Best / New Arrivals
Content published in:
2021
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such problems makes it advisable not to rely on the Pāli version for reconstructing the Madhyama-āgama parallel.
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📦 In The Archives
Manipulation only works if its target isn’t aware that they’re being manipulated
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How did the Geluk school come to dominate Tibetan Buddhism?
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slender citrine lip onto which I place, gently, this first handful of hair
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The Buddhist tradition has tended to associate Moggallāna with concentration or serenity, and Sāriputta with wisdom or insight, and to characterize the former figure along with his outstanding faculty as inferior to the latter.
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Māra was largely a way to differentiate Buddhism from Hindu competitors by drawing on a number of Hindu stories and then subverting and redeploying their symbolism.
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four cases of a dhyāna practitioner who is:
- Increasing (熾盛) but thinks they are decreasing (衰退)
- Decreasing but thinks they are increasing
- Increasing and truly knows they are increasing
- Decreasing and truly knows they are decreasing
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One of the first transgender men in Britain, Michael Dillon, was also a pioneering Buddhist monk.
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The canonical account of the Buddha’s first days and the story of how the religion was founded.
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“It would not be appropriate for me to give the Buddha a powerful laxative.”
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the role of Buddhist temples in providing aid and taking care of survivors in the wake of the disaster, including the indispensable function of Buddhist monks to conduct funerals and other ceremonies, and their vital responsibility for helping the survivors overcome their suffering.
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An interview with the author of a novel retelling the Buddha’s life from the point of view of his wife.
2020
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A sober analysis of the militant history—and future—of extra-planetary geopolitics.
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I had this sureal sense of vertigo where I felt like I was constantly teetering over the edge of something that I didn’t understand. The entire town was built on top of bombs.
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Early in the history of Buddhism, some monastics decided to stress the good merit of ostentatious donation to the Sangha. This early “prosperity theology” offered mercantile lay Buddhists an apologia for materialism and expansionism that profoundly reshaped Buddhism, Asia and the World.
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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
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in the past two decades, as the Chinese economy has grown by leaps and bounds, the People’s Republic of China has begun to play an increasingly assertive role in mainland and maritime Southeast Asia
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The inspiring (and frustrating) story of one modern, South Indian reformer who turned towards Buddhism as a refuge from exploitation.
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I, Li Bo, love wine completely, right now. How to attain the immortality within wine? This Dao always gets muddled. Don’t look for it in a ladle! The deity of drunkenness will give transmission to whoever is chosen.
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There’s a huge amount of it that’s positive! I’m not so surprised that there are negative attitudes towards women depicted in early Buddhist literature, because this is an ancient civilization with traditional values. So, the negativity doesn’t surprise me. But all the positivity does.
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🥇 Best Of The Library
this paper aims for a philosophically more nuanced discussion of the case for and against eating locally. I assess, in turn, locavore arguments based on environmental preservation, human health, community support, agrarian values and political concerns
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A translation of MA Discourses 72–131.
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[In Buddhism, morality] is not concerned so much with the result of one’s actions on other people as it concerns the result of one’s actions on one’s own mind.
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We’re already geo-engineering the planet, we’re just doing it accidentally and badly
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the evidence found in early printed liturgical booklets that promote Buddha-vandanā points to a different kind of modernization. This article reveals how Buddhist activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made use of the capabilities presented in the colonial context, including print technology, to promote this devotional ritual practice as a principal marker of a newly constructed Buddhist identity.
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An excellent walk-through of the classical Indian philosophies of language: from the Sanskrit grammars of Panini and Patanjali, to Brahmanical realism, Buddhist scepticism, and Jain agnosticism.
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“A monastery is a place where equality is preached but not practiced; a gar is a place where equality is practiced but not preached.”
2019
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Every other rights struggle that we have seen—disability rights, gay rights, women’s rights—all come from the efforts of the black civil rights struggles. […] It is black people who have been the perfectors of democracy.
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Young Brahmins would already begin memorizing the sacred texts by rote when they were about eight years old, and some began the training still earlier. Only after having completed this task successfully, following years of memorization, would they study the meaning of what they had memorized.
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The world went from a situation where most of humanity had no need of money at all to one where today most of humanity struggles to survive on extremely small amounts of money. The graph casts this as a decline in poverty, but in reality what was going on was a process of dispossession
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An excerpt from an interview on Chinese Pure Land making the point that while we tend to think of Mahayana Devotionalism as a separate sect, historically it was seen rather as an optional practice available to all Buddhists.
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the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix
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today’s rich are far less materialistic, but a far greater threat to equality
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But the Bodhisattva, unwilling to ask anyone for help, plucks up his courage, and goes out with his basket and cutting tool and cuts grass. He sells the grass and ekes out a meager living, giving what he can to those in need.
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How mindfulness took over the board room, and how the board room took over mindfulness.
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The monastic rules for Theravada Bhikkhunis, prepared in a bilingual English-Pali edition for study and recitation.
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Set aside all the social norms we have, the expectations we have about who animals are or what is appropriate to do for animals and just ask: What would you do—what do you think the right thing to do is—if you saw an animal suffering?
2018
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There is a way of developing immersion further
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‘I’ve developed the heart’s release by love… Yet somehow ill will still occupies my mind.’
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Let them enjoy the filthy, lazy pleasure of possessions, honor, and popularity.
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A group of monks tries to figure out the meaning of a difficult poem uttered by the Buddha. After offering several interpretations, the Buddha gives his answer.
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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.
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It would be good, lord, if the Blessed One would teach me the Dhamma in brief
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🥇 Best Of The Library
You might wish to drink the nectar of calm abiding…
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A long and entertaining debate with a skeptic who went to extravagant lengths to prove that there is no such thing as an afterlife.
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A magisterial compendium of good advice for lay people.
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We manifest our humanity, we are most fully human, in learning.
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wealth and power did not seem to ease disruptive conflict
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A Creative Commons licensed selection of suttas from Wisdom’s celebrated translation, representing about a third of the full book.
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Here the Buddha details the seventh factor of the noble eightfold path—right mindfulness. This collects many of the meditation teachings found throughout the canon, especially the practices focusing on the body, and is regarded as one of the most important discourses in the contemporary Theravada tradition.
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‘What the hell, Kāḷī!’
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And how is a mendicant not skilled in characteristics? It’s when a mendicant doesn’t understand that a fool is characterized by their deeds
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Wisdom and consciousness–these things are mixed, not separate. And you can never completely dissect them
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A deep discussion between the Bhikkhuni Dhammadinnā and her student, the layman Visākha, on many profound topics, including the very highest meditative attainments.
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Suppose a trustworthy and reliable man were to come from the east. He’d approach you and say: ‘Please sir, you should know this. I come from the east. There I saw a huge mountain that reached the clouds. And it was coming this way, crushing all creatures.’
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The Buddha is confronted by an angry and rude Brahmin.
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How is a sentient being defined?
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I say it’s not possible to know, see or reach the end of the world by traveling. But I also say there’s no making an end of suffering without reaching the end of the world.
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Suppose a person was to catch six animals, with diverse territories and feeding grounds, and tie them up with a strong rope.
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One should rein in the mind thus
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Suppose a person was to catch six animals, with diverse territories and feeding grounds, and tie them up with a strong rope.
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In this controversial sutta, the Buddha declares that everything an individual experiences is not necessarily the result of past karma.
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In this famous simile, the Buddha explains how rare it is to receive a human rebirth in the time of a Buddha and encourages us to use the opportunity well.
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🥇 Best Of The Library
The text jumps inside me and helps. me. out.
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So, when you’re studying Buddhism, what are you studying?
I know the answer. I’m studying me.
I’m studying me. -
🥇 Best Of The Library
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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?
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Bhikkhu Bodhi shares with the Abhayagiri community his favorite section of the Dhammapada: verses 110–115.
2017
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if you’re present, but not too present—available, but not intrusive—if you can create an environment for somebody where you’re available and interested, then this stuff will come up when it’s ready.
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The not-so-public parks of Los Angeles, CA.
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It is inescapable that, whatever the reading, according to the early texts the Buddha did not have “normal” genitals. And the only reading actually supported by a canonical text is that the Buddha was intersex, and his genitals looked like a woman’s.
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Deep contemplative experiences and the philosophical conclusions which they yield are beyond history. Or are they?…
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⭐ Recommended
2016
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🥇 Best Of The Library
Five classic lectures by Faraday on the physics of a candle, restaged by the “Engineering Guy” YouTube Channel.
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Handicapped and at-risk Vietnamese youths share their appreciation of and enthusiasm for a mindfulness meditation course.
2015
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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.
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I swear, you will wake–
& mistake these walls
for skin.
2014
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While many assume Treasure to be innovative, those developed Treasure tradition texts we inspected can, at least in their final published versions, better be described as conservative, and often extremely so.
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We wouldn’t say “this is proof of reincarnation,” but I would say it’s strong evidence of something like it.
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The canonical explication of the monastic rules.
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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.
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…recognize that this view is not scientific discovery: it is ideology.
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A fascinating series of open letters between Ajahn Geoff and Bhikkhu Bodhi on the subject of “just war.”
2013
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A lonely temple, nestled in the mountains of central Taiwan, says goodnight.
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both works typify a style of writing in Buddhist Studies that seems to blur the line between religious writing and academic analysis
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the time for discovering Buddha directly, you must remain alone
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A heartfelt and spellbinding talk on meditation practice and expectations.
2012
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A talk delivered at the Bodhi Tree in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka on the importance of symbols in Buddhism.
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A very brief summary of the Śrāvakabhūmi: an ancient meditation manual preserved by the Yogācāra school.
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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.
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Ajahn Brahm discusses the Buddha’s qualities and tells some stories from his time as a monk in Thailand.
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2011
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The full Pāli Canon online in Pāli alongside its traditional commentaries and modern translations. An essential tool for anyone working on translating the Pāli Canon.
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One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end.
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based on what can be culled from the Madhyama-āgama discourse in comparison with the other versions, it seems possible to arrive at a coherent narrative of [the founding] of the order of nuns.
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A thorough examination of each discourse in the Majjhima-nikāya in the light of its parallels.
2010
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I would say that the Nikāyas and Āgamas give us a “historical-realistic perspective” on the Buddha, while the Mahāyāna sūtras give us a “cosmic-metaphysical perspective.”
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2009
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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
2008
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while the Theravādins have preserved the clearest and best-understood early texts referring to the in-between state, their philosophical posture prevented them from investigating and describing this in any detail. For that we shall have to listen to the other schools, starting with the Puggalavādins and Sarvāstivādins, as passed down through the Chinese and Tibetan traditions.
2007
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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.
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When examined closely, the doctrines of the schools cannot be explained away as simplistic errors or alien infiltrations or deliberate corruptions. It would then follow that more sympathetic and gentle perspectives on the schools are likely to be more objective
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SuttaCentral hosts sources and free translations of Early Buddhist Texts, meticulously organized by parallels, books, languages and searchable with several large indexes.
2006
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Venerable Shariputra explains five ways to quell anger through wise attention, giving five memorable similes on being determined to find the good in everyone.
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During my first weeks with my teacher, Ajaan Fuang, I began to realize that he had psychic powers.
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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.
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indeed there is no thing there
2005
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Only a man could dream of Heaven as a place where he can lie about all day, surrounded by beautiful women
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2004
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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
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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.
2001
1999
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This paper introduces a new distinction between the ‘formal’ and the ‘practical’ canon[…] in medieval Sri Lanka. I show that few monks encountered the [Vinaya] in anything close to its full form.
[Rather,] Monastic leaders considered the Anumāna, Dasadhamma and (Karaniya)metta Suttas to be [the important sources] for monastic education.
1997
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To approach what, for the want of a better term, we call the mythic portions of the Nikayas with the attitude that such categories as “mythic symbol” and “literally true” are absolutely opposed is to adopt an attitude that is out of time and place. It seems to me that in some measure we must allow both a literal and a psychological interpretation. Both are there in the texts.
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Ajahn Geoff explains how the monastic institution works by creating an economy of gifts.
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1996
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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
1995
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Subha Bhikkhuni finds a creative solution to sexual harassment.
1993
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Reverend Sirs, I would like the reverend bhikkhus and bhikkhunis—as well as the laymen and laywomen—to listen to these passages frequently and to ponder on them.
1992
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1991
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On separating out early from later Buddhism and why it matters.
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Forget you. This is about waiting
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I give you back 1948.
1989
1985
1982
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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.
1980
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Kammaṭṭhāna meditation should be practised so as to reach Nibbāna, thereby escaping from all kinds of misery
1977
1975
1972
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there will be resistance to giving the thing rights until it can be seen and valued for itself; yet, it is hard to see it and value it for itself until we can bring ourselves to give it rights — which is almost inevitably going to sound inconceivable
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