The Mahaparinibbana Sutta

Posted by & filed under Buddha's life, teachings.

I’ve posted the final sutta that we’ll be discussing, the Mahaparinibbana Sutta. This sutta, by far the longest in the Pali Canon, details the final days of the Buddha, covering the three-month journey that the Buddha and Ananda undertook, north from Rajagaha to the remote village of Kusinara, where the Buddha took his parinibbana, his final release of the last experience that bound him to this world of samsara, the experience of his physical body. The sutta, unlike any other in the Canon, has an historical structure; it is very moving, presenting a vivid picture of two old men, having accomplished much and having left much unaccomplished, making a long, painful, and difficult journey, working very hard as they went to make certain that the Dhamma was well-propounded and would endure after the Buddha’s death.

I’d like you, if you can find the time, to read the whole sutta, but I’ve marked the passages that I’d like to discuss in class, and added my gloss to those passages. The translation of the sutta that I’ve used is by Sister Vajira, a German nun, translated from the German and edited by Mr. Francis Story.

Despite the sutta’s length, I hope we can finish our discussion of it in time to devote the last half hour or 45 minutes of class to a general discussion of the experience we’ve shared over the past two months: the questions you came with, the questions you’re leaving with, the ways in which the class has changed the way you view Buddhism, the Buddha’s Dhamma, and your own experience of the world.

I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday.

Meditative Practice

Posted by & filed under meditation, practice, teachings.

The Buddha's understanding of how things unfold in this world was keen, comprehensive, and most persuasive, and his explication of that understanding throughout the discourses has a coherence and logical consistency that's unique among the world's spiritual traditions. But the Buddha was not a philosopher or a psychologist. The term that's very frequently used in the canonical texts to define his role is "healer" or "physician". The Buddha's doctrine is not simply an explanation of how things are but a diagnosis of how events emerge in the world, an analysis of what creates the anxiety, dissatisfaction, suffering that we experience in dealing with those events, and a prescription for a path of practice that will ameliorate or even end that experience of suffering. Meditating BuddhaTo be a Buddhist is not to "believe in" Buddhist doctrine, but to practice the Buddhadhamma, the Path that the Buddha defined, the end of which is the end of suffering. Throughout the discourses, the Buddha gave quite detailed instructions regarding that path, and how to follow it. The most comprehensive teaching regarding the meditative practice that he prescribed is the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. In that discourse, the Buddha covers one type of meditative practice, the practice of "mindfulness", sati in Pali; he describes a series of steps whereby a bhikkhu (or, presumably,