Category: Patipatti

Walking towards freedom

Here is a very beautiful description by the Buddha on the progressive stages a meditator goes through until he realizes Nirvana. It sheds some additional light on the progress of insight meditation which the later commentary literature called “insight-knowledges” or “vipassana nyana”….

A Dhamma rain shower – Mahamevnawa

2300 years ago emperor Ashoka‘s son, a Buddhist monk by the name of Mahinda, was sent to Sri Lanka to propagate the Buddha’s message  to the people of Sri Lanka. He met the king, who happened to be on a…

Understanding Vipassanā

Is the practice of vipassanā the application of viriya (energy), sati (mindfulness), samadhi (concentration) but only when it generates wisdom (paññā), more specifically ñāṇadassana (knowing and seeing)? Introduction The Sutta-Pitaka has a couple of texts which are not the word…

As pure as the full moon – Theory and Practice

[This story is part of our Arahant series.] Once, they say, the elder Mahāsīva of ‘Mountainpeak’ lived in the city of Mahagama, in Tissa’s Abbey. There, he taught eighteen groups of young monks in the three baskets – the traditional teachings…

The process of awakening

In the  “Group-Section” (Khandhasamyutta) of the Samyutta Nikaya numerous short suttas can be found which – if we squeeze them in the right manner – provide valuable information how a puthujjana (or unenlightened being) turns into an ariyapuggalo (an enlightened…

Mindfulness is not Sati?

Many people  (especially those who intensively try to put the Buddhas eightfold path into practice) have thought about the meaning of samma sati or “right mindfulness”. In fact, the meaning of this important aspect of Buddhist practice had troubled me…

Find the differences…

Found all the differences? Maybe now you know why there is no English translation of the Phusso Theragatha? v. 949 – 980. Hmmm…. The online versions of the Theragatha seem to ignore this interesting gatha. Seems like every monastic translator…

Are you a monk? – Consider only one duty left!

If you are a monk, i guess you do not read (online). But if you do, this text was written exactly for you 🙂 In 100 BC Buddhist monks faced a tough question: “Should we preferably memorize and thus keep…

Can you feel the sense stream’s drag?

There are a couple of instances in the Pitaka, where the Buddha compares our moment to moment experience (zoom out and you would call it “life”) with a swift river. In some similes he compares our journey from Samsara to…

Dassanabhumi – studies in context II

Continuing on where i stopped the other day, i was amazed to see the interpretation of the next line of the Sutta Nipata by our alleged Mahakaccayana: ‘‘Paññā ceva sati ca, Nāmarūpañca mārisa; Etaṃ me puṭṭho pabrūhi, katthetaṃ uparujjhatī’’ti. ‘‘Yametaṃ…