For those readers in Austin, TX:
This Thursday I will give a talk for the Mariposa Sangha in Austin. All are invited to attend.
Karma = Practice
Speaker: Bhikkhu Cintita, Sitagu Buddha Vihara
Location: Trinity United Methodist Church, Interdenominational Chapel
4001 Speedway, Austin
Time: Thursday, September 6, 7pm – 8:30pm
Afterwards Bhante Cintita will present some pictures of the new pagoda at the Burmese monastery in SW Austin.
Full Moon Uposatha Day, August 2, 2012
This particular full moon marks the beginning of vassa, the three month rains retreat as observed in the Theravada tradition. According to tradition Buddhist monks and nuns are encouraged to stay put during this rainy season where every muddy step would endanger the many living things that are displaced and driven to the surface by penetrating wetness. To confuse matters, unlike in India (and Burma for that matter) here in Texas vassa is precisely the driest time of the entire year. We might very well see no precipitation at all before November. Nonetheless, vassa serves also traditionally as an opportunity to settle into one’s own practice without the distraction of travel.
For this vassa I have decided to avail myself of more time for practice and study and accordingly I am going to do something different with regard to my weekly Uposatha Day postings. I have been in the habit of posting an essay each week, generally at least three pages single-spaced in my word processor before painstaking silly image insertion, assiduously researched and composed, and commonly involving a bit of a last-minute time crunch. No longer! I had considered suspending these postings altogether for three months, but decided that was not necessary. A creature of habit myself and knowing that there is a substantial audience in the habit of receiving my weekly posts, I intend instead to continue posting on Uposatha Days, but something more informal and probably generally very short. One week it might be just a thought or a quote, the next a review of something I’ve just read, still another something I have rewritten from an earlier post. If anyone would like to submit a Dharma question that lends itself to a short answer they might also form the basis of a post.
I intend to do some writing during vassa, but at a reduced pace. Perhaps I can complete a draft of my autobiography, which has been frozen at about 2010 for some months. I would also like to revisit some of my previous serialized postings and to reorganize the content, sometimes into separate essays. I notice from examining the statistics of this blog, for instance, that “Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 13” has displaced my stand-alone essay “Sex, Sin and Buddhism” as the runaway most popular (15 hits so far today alone). I think this is because it deals with the curious similarities between Theravada Vipassana and Zen Shikantaza. Since people seem to be skipping over the twelve essays that precede it it seems appropriate that I turn this one episode into a stand-alone essay by summarizing what people need to know from the first 12 episodes and then giving in a catchier title, like “Zazen and Vipassana: What’s the Difference?”
I hope this adaptation of a weekly habit is satisfactory to the readers of these posts.
Through the Looking Glass, Book Three: “Zen Days,” Chapter Four: “The Zen Monk,” in which Kojin discovers another Path.
Books One, Two and Three Here (pdf)
Book Three,
“Life Choices” Here (pdf)
“Dropping Out At Last” Here (pdf)
“Priestcraft,” Here (pdf)
“The Zen Monk” Here (pdf)
Series Contents Here (html)
Through the Looking Glass, Book Three: “Zen Days,” Chapter Three: “Priestcraft,” in which Kojin ordains and begins life as a Zen priest.
Books One and Two Here (pdf)
Book Three, Chapter One Here (pdf)
Book Three, Chapter Two Here (pdf)
Latest Episode, “Priestcraft,” Here (pdf)
Series Contents Here (html)
Readers of this blog, especially anyone living in Austin, might be interested in the following.
Blog: News from the Dhamma Ceti Library. The Dhamma Ceti Library is being established at the Sitagu
monastery in Austin (I am the librarian). I intend to post book reviews here, things you might want to read or to avoid, primarily in the way of Buddhist books. Read a good book lately? I also invite others to submit reviews.
Blog: News from Sitagu Austin. If you live in Austin, this is a must for updates on events at the monastery and other developments. If you are in the area come visit the Vihara and bring the kids. The pagoda under construction is amazing.
Event: Dhamma Discussion Group in Austin. I will be leading this group Sunday afternoons, 2 – 4 pm, starting February 26, at 2501B Trailside Dr., Austin, off Robert E. Lee near Zilker Park. This will largely be informed by the Suttas, that is, the common heritage of all Buddhism.
Email me at bhikkhu dot cintita at gee-mail dot com for any questions. Thank you.
Today’s post, which was called “Buddha’s Meditation and Its Variants 6: Five Interesting Features of Buddha’s Mindfulness” will have to wait until next week. Sorry. This is due to computer error, or perhaps errorful human response to computer error. In short, the text I was about to post is gone with no backup. I think I remember what I had to say more-or-less, but it will take a week to reconstruct it. Sigh.
I will resume my weekly series of Uposatha Day posts next week, for the First Quarter Moon on November 3.
I have used my little vacation to put some ideas into order, to visit family and the attend the Seventeenth Annual Western Buddhist Monastic Conference in Sacramento, CA. In the meantime the weather here in Austin, Texas has turned from bake to chill very quickly.
A lot of construction is disrupting the accustomed stillness at the Sitagu Buddhist Vihara where I live, which will produce a pagoda, a Dhamma hall, many more cottages, and, my particular interest, a dedicated brick library building! There are some sketches HERE. I have for a few months undertaken to catalog our books and implement a check-out system, and growing out library. We will soon be a fully functional retreat center, for both meditation and retreat. Then the peace will return. The plan is that a very eminent Burmese meditation teacher will lead a long retreat here next May after the opening of the new pagoda. More about that later.
My new Uposatha series will be entitled “Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants.”
I have been posting Uposatha Day teachings weekly for almost a year and a half on this blog. I have decided at least temporarily to suspend this schedule. The primary reason is not to take a break from writing, but to put more energy into reworking and consolidating much of what I have written, which does not lend itself to producing weekly results.
However, if there is someone out there who has become addicted to my Uposatha Day postings and cannot manage without a weekly Dhamma fix from this particular pusher, please let me know. Maybe I can work something out, for instance, by posting reruns.
I intend to continue make frequent postings to this blog, just irregularly. I will continue to post episodes in the series “Through the Looking Glass: How I Became a Buddhist Monk.” I will also post anything I am reworking when it has settled back into a readable form. Some material will appear eventully as ebooks. I will probably also post some independent essays when I am so inspired. If anyone would like to post questions to my blog I will try to respond to them there.
If this literary output interests you I invite you to subscribe to my blog so that you will get email announcements when something new is posted. I also invite you to explore the contents of my Web site for old blog postings and other essays and, as of now, one ebook, “From Thought to Destiny.”
I am gratified that my weekly postings have been so well read and well received. I thank Michael Rickicki for discovering my blog at some point and starting to repost it to the Uposatha Day Observance Club on Facebook, and to many others who have posted links to it.