Category: Dharma
New podcast episode: The blunder of extrinsic motivation
Source: The blunder of extrinsic motivation
The second ‘trinsic motivation sermon.
Podcast episode: The wonder of intrinsic motivation
Source: The wonder of intrinsic motivation
The first ‘Trinsic motivation sermon.
The Wonder of Intrinsic Motivation
During my days in graduate school, where I studied theoretical linguistics (of all things), I happened to have a conversation with a young man outside my normal circle that went something like this:
“So, what do you do?”
“I am a linguistics graduate student.”
“Oh? What is linguistics?”
“Well, …,” I very briefly explained that linguistics is the science that studies human language as a natural phenomenon and how much it fascinated me.
“Is it, um, something you can make a lot of money doing?” he asked.
“Hmmm, I’ve never thought about it. I suppose not.”
“Why would you do something that takes so much work if you can’t make a lot of money? And why would you not think about it?”
Why indeed? Nothing I said from that point on made the least sense to him. What he said made sense to me, but had a twisted logic to it, and the conversation quickly devolved into mutual bewilderment. For me, after all, this was human language we were talking about. Where was this guy’s sense of wonder?
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the two of us were talking from opposite sides of a chasm, a deep gash through the middle of our culture with profound implications for human psychological and spiritual well-being, for the very direction of people’s lives, for the structure of our economy, and for the way children are brought up and educated. This guy represented what seems to be the dominant, utilitarian view in our culture, one that speaks of maturity, rationality and purpose. Mine was the more foolhardy, silly view that something can be worth doing for its own sake. I consider myself fortunate to have since lived a life of “silliness,” which, many years later as a rather elderly, scholarly Buddhist monk, I continue to live to this day.
New Buddhism Video Course
I have completed a five-part video course and uploaded it to Youtube just in time for the wave of social distancing that is driving people out of Buddhist centers among other public gathering places. The videos are based on my new book Mindfulness, where Dharma meets Practice. Click here for access:
I have plans for putting up more videos and also for starting a podcast in the near future.
I hope that all readers and your loved ones are healthy and that your lives are not too burdened socially or economically during this pandemic.
New introduction to Buddhism
Mindfulness, where Dharma meets Practice
I am releasing in draft form a textbook for a five-week course on Buddhism based on early sources. I am currently using an earlier draft to teach a class in Minnesota and will use it in the next two months to teach in Austin and Houston, Texas. This was originally conceived as a more concise version of my Buddhist Life/Buddhist Path, but, as these things go, it became a distinct work, with mindfulness as the central theme.
This book is about Dharma, practice, and how they intersect in mindfulness. It is a nutshell introduction to Buddhism based almost exclusively on the earliest Buddhist sources, which are the historical basis for all of the diverse later schools of Buddhism, and which represent what the Buddha actually taught, as best as we can determine. It is a textbook that has been used to supplement about ten hours of class time.
In spite of its conciseness, this text provides a comprehensive overview of the range of Buddhist practice and understanding and contains practical advice on how we can integrate Buddhist practice into busy modern lives. It begins from the premise that Dharma serves solely as a support for practice and that the role of mindfulness is to enable Dharma effectively to inform practice.
I will distribute hard copies locally, but a pdf can can be downloaded here:
Book: With Needle and Thread
essays in early Buddhism
This volume presents a set of essays, each of which is intended to put a few stitches in what the author regards as a common traditional or modern misunderstanding of an important point of Dhamma, or (in the case of the first essay) Vinaya. In each case it advances an alternative interpretation, at least as a way of encouraging further discussion. Of the six essays in this volume, the first concerns the role of women in the Buddhist community, the second concerns issues of faith and belief, the third a seemingly small doctrinal point that has led, I maintain, to great misunderstanding of a significant portion of early Dhamma, and the final three with aspects of meditation: mindfulness (sati) and concentration (samadhi).The book can now be downloaded in various formats:
Order hardcopy hereWith Needle and Thread
Essays on early Buddhism
In this new book (pdf linked below) I present a set of essays, each of which is intended to put a few stitches in what I have come to regard as a common traditional or modern misunderstanding of an important point of Dhamma, or (in the case of the first essay) Vinaya. In each case I advance an alternative interpretation, at least as a way of encouraging further discussion. Of the six essays in this volume, the first concerns the role of women in the Buddhist community, the second concerns issues of faith and belief, the third a seemingly small doctrinal point that has led, I maintain, to great misunderstanding of a significant portion of early Dhamma, and the final three with aspects of meditation: mindfulness (sati) and concentration (samādhi).
Here is an abstract of each:What did the Buddha think of women?: the story of the early nuns. This challenges the common view that the Buddha’s intentions in establishing the nuns’ sangha were biased by the patriarchal and ofttimes misogynistic attitudes of the dominant culture. It argues that the Buddha did all that he could to secure equal opportunity for practice for women as for men, while, always the pragmatist, maintaining the outward propriety of the Saṅgha within the constraints of the dominant culture. Subsequent tradition has not always been so kind.
Take seriously and hold loosely: faith without beliefs. Unlike a “belief system,” the Dhamma represents faith with wiggle room. Teachings are to be taken seriously, because they have important practice functions, to be realized in beneficial results for the practitioner and for the world at large. At the same time, the Buddha’s teachings are to be held loosely, as flexible working assumptions, because teachings need to be meaningful and acceptable by the individual practitioner in order to fulfill their practice functions.
The Buddha as biologist: true to practice. This challenges the view that three of the twelve links of dependent co-arising, so central to the Dhamma, are about conception and development in the womb. Biological processes are substantially beyond immediate experience and therefore not significant factors of practice, and therefore have no substantial role in Dhamma. This traditional interpretation of these critical links has only served to mask their true function.
Sati really does mean memory: the Buddha’s take on mindfulness. The word we translate as “mindfulness” has been interpreted various ways in later traditions, often as a kind of mind state. However, the word literally means memory or recollection. I argue that in the EBT the word rarely wanders too much astray from recollection of the Dhamma (or Vinaya). The Buddha meant what he said. This has implications for how we practice this central teaching.
Seeing through the eyes of the Buddha: samādhi and right view. This challenges the traditional and modern ways in which samādhi has become disassociated from right view through the assumption that the stillness of samādhi cannot carry the cognitive load of right view. It then explores how samādhi is properly understood precisely as the most effective instrument for internalizing right view, as an entryway to knowledge and vision of things as they are.
How did mindfulness become “bare, non-judgmental, present-moment awareness”? This companion essay to “Sati really does mean memory” discusses the genesis of the widely accepted but very modern understanding of the term “mindfulness,” which is quite distinct from the use of sati in the EBT. The shift in meaning is attributed in part to a modern retreat from concern for virtue and right view.
These essays are revised versions of essays I have posted on-line over the past seven years. Some of them are much shorter.
EDIT: Please go HERE for pdf and hard copy.
How did mindfulness become “bare, non-judgmental, present-moment awareness”?
“Mindfulness” in modern discourse – whether among meditation teachers or clinicians – is defined in various ways, but generally circle around “bare, non-judgmental, present-moment awareness.” Nonetheless, although mindfulness (in Pali, sati) is one of the most fundamental concepts in the Early Buddhists Texts (EBT), one would be hard-pressed to find a definition or description of mindfulness there that remotely resembles such circulations. In this essay I will try to account for our modern definitions of mindfulness and how they might be reconciled with the EBT.My intention is not to delegitimize these modern definitions; words come to be used differently with time and, hey, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet!” The modern definitions have clearly proved useful and resonate with modern meditative and clinical experience. My intention is to explore what the shift in the meaning of mindfulness tells us about the shift from early Buddhist concerns to modern concerns as we pursue “mindfulness,” and then to ask the important question, What might we have left behind?
Sati really does mean ‘memory’
“Mindfulness” as we now understand it is the result a history of semantic change. This began in ancient times with the Pali word sati, which in origin means ‘memory’, and has somehow given rise to the modern term ‘mindfulness’, which the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as “the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.” Moreover, modern scholars have perhaps been far too hasty to dismiss ‘memory’ as its central meaning in the EBT. I hope to show here that sati barely strayed in the early times far afield from this central meaning.
This volume presents a set of essays, each of which is intended to put a few stitches in what the author regards as a common traditional or modern misunderstanding of an important point of Dhamma, or (in the case of the first essay) Vinaya. In each case it advances an alternative interpretation, at least as a way of encouraging further discussion. Of the six essays in this volume, the first concerns the role of women in the Buddhist community, the second concerns issues of faith and belief, the third a seemingly small doctrinal point that has led, I maintain, to great misunderstanding of a significant portion of early Dhamma, and the final three with aspects of meditation: mindfulness (sati) and concentration (samadhi).
Here is an abstract of each:
“Mindfulness” in modern discourse – whether among meditation teachers or clinicians – is defined in various ways, but generally circle around “bare, non-judgmental, present-moment awareness.” Nonetheless, although mindfulness (in Pali, sati) is one of the most fundamental concepts in the Early Buddhists Texts (EBT), one would be hard-pressed to find a definition or description of mindfulness there that remotely resembles such circulations. In this essay I will try to account for our modern definitions of mindfulness and how they might be reconciled with the EBT.