; we know the causes (Three Poisons); Suffering can be cured; and, the cure is known (8 Fold Path, Precepts, etc.). This is classical psychology with “psychoanalysis” and “Psychotherapy”.

    What young people ask themselves is: “What’s in it for me?”. The answer is “Happiness”; the end of suffering. But, young people I know don’t think they’re “suffering”. They think that anger, hate, resentment, jealousy, envy, worry, fear, cravings, addiction, anxiety, and depression is “normal”!!! In short, Buddhism needs to be repackaged to appeal to these younger people in a form which is Simple, Relevant, and Compelling.

    RESPONSE by BC

    I agree with your most of your points, and along with you am particularly alarmed at what young people experience as life.

    You are right: Buddhism, at least the early Buddhism taught by the Buddha, is psychological through and through. I am a retired cognitive scientist and I am simply in awe the the Buddha’s understanding of the human mind. I’m discovering that early Dhamma matches up with modern cognitive research well. However, I don’t agree Dhamma bears a close relationship to psychotherapy (although a lot of psychotherapists are Buddhists). The goals are different. Freud described psychotherapy as curing psychological abnormalities that cause individual suffering, and added something like, “so that sufferers can return the common level of suffering that we all share.” Buddhism is concerned with curing the common level of suffering that we all share. But even that goal is incidental to its main goal: to improve and eventually perfect the human character in its dual aspects of virtue and wisdom. I think of the suffering of young people in modern society, and of almost everyone else, not so much as an abnormality of individual psychology, as of the break-down of the society in they live.

    As for the “larger focus on the more mystical concepts of rebirth, merit, realms, devas, and the supernatural,” many teachers explicitly exclude such teachings, particularly the secularists. As for preserving the integrity of early Dhamma, I’ve concluded that devas, realms and much of the supernatural (like acquiring the ability to jump up and touch the sun) are dispensable, but fun. Rebirth and merit are critically important. Merit (or the fruits of kamma) is simply the effects of wholesome practice on our character, and can be largely explained cognitively. Rebirth gives us an important way of framing our long-term practice. It’s not necessary to believe that it is actually true as described, only that we accept it as a working assumption. We do this all the time anyway: money is not true, it is a social construct that everyone accepts as a working assumption, and thereby serves an important social function.

    Please REPLY if you would like to continue this conversation on a multifaceted topic that perhaps all readers have a stake in. I would like to encourage such discussions in order to revive this web site, to which I have given insufficient attention in the last years. Submit a question

  • Introduction to early Buddhism, book and class

    Two announcements:

    book

    I’ve just published a new addition of my 2020 book, Mindfulness, where Dharma meets practice. The title is now simply Where Dharma Meets Practice. (If you follow my writings, you might know that I maintain that the word ‘mindfulness’ (the word, not the concept) has not served our understanding of the early texts well. It is no longer a faithful translation of Pali sati) I’m doing something new with this book: publishing it for global distribution; it a few weeks you should be able to buy it from you local book seller, at a nominal price. It can be found as PDF or as PAPERBACK.

    Buddhism is a practice tradition. It aims at achieving the cardinal skills of virtue, wisdom, and maturity. The awakened person has perfected these skills, much as the master chef and the virtuoso pianist have perfected theirs. The Dharma is a guide for Buddhist practice, much as a cookbook is a guide for haute cuisine.

    We discover that the Buddha’s Dharma is radical in any culture. This book gives particular attention to bringing these ancient teachings to life for those trying to navigate our troubled modern times.

    Class

    I teach a class here in Minnesota Wednesday Evenings 6:00-7:30 pm, CDT (Chicago time) called Buddha’s Book Club that can also be attended via Zoom. Next week, May 7, we will begin reading the book together, word for word, while I offer commentary. I would like to invite anyone in my readership here who might be interested to join us. Email me at bhikkhu.cintita@gmail.com for a Zoom link.

  • New Book: Rethinking Satipaṭṭhāna

    From investigating Dhamma to dwelling in jhāna,
    Bhikkhu Cintita (2025)

    Satipaṭṭhāna (often translated as “Foundations of mindfulness”) is the Buddha’s method of wisdom contemplation, best known through the ancient practice tutorial The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. It is recognized as the basis of the modern vipassanā or insight meditation movement. Unfortunately, the currents of Buddhist intellectual history have not been kind to this early teaching.

    Rethinking Satipaṭṭhāna is a thoroughgoing reevaluation of the early satipaṭṭhāna teachings that integrates right view, right recollection and right samādhi based on a critical rereading of the earliest Buddhist texts in an effort to recover a doctrinally coherent, cognitively realistic, etymologically sound, functional, and explanatory interpretation of this ancient wisdom practice.

    Satipaṭṭhāna is seen as a practice that extends Dhamma study to investigation, verification, and internalization in terms of direct experience to produce the fruit of “knowledge and vision of things as they are.” The jhānas are seen, in accord with modern cognitive research, as an aid to internalization that offloads sophisticated Dhamma understandings onto the effortless and intuitive “intrinsic” system of human cognition.

    Bhikkhu Cintita is an American Buddhist scholar-monk. He is a former professor and research scientist in linguistics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Since 2001 he has dedicated himself full time to Buddhist study and practice. He ordained in 2003 as a Soto Zen priest, then in 2009 as a Theravada monk in Myanmar. He currently resides in a monastery with 4 Burmese monks in rural Minnesota, and is the author of several books, including Buddhist Life/Buddhist Path, an introduction to Buddhism based on the earliest texts. He’s been a meditator for 45 years.

    Download Rethinking Satipaṭṭhāna (pdf).

    Order a printed copy from Lulu.com.

  • The jhānas: Dhamma made easy

    Chapter in the rethinking satipaṭṭhāna series

    What follows is an account of the jhānas and the fulfillment of the functions attributed to them in the early texts. Strangely, in spite of the clarity of the early texts, this endeavor is likely to meet with controversy, for many will insist that jhānas are difficult or almost impossible to attain, others that they are well within reach of the average meditator. Some will insist that they are necessary for awakening, or even the lone basis of awakening, others that they are dispensable. Some will insist they constitute a practice on their own, others that they integrate with other practices (notably satipaṭṭhāna contemplation).

    Such views certainly reflect at least in part the range of meditation practices available in the Buddhist world and our tendency to seek authority for that method with which we began or with which we became most intimate (in my case it was shikantaza in Japanese Soto Zen, for many readers it will be one of the vipassanā schools based on the 5th century Visuddhimagga). But even if we adopt only the early Buddhist texts as authoritative (as I do here) controversy lingers.
    The account I offer here will start with three basic premises concerning the teaching of the early texts:

    (1) Buddhism is a practice tradition, the Dhamma provides a framework for training in practice and the arahant is a type of Buddhist virtuoso.

    (2) The nature, uses and functions of jhāna are described in a highly consistently and detailed manner in terms of lived practice experience in the earliest texts. An account of the jhānas must be similarly consistent with how they are so depicted.

    (3) The jhānas arise in human cognition. An account of the jhānas must be consistent with the mechanics of human cognition.

    MORE …

  • Major themes of satipaṭṭhāna investigation

    The contemplative practice of satipaṭṭhāna is a process of verifying and internalizing Dhamma through experiential investigation, moving beyond a mere intellectual understanding of Dhamma to an effortless, intuitive and automatic way of seeing. The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (for our purposes, “the Sutta”)is a tutorial that presents a set of twenty-one exercises through which this practice is to be pursued, each of which investigates one or more major Dhamma teachings. The starting point for each of these exercises is an initial intellectual understanding of the relevant teaching(s), and that is what this paper/chapter undertakes to provide. The companion manual Satipaṭṭhāna Rethought presents these same teachings from a practice perspective.

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