This month we’ve added three new bibliographies on:
Together, they contain hundreds of free items on Mahāyāna Buddhism from books to films, so check those links out if you’re interested in learning more about Buddhism in those countries.
And even if (especially if!) you’re not interested, I’d still recommend you listen to this podcast by a Japanese priest explaining why we value Buddhism’s religious forms.
And even if you’re not especially interested in Tibetan Buddhism, you may still want to listen to this 4-minute audio cut summarizing one scholar’s take on the Tibetan “Tulkus” (reincarnated lamas).
And even if don’t care about Korean Buddhism per se, the history of Korea’s stigma against renunciants demonstrates for us all how even modern, “secular” forms of Buddhism depend upon a healthy monastic saṅgha.
In addition to our sections on Buddhist topics, OBU is also striving to advance understanding of our world by sharing links to free, secular, educational material. To that end, this month I am also proud to announce a new section of our library on the history of
Yes. Just “things”: how humans use the material of the environment for our own ends and and how to think about sustainability.
To highlight just one striking example I learned while putting together this bibliography:
Did you know that burning fossil fuels creates 100000x times more heat from its greenhouse gas effects than it does from the immediate fire? I can never burn a paraffin wax candle again without imagining its heat multiplied a hundred-thousand times!
To learn lots more about the stuff of our world, check out the whole bibliography at the link above.
The eagle-eyed among you will no doubt be wondering…
Wait. Where is the section on Chinese Mahāyāna?
Good question, hypothetical reader!
As Chinese Buddhism is such a large topic, we’ve decided to split it up into multiple (oo!) new library sections… which we will be adding sometime next year. So, stay tuned for that!
But, to hold over all you Sinophiles until then, here is a beautiful documentary about the hermits of the Zhongnan Mountains which is well worth a (re)watch this holiday season!
Wishing you a new year filled with 🪶 hope 🪶.
Your librarian,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
The Open Buddhist University
This month we’ve added four new bibliographies on:
On each page you’ll find a mix of books, papers, and talks covering that country’s unique religious history and how it came to shape the doctrines and flavors that Buddhism took in each.
For example, this medieval, Pāli chant put the recollections of the Buddha, friendliness, unattractiveness, and death at the center of monastic practice across the Theravāda world. You might argue that those recollections were already present in Theravāda’s earliest texts and they certainly were. But we make history by walking. And each generation of Dhamma teachers decides which Dhammas to emphasize and their own way of teaching them.
And to help advance understanding of our multicultural world, this month OBU is also proud to launch two, new, secular sections on:
With governments around the world failing in their responses to the global refugee crisis and people everywhere wondering how to respond to rising tyranny, and how to act out their gloom, I think it’s more important than ever for us Buddhists, Śrāvakas and Bodhisattvas, to embody the ideal of “Good Spiritual Friendship”.
Our Karma is not just incidentally interpersonal. In Saṃsāra, there is no escaping living in dependence on each other: even at the South Pole, let alone Mars. So, let us choose to live together, as best as we can, in friendliness and in grace.
Wishing you happiness and good company until next time,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian at the Open Buddhist University
Buddhism sees animals as fellow living beings to be treated with sympathy and compassion for their unfortunate circumstance. We see ourselves in animals both because they, like us, are composed of the four great elements and the five aggregates but also because we Buddhists believe that we have been animals too in countless previous lives.
Our new bibliography on Buddhism and Animals explores these themes and the many ethical, philosophical, and practical questions that arrise when we take animals seriously as “future Buddhas” in their own right.
The Jātaka Tales, of course, are the starting point for that discourse, as they tell of the many past lives of the Buddha in which he was an animal.
Together with the Avadānas about the Buddha’s disciples and the Petavatthu about rebirth in the ghost realms, ancient Buddhist tales offer a rich tapestry of stories about Saṃsāra and our strange lives within it, as Bhante Sujato explains in his excellent, short lecture series on Buddhist Mythology.
In addition to the mythical, the Pāli Khuddakanikāya also contains several poetry collections:
On the above, new pages you’ll find high-quality translations of each collection along with some scholarly analysis and lectures as well. I hope you enjoy them!
Lastly, we’re proud to announce today the addition of a collection of resources on the human body. You might start with this article on what every meditator should know about the physiology of breathing, but the whole bibliography is full of valuable information for anyone with a body.
I hope you’ll have time this holiday season to check these (or our previous offerings) out and, of course, to relax and deepen your practice as well.
Wishing you all the best in the New Year,
Your Librarian,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
The Bibliography: Medieval Buddhism
We can roughly divide the history of Buddhism into three periods: its early growth in India, its spread across Asia, and finally its global spread West in the modern era. This new section of our library delves deeper into those middle ages where Buddhism spread across the Silk Roads and split into the many varieties we know today.
Where to start
The works listed there cover many critical topics, such as the entanglements and innovations in Buddhist Art and the role of medical knowledge in Buddhism’s spread. But here I especially would like to highlight:
The Bibliography: The History of the Theravāda
Many interesting episodes in the medieval history of “Southern Buddhism.”
Where to start
The bibliography focuses largely on the Pāli texts and the sometimes surprising politics surrounding them.
The Bibliographies: Rebirth Stories and Canonical Poetry and Abhidhamma Studies
For those interested in just diving right into the Pāli texts themselves, we’re pleased to now provide two bibliographies on the Khuddakanikāya and one on the Abhidhamma Piṭaka.
The Khuddakanikāya can roughly be divided into two parts: poetry collections and rebirth stories. The former are generally considered “early” and the latter “later” additions to the Canon, and thus the separation of the Kn into two different bibliographies. You can look forward to more on the Kn later this year!
The Abhidhamma bibliography, by (surprisingly!) popular demand, has also been added, mixing together the canonical books with some of their exegetical works as well and rounding off our coverage of the Pāli Canon!
Where to start
Here I’d especially like to highlight a new project over at ReadingFaithfully to create:
The Bibliographies: Media Studies and The Intellect
In today’s ever-connected world, media literacy is more important than ever. I’m happy to announce today the launch of two new sections of our library on the general (secular) philosophy of mind as well as on how different mediums affect us.
Where to start
Opting out of the “attention economy” isn’t easy. For those who are going into seclusion for the next three months, I salute you! 🙏 And for everyone else, I hope that you’re able to find some refuge and peace this vassa as well. 😊
And, just in case it isn’t peaceful and safe, here are a few first-aid tips from the Red Cross worth reviewing which I sincerely hope don’t come in handy for you!!
Wishing you the very best this Rains,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian
The Buddha’s “Law of Karma” is simple in its basic formulation. The Buddha guaranteed karma’s moral directionality, thus:
It is impossible, it never happens, that a wished-for, desired and agreeable result should come of bad conduct […] It is impossible, it never happens, that an unwished-for, undesired and disagreeable result should come of good conduct ~ MN 115
And the Buddha also encourages us to “frequently recollect” our intimate relationship with our actions:
Kammassakomhi, [I own my actions]
Kamma-dāyādo [I am the heir to my actions] ~ AN 10.48
But working out precisely how karma works is “unthinkably” complex, as
anyone who tries to conjecture about the results of deeds will go mad or get frustrated. ~ AN 4.77
But, while we cannot understand the full complexity of karma, we can strive to better understand what the Buddha taught. For example, this article traces the wider cultural resonances behind the Pāli word ‘dāyādo’ giving us a more nuanced appreciation of that one line of chanting above.
I hope that this and the other free books, talks, suttas, and more that we’ve put together in our new bibliography will help you make sense of this “imponderable” philosophy—without driving you mad!
Over the ages, Buddhists have discussed many such subtle points of their doctrine as this with each other. These discussions form one way of viewing the arc of Buddhist history.
For that version of the story of Buddhism, you could certainly do worse than reading Kalupahana’s History of Buddhist Philosophy which strikes a refreshing balance between the early and later Buddhist perspectives, giving an excellent overview of its titular subject.
And in the rest of our bibliography on Buddhist dialogue, you’ll find a variety of other instructive and interesting topics in Buddhist philosophy which continue to shape the religion today.
And for the larger arc of human history, I’m pleased to share with you a new bibliography on “Time”.
There you will find a mix of books about history along with works on the philosophy of time and the science of history, such as this fascinating paper on why people have always felt that the world is getting worse.
Regardless of whether the world truly is getting worse or not, however, I do hope that you and I will continue to progress in the Dhamma together.
Until next “time”…
Your Librarian,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
The first three sections are subtopics exploring different facets of Right View and “Communication” further extends our library’s coverage of practical, secular topics.
I’m especially pleased to introduce you to three of my favorite works on the true meaning of Emptiness (Śūnyatā):
All the works here (but especially these three) have been impactful on my learning and practice, and I hope you will find them useful as well.
Wishing you all success in your own spiritual journey,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Librarian @ OBU
Right Effort [link]:
A collection of talks and suttas to help inspire you when you’re facing difficulties and challenges in your practice, such as this classic talk by Ajahn Chah delivered to a man on his deathbed.
Right Mindfulness [link]:
A collection of suttas and writings on what sati really is and how “remembering” the dhamma leads to success in meditation, such as this classic book on meditation by Ajahn Mahabua.
and Right Concentration [link]:
A collection on what samadhi is and can be, including, for example, this fascinating pair of essays on what absorption may say about “normal” psychology.
And lastly, in case those aren’t enough to inspire your practice, here is a reminder of what is coming in the future…
May we all work out our salvation with dilligence!
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian @ OBU
Dear fellow students,
With September fast upon us it is already “Back to School Season” and here at OBU we’re celebrating the start of the school year with five (!) new bibliographies on Buddhist Philosophy and our shared, human world.
Right View
Right View is the perspective conducive to liberation which is the cornerstone of Buddhist Philosophy. Nāgārjuna is largely considered Buddhism’s greatest philosopher so I’m excited to share with you this accessible selection of verses from his main treatise as an entry point to his profound wisdom.
Right Thought
Right Thought is the quality of discernment which amplifies the good within us while wearing away the unwholesome. This talk by Ajahn Jayasaro is an excellent introduction to the role of “skillful desires” in “getting somewhere” with our practice.
The Human World
In building out OBU’s worldly collections, I’ve decided to divide up the immense subject into three basic categories:
This split was based largely on the Buddha’s division of Karma into the spheres of the Mind, Speech, and Body, but my thinking here was also partly inspired by Ken Wilber’s “Integral” metatheory.
It is my hope that these new offerings will help you hear the sound of love as you navigate the world of men.
Until we meet again: besaydoo!
~ Khemarato Bhikkhu
Librarian @ the Open Buddhist University
Dear fellow students,
Happy Vesak!
Vesak is the annual, Buddhist holiday in which we celebrate the life of the Buddha: his birth, enlightenment and final quenching. Lay Buddhists (and monastics alike) may take this day as an opportunity to recommit themselves to the ethical precepts, rekindle or extend their meditation practice, listen to or read some words of Dharma, or maybe even visit their local, Buddhist temple.
The holiday is typically celebrated on the full moon of May, but it seems that, this year, Thailand is even more “behind the times” than usual: we’re finally celebrating Vesak today!
So, whether you’re as slow as we are or have celebrated Vesak already, I’d like to wish you a Happy Vesak and to offer you a new section of our library dedicated to:
The Buddhist Attitude towards Nature
In it you’ll find a variety of essays, suttas, and talks to help you think through and learn about how Buddhists relate to the natural world and perhaps the works there may even inspire you to get Back to Nature yourself! (Yes, that’s a Dhamma talk link;)
Other Offerings
So far this calendar year OBU has also added over 200 other new items to our existing library and I’d like to share five of them here:
Particularly charming to me was Trent Walker’s thesis on the ethereally beautiful Cambodian Dharma Song tradition which he’s called “Stirring and Stilling” after his translation of samvega and pasada. Not only does his website contain recordings of the traditional, Cambodian performances, but it even includes his own rendition of the songs in English!
Chanting
For those keen to start their own daily chanting practice in the Theravāda tradition, Dhamma Puja offers an online “karaoke” version of the Abhayagiri daily chants in Pali and English which you may find supportive. Daily chanting, especially upon waking up and before bed, can do a lot to set the mind in the right direction, and it’s no wonder that it’s been a staple of monastic life for centuries.
Vinaya
To continue practice even into sleep itself, Ann Heirman has this article on monastic sleep regulations which is surprisingly inspiring, demonstrating well how the Vinaya is better thought of as a spiritual aid than as a set of “laws”.
The World
Indeed, even the worldly legal system may be thought of as codifying our collective aspirations, and it was with this in mind that I recently (actually) read The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We have a long way to go before its ambitions are realized, but it’s moving to know that (at least on paper) the governments of the world were able to come together and agree, “wouldn’t it be nice if…”
It gives me hope to see so many people coming together to celebrate what is “worthy of respect” and I hope you’ll join me this Vesak in praying for a bright future for us all.
Wishing you all the peace and happiness of Nibbāna this full moon night,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian @ OBU
There you’ll find books and papers about Pāli along with a suite of helpful tools, including a selection of Pāli Dictionaries containing, among all the classics, an exciting new grammar app just published this year: The Digital Pāḷi Dictionary. If you’re a student of Pāli struggling with declension charts, I recommend checking it out!
This month I’ve also continued to make small technical improvements across the site and add many new items to the library, such as this course on the history of Eastern Europe and this essay by Bhante Sujato on the karma of “just” war—both written in response to Russia’s (ongoing) invasion of Ukraine this year.
In fact, we’ve added so much this year that our library now has over 2000 items! A big thank-you to all the publishers and authors who’ve made this milestone possible through their generous offerings.
If you’d like to stay informed about all our new arrivals, subscribe to one of our RSS feeds or follow OBU on Mastodon where we’ll be “tooting” updates now that we’ve moved off of Twitter.
As the old year draws to a close, I hope that the coming year will be a good year for everyone.
And thank you, as always, for all the kindness and support in 2022.
Wishing You a Most Happy 2023
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian @ The Open Buddhist University
The new Nuns’ page contains a number of works covering unordained forms of renunciation as well as highlighting the reformers who are “fighting” the patriarchy to reestablish full ordination for women.
The story of how the Dhamma came West is probably best exemplified by The Chithurst Story, in which one man’s sincere intention and faith led to the founding of England’s first forest monastery. The importance of individual efforts is also highlighted in Bhante Dhammika’s profile of Mary Foster: an unsung supporter of Anagarika Dhammapala, who, for his part, did much to advance the position of Buddhism by appealing to American and British Protestant sensibilities.
Thanks to early advocates like them, Buddhism is still seen as an anodyne, positive influence in the West today, though that view often whitewashes the contributions of Asians in the West. In her poem, “A Year Dot”, dg nanouk okpik addresses that gap by beautifully paying homage to one of her own Asian-American teachers.
And, yes, all of the above links are highly recommended! So go check them out!
I hope this summer/rains treated you kindly and I’m happy to welcome you back to OBU for the 2022/23 school year.
If you’d like to have a short sutta delivered to your inbox every day this term, sign up for the Daily Sutta Readings from our friends over at ReadingFaithfully. The theme for November will be “generosity,” about which Dogen instructs the cook:
Putting the mind of the Way to work, serve
Respectfully yours,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian at The Open Buddhist University
Together, they represent the main focus of Buddhist meditation: on calm abiding and the development of wisdom.
While separated here, they obviously support each other, because “to contend seriously with a problem, you first have to let it in,” as a brilliant podcast episode on climate change recently worded it. And that “letting in” requires mindfulness.
But despite the urgency of change (in ourselves and in our world), we need not shoulder everything alone. Despite its quiescent reputation, Buddhist meditation is a social-emotional education system.
John Paul Martinez’s poem “To Offer Sweet Fruit to the Ghost” was featured in a beautiful episode of The Slowdown recently. In his poem, Martinez shows how Buddhist “superstitions” can be a powerful form of connection and meaning in difficult times—even when they are hard for the Western-educated to accept:
Ma says not to swat at the housefly
chirring in our headspace
for the past two hours
because it just might be you.
…
You can read or listen to the rest of the poem here or find hundreds of other poems, podcasts, papers, and a potpourri of other precious pieces at our website: BuddhistUniversity.net
As always, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to email me,
Your librarian,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
While the Vajrayāna is famous for its “magic,” there is also a long history of “spells” in East Asian Buddhism, as Ryan Overbey explains in “The Meaning and Function of Dhāraṇī Language”.
But the real heart of the Mahāyāna tradition is that just as:
Apart from water there is no ice;
Apart from beings, [there is] no Buddha.
How sad that people ignore the near
And search for truth afar
You can read the rest of Hakuin’s Song of Zazen along with dozens of other pieces on the history, theory and practice of the Mahāyāna now online at the buddhistuniversity.net.
阿彌陀佛!
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian @ The Open Buddhist University
A classic, 1970s documentary about the monks at Ajahn Chah’s forest monastery in Thailand.
An American woman raised in a Buddhist commune reimagines what childhood could be in the post-modern West.
The images in this glossy art book serve well as inspiration, but the book is also a superb introduction to the history of the Mahāyāna.
A conversation about depression and human frailty and the political implications of our mortality.
An enthusiastically personal textbook about how to live in an interconnected, multicultural world.
To stay up-to-date on all the new additions to the library, don’t forget that you can subscribe to any of our content RSS feeds.
And if there are any topics you’d like to see more about in the future, or if you have any other feedback on the site, please email me any time.
Wishing you all the best in your Dharma journey,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian @ The Open Buddhist University
The Majjhima Nikāya course on this site had previously contained only Bhikkhu Bodhi’s lectures through 2010 which were hosted at the Bodhi monastery website. A “part 11” (from 2010–2015) covering the suttas not covered in the first 10 sections, however, exists on YouTube and can now be found on this website too.
And after thirteen years (!) of lecturing on the Majjhima Nikāya, Bhikkhu Bodhi decided to continue his sutta study classes by going through the Aṅguttara Nikāya: a series which is still on-going today. You can follow that course on YouTube here.
Many thanks to the eagle-eyed Redditor who pointed these links out to me and to everyone else who gave feedback on the website recently. The new, bolder color scheme unveiled this month was also based on your suggestions, so thank you all again and please keep them coming!
As always, you can find me over at SuttaCentral… where occasionally the content is as good as any you’ll find in a prestigious journal:
… some see in viññāṇa anidassana a kind of consciousness essentially equal to nibbāna. But there are many problems with this
Your friendly librarian,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
As this rainy season ends, OBU sees a number of new pieces added to our existing collections, including some films and a few old JPTS articles.
You can see the entire list of new content by subscribing to our new content RSS Feeds which will notify you when any new content is added to the library. For a primer on getting started with RSS, see the Wiki on SuttaCentral and if you have any questions, please ask in the comments there.
Of all the new content added over the last few months, I’d especially like to recommend the following, absolutely captivating, pieces which give windows into a few, remote, Buddhist cultures:
… what was the religious environment that encouraged the spread of the new technology of printing in late seventh century China?
A young teacher is assigned to Bhutan’s most remote school.
… it appears contradictory that Chinese who follow the teachings of Mahāyāna Buddhism have worshipped arhats. […] who was the arhat for Chinese Buddhists?
“A monastery is a place where equality is preached but not practiced; a gar is a place where equality is practiced but not preached.”
I’d also like to highlight these beautiful answers to a few of the most commonly asked questions I see about Buddhist theory:
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the MNS has provided the historical starting-point as well as the chief scriptural basis for enquiry into the problem of the Buddha-nature in China, and it would be difficult if not impossible to grasp the significance of the concept and its subsequent evolution in Chinese Buddhism without a proper understanding of the teaching of the MNS on the subject.
The four toraṇas, or gateways, [put] the stūpa, symbolically, at the place where four roads meet, as is specified in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta.
An encyclopedic overview of the various kinds of samādhi and their place on the path.
As a result of seeing the truth of how craving leads to suffering, we have a moment where our minds cease all craving and release us from the incessant arising of experience
I found the above extremely helpful and interesting and I hope that you will too!
As always, if you have any questions or comments feel free to email me and thanks for subscribing.
With much metta,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian
It takes a sympathetic but critical look at the modernist movement, starting with the methodological problem of defining “Engaged Buddhism” in the first place. The bibliography then highlights several examples of Engaged Buddhists doing real good as well as a few, more problematic examples. In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether Engaged or “Disengaged” Buddhism is right for you, but I hope that you’ll at least find the topic as thought-provoking and engaging as I have!
I’ve also been busy this month making backend improvements to the site. You may notice that the content pages load a little faster now, and that the “www.” is now gone from the front of our URLs. I also identified and fixed a number of broken links around the website: If you ran into one of them before, please accept my apologies about that! Hopefully they will be less frequent in the future.
Lastly, I plan to spend the upcoming rains retreat almost entirely in seclusion away from the internet, so please anticipate that future updates will be less frequent. Thank you as ever for your kind support.
All the best until next time,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian
There’s a lot of great scholarly content in the new bibliographies this month, so I encourage you (really!) to go and check them out. I won’t list every exciting thing here today, but I did want to highlight some work by four of my favorite Bhikkhu teachers:
Lastly, this month marks a special milestone for the University. It was exactly one year ago yesterday that I first launched the University library with the goal of providing thousands of free books, articles, and talks across the breadth of Buddhist Studies. One year later, we now have over 1000 pieces, covering everything from the Agamas to the Vinaya, from the Buddha to the World and in that year, over a thousand scholars from 67 countries have come and downloaded an average of seven items each.1 It means a lot to me to see that so many people are interested in learning authentic Buddhism and want to keep the Dhamma as it always has been: free. Thank you for coming and studying with us, and I hope you will find the University a helpful resource for years to come.
Looking to the future, there’s still much to do to bring greater depth to the University’s offerings. I look forward to delving deeper into Buddhist philosophy and history in the coming years, but I especially look forward to hearing your ideas about where the University could go from here. If you have any ideas, feel free to drop me a line, and until then: Thank you for reading!
Yours sincerely,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Chief Librarian, The Open Buddhist University
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Among the many interesting and compelling characters in the canon, I’ll just highlight one here: Jīvaka. Not only is his story charming as a tale, but you can now read the original telling thanks to Ajahn Brahmali’s new translation of the Vinaya Piṭaka which just dropped this month on SuttaCentral. A huge congratulations to him and the SuttaCentral team for launching the latest update to their site, and a huge encouragement to you, dear reader, to go and check it out!
In Buddha’s India, I’ve highlighted works that help explain the social world that the Buddha was born into and how he transformed it. This is especially visible in how Buddhism adopted and adapted legendary beings from the local culture. Bhante Sujato’s talk about the Buddhist adoption of “Evil Creatures” and Linda Covill’s article on the adaptation of “Celestial Nymphs” are both especially inspiring examples of how skillfully this was done.
Buddhism itself, of course, also adapted in the centuries since its founder. Considering the diversity of early Buddhist schools, it may be tempting to project the current diversity of Buddhism back onto ancient India, but Florin Deleanu points out that this may be mistaken in his excellent overview of the Śrāvakabhūmi, a meditation manual preserved by a Mahayana school which closely parallels the Visuddhimagga. The differences are minor, but telling.
There is more to say about Indian Buddhism, of course, but I’ll save some for next month. So, for now, I’ll just leave you with this fascinating Chemical History of a Candle: one of my favorite science videos on YouTube. Not related to anything, just thought I’d share :_)
If you have any videos, articles, feedback or anything else you’d like to share, as always, feel free to drop me a line. Until then,
Your Librarian,
Bhante Khemarato
Somewhat complicating “The Canon,” Anne Blackburn, for example, encourages us to think about its “practical” subset and Ajahn Geoff highlights a few conflicts between The Canon and its commentaries in his extensive, and highly recommended, guide to the Vinaya. The bibliography here aims to help (primarily monastics) make use of the texts.
On the meditation side, in addition to the profound lectures by Bhikkhu Analayo in the aforementioned course, I am also very excited this month to share with you this classic talk on impermanence by Ayya Khema which beautifully summarizes the path of Vipassana Meditation. A real gem, be sure to give it a listen and check out our library’s other great talks!
As always, if you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to email them in! And until next time,
Best wishes,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
The Librarian
The biggest news is that, thanks to a generous supporter, the website now has a proper domain: buddhistuniversity.net! The other technical improvement this month was the addition of a search page, where you can now plumb the depths of our archives like a pro! Expect more design improvements in the next couple weeks, as we continue to make ourselves at home.
In terms of content, The University is now proud to offer a new course on the Buddha in the Pāli Texts featuring a couple new PDFs about the Buddha from Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Ānandajoti released just a few weeks ago (!) along with this classic paper by Bhikkhu Anālayo attempting to reconstruct a sensible version of the Bhikkhuni Order formation narrative.
Over at the library, Rober Mayer explains why Tibetan Treasure literature may not be as innovative as you’d imagine, Jorie Graham catches sight of the now, Ezra Klein talks about the most important book he read last year with its author, and Helena de Bres explains the moral case for eating local food. Be sure to check them out!
As always, you can email me (now at a shiny new email address!) with any comments, questions, concerns, or compliments you may have.
Until next month,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Librarian in Chief
But first, the courses!
This month I’ve added three new courses on the primary languages of the Early Buddhist Texts: Chinese and Pāli.
Chinese Buddhist Writing is a course for Buddhists with some prior knowledge of Mandarin (or who are willing to hussle to get those fundamentals elsewhere) who would like help reading Chinese Buddhist scriptures. This course goes character-by-character through the different strata of Chinese texts, giving a comprehensive introduction to Buddhist Chinese from ancient Indian translations to esoteric treatises.
The Pāli Primer Course is a fun introduction to the Pāli Language for everyone, and for those who have some background already, the intermediate Pāli course will get you into the suttas themselves. Both classes are taught by the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi.
In case it’s helpful to academics, I’ve added the Bibtex information for all the items in the library to the bottom of each piece’s permalink page. And for those who use bibliographic software, like JabRef, you can now download the entire library as a single .bib file for importing into your reference manager of choice, here.
And, on a more serious note, 2020 has been a year.
With wildfires and a pandemic raging across the globe, it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of such large problems. But there are things we can do and, with your indulgence, I’d like to talk about four of them here:
The Life You Can Save – Peter Singer
Sexual Consent – Milena Popova (.pdf) (.epub)
Should Trees Have Standing: Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects – Christopher D. Stone (.pdf)
Wishing you a happy and most auspicious new year,
圖書管理員
Khemarato Bhikkhu
Normally these digests would wait until the end of the month to come out, but this month I can’t wait to share with you what I’ve been working on! Today, I add six courses to the University curriculum on:
The new course catalog now contains ten Undergrad-level courses, representing over a year’s worth of full-time study and bringing us a large step closer to the University’s goal of providing a free education in Buddhist Studies.
If there’s anything you’d like to contribute towards that vision, from design or technical help to content or feature suggestions, please feel free to email me about it any time. The University wouldn’t exist without your gracious support and encouragement, so thank you for your kindness and enthusiasm this year and I hope you (continue to) enjoy your time here at OBU.
Sincerely,
~ Than Khemarato
From the South, I’d like to highlight:
… teachings from twelve of the greatest masters and monasteries in the Theravāda tradition
This classic book on insight meditation introduced the West to the Theravāda Tradition of Southeast Asia and launched the career of not only its author, but also many of his readers who subsequently sought out, learned from, and carried on the tradition of these venerable masters.
It’s basically impossible to understand modern Theravāda Buddhism without being familiar with at least most of the teachers featured in this outstanding book, but its value isn’t strictly historical as the wisdom and advice it contains is invaluable not just to scholars but also to any serious meditator intent on realizing the fruits of insight practice.
Bhikkhus, before my enlightenment, while I was still only an unenlightened Bodhisatta, I too, being myself subject to birth, sought what was also subject to birth
The Buddha’s own spiritual autobiography, from searching to finding true deliverance.
To understand Buddhism, one must understand the tension between the knowledge of impermanence and the love of the Dharma. This sense of loss has defined Buddhism from the Buddha’s Parinirvana through to the present day.
In this illuminating interview, we see how this meme of the declining Dhamma gave rise to particular responses among Burmese Buddhists to British Colonialism and how those reactions helped to birth modern Buddhism.
From the Northern schools of Buddhism, this month saw the addition of these two Tibetan gems:
You might wish to drink the nectar of calm abiding…
… the time for discovering Buddha directly, you must remain alone
A short poem on overcoming our barriers and sticking to the practice.
And lastly, I wanted to share with you this sutta, which both traditions will agree is worth reading again and again:
I have taught the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas.
In this famous and much-celebrated sutta, the Buddha teaches how to properly grasp Buddhist philosophy so as not to lead to more suffering.
As always, if you find any typos or problems with the site, have any questions or just want to say hi, feel free to drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you.
Happy reading!
~ The Librarian
Than Khemarato
In particular, I’d like to highlight this free anthology of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s Majjhima Nikāya translations along with Bhikkhu Analayo’s thorough comparative analysis of the Majjhima Nikāya both of which are jewels of contemporary scholarship.
I’d also like to highlight a few beautiful poems which I’ve added to the library this month:
Forget you. This is about waiting
I give you back 1948.
… indeed there is no thing there
I hope you enjoy them as much as I have and, as always, feel free to email me with any questions or comments you may have.
Best wishes,
The Librarian
Khemarato Bhikkhu
The canonical explication of the monastic rules.
As well as this anthology of stories about the Buddha’s disciples:
Just as the sun is valued not only for its own intrinsic radiance but also for its ability to illuminate the world, so the brilliance of the Buddha is determined not only by the clarity of his Teaching but by his ability to illuminate those who came to him for refuge
The Buddha’s first generation of followers established the traditions and values of the early Sangha. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to understand Buddhism without understanding the lives of the early Buddhist saints. This rich and inspiring series of biographies edited by Bhikkhu Bodhi mainly draws from the traditional commentaries of the Theravāda tradition and so provides an excellent balance between readability and faithfulness to the source material. A must read for all students of Buddhism.
But, in addition to the usual Buddhist stuff, this month also saw the addition of a new tag on The (Human) World featuring miscellaneous favorites of mine, such as:
To be female is to have the dukkha of a female. To be male is to have the dukkha of a male. […] If we deludedly think ‘I am happy’ then we must suffer accordingly.
In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of previously unknown and unchronicled folk … and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth
Insofar as it disintegrates, it is called the ‘world.’
One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end.
As with all the tags, if there’s any favorite of yours missing, I’d love to hear about them! Feel free to email suggestions or accolades any time.
Until then, or next time,
Best wishes,
Than Khemarato
The Librarian
I’m especially happy to finally share with you:
The Purpose of Practicing Meditation – Mahāsi Sayadaw (.epub)
Aṅguttara Nikāya Anthology – Ven. Nyanaponika Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi (.pdf) (.pdf)
A classic translation of the primary book of poetry from the Pāli Canon.
An extremely profound and exceptionally rare book, Arahattamagga gives an unfiltered first-hand account of what it’s actually like to walk the entire Path—from its tumultuous beginning to its extraordinary finish.
the Buddha himself rarely smiles in the Canon, and when he does, the reasons for his smile are never hilarious. Still, the Canon’s reputation for being devoid of humor is undeserved. It’s there in the Canon, but it often goes unrecognized.
All classics, which I recommend most highly to any serious student—along with the rest of the library, of course, which remains open 7 days a week (regardless of Covid-19).
As always, feel free to email any questions or comments you may have.
Best wishes,
Your friendly librarian
Than Khemarato
It might strike some as odd that a site about Buddhism could exist for months without a section on meditation, yet for as pivotal a psychotechnology as meditation is, it is also a rather contentious and challenging topic to teach—especially over the internet. While far from the final word on the subject, the bibliography here should provide a good starting point for the study and practice of meditation. And while far from complete, the reading list already contains some of my favorite talks, articles, and songs (!) which I highly recommend you check out:
It’s interesting to walk through the graveyards of towns, and see that for the first few years after a person dies there may be a head stone, maybe someone remembers, but after twenty, thirty, or forty years, they could bulldoze the graves because the land is so valuable and plant somebody else in there. So even your head stone just crumbles to dust. All record of you living here is gone, because no one remembers who you were or what you did. Isn’t that beautiful? So why not do that right now? Bulldoze this idea of who you are
We, moderns but especially Americans, have a fundamental misunderstanding of cognitive development: we assume that higher-level functioning is always desired and so disparage and neglect fundamental cognitive skills.
A beautiful music video about the passing of time.
My most highly recommended introduction to Buddhist meditation.
An engaging lecture at Spirit Rock on using text critical methods and personal practice to narrow in on an understanding of early Buddhist meditation practices.
An incredible music video, perfectly capturing the world-weary feeling of saṃvega.
A heartfelt and spellbinding talk on meditation practice and expectations.
… the common interpretation of the jhānas as absorption-concentration attainments [is] incompatible with the teachings of the Pāli Nikāyas. […] one attains the jhānas, not by one-pointed concentration and absorption into a meditation object, but by releasing and letting go of the foothold of the unwholesome mind […] the entrance into the first jhāna is the actualization and embodiment of insight practice.
Handicapped and at-risk Vietnamese youths share their appreciation of and enthusiasm for a mindfulness meditation course.
Wishing you a peaceful and productive meditation practice,
Than Khemarato
The Librarian
There’s a lot of good stuff there to check out, but here are a few especially nice flowers just for you:
Subha Bhikkhuni finds a creative solution to sexual harassment.
Venerable Shariputra explains five ways to quell anger through wise attention, giving five memorable similes on being determined to find the good in everyone.
Featured in the course, " Nibbāna: The Goal of Buddhist Practice"
A fascinating series of open letters between Ajahn Geoff and Bhikkhu Bodhi on the subject of “just war.”
Mendicants, these seven perceptions, when developed and cultivated, are very fruitful and beneficial. They culminate in the deathless and end with the deathless. What seven? The perceptions of ugliness, death, repulsiveness of food, dissatisfaction with the whole world, impermanence, suffering in impermanence, and not-self in suffering.
… someone is a sequence of choices, and the question is: Will my next choice be conscious, and will my ability to make it be unfettered?
I hope you enjoy the bouquet!
Yours etc,
The Librarian
Lots of new content has been added to fill those bibliographies, so check them out! In particular I’m excited to share with you:
And last, but certainly not least, I am very excited to share with you this profound interview with Professor Charles Hallisey which has been added to Buddhism and the Early Buddhist Texts.
I hope you enjoy this month’s arrivals and, as always, feel free to email me with any thoughts or questions you might have.
Yours etc,
The Librarian
Than Khemarato
As you may have noticed, there are two primary ways to study here: taking our courses or hanging out at the library.
The library contains all the best content I’ve found for learning about Buddhism. Every piece featured in the bibliographies has been vetted for both accuracy and relevance.
For a video tour of the website, click here!
As I slowly review and add more content, I highlight the best finds here as well as in the email newsletter, so be sure to subscribe for the best free content on Buddhism available online.
Here are a few of my favorite pieces you might want to check out first, if you haven’t already:
In this beautiful letter to a friend, Thay offers practical advice and encouragement to cultivate mindfulness: the quality of presence and wakefulness in our life. From washing the dishes to answering the phone, he reminds us that each moment holds within it the seeds of understanding and peace.
In this essay, Judith Shklar (not a Buddhist) ponders the implications of placing cruelty first (as the Buddha did). She shows how this position stands at odds with both Christian piety and neoliberal apathy and carves out a more realistic humanism than either extreme.
On separating out early from later Buddhism and why it matters.
Ajahn Geoff explains how the monastic institution works by creating an economy of gifts.
Who was the Buddha in his own words? In this story, he calls himself the “Tathagata” or “Truth-Arriver”, and he responds to a question on what will become of him after his death. The Buddha explains that he doesn’t talk in such terms, as he has overcome all such notions as “I am the body” or “I am the mind” so how could such a question ever be answered? He ends the discourse by famously saying that all he teaches is suffering and the end of suffering, thus redirecting our attention from empty philosophical musings to the things that matter most.
Ajahn Brahm gives a talk on how to achieve harmony in real life, where we all-too-often meet difficult people.
What lies behind this insistence on love is a worry: without a deep-seated fear that one day love would no longer exist (or exist in the same way) why would anyone feel that they have to insist upon it so much?
A lonely temple, nestled in the mountains of central Taiwan, says goodnight.
Congratulations again on making it here. I hope you learn something truly worthwhile, and I invite you to email me (at the address below) with any questions or feedback you may have.
Yours etc,
The Librarian, Than Khemarato
| Buddhism 101 | An introduction suitable for everyone, especially beginners and people completely new to Buddhism. |
| The Early Buddhist Texts | An introduction to the Buddhist Canon suitable for everyone. This courses is based on Bhikkhu Bodhi’s popular anthology, In The Buddha’s Words. |
| The Form(s) of Buddhism | An introduction to the history and religious aspects of Buddhism, including analysis of the Sangha and what it takes to call yourself a Buddhist. |
| The Function of Buddhism | An introduction to the Buddhist practice, placing the meditative and ethical trainings in their broader developmental context. |
I’ve been working on them for a long time and I’m happy to finally be able to share them. I’m especially proud of the Form and Function courses and recommend them both to novices and experts alike. I know I learned a lot while making them!
As always, you can find the courses on Google Drive or right here.
Happy Studying!
Than Khemarato
