Do you have a favorite passage in the Suttapitaka?…Difficult question, there are so many gems. But this one is really special, IMHO. It’s a ZEN Masters dream come true in the Pali canon: ‘Tasmātiha te, bāhiya, evaṃ sikkhitabbaṃ – ‘diṭṭhe…
How do the 4 jhana and 4 arupa jhana they relate? You could say that the 4 arupa jhanas are a “modification on the topic” of the fourth jhana or a “variation on the same theme”. They bear its characteristics…
Some people face these questions: My day to day life doesn’t allow me to meditate at all. I have the feeling that i do not progress in my meditation. The retreat was fine, but now all the calmness and serenity…
Found this very nice Chinese film about the story of Bodhidharma: Bodhidharma (11 parts) The legend of Bodhidharma is a wonderful founding story for Zen a la Chan a la Dhyana a la “Jhana Buddhism”. But in the time of…
the following is an email i answered with regard to the last blog entry on the vipassana knowledges. I thought that many people might have the same reservations and would like to share with you my take on this: Well,…
A Howto: Go to a secluded place Close eyes take up a meditation topic and concentrate, for example on breathing in and out. Repeat ONE thought bringing back the mind and trying to “establish” it on this one topic implied…
… If you want to search through the Buddhist Pali Canon in English you can use this Google custom search: search.nibbanam.com This is like a Meta Search Engine: Many of the big online sutta repositories complement each other. Using this…
Tonight i launched a new webpages/services on nibbanam.com. It’s in a custom Google search for all Buddhist Pali Canon translations in German – something which i had in mind for a long time. I was using site:palikanon.com quite too often…
I just found this very interesting letter by Hans Gruber in the Asian Tribune (June 8, 2007) regarding a controversy around the Venerable Nyanatiloka Mahathera. The observation made by Gruber in the following few lines are very notable. I think…