Heavenly gapura gate facing Mount Agung, Candi Bentar temple, Lempuyang temple compound, East Bali, Indonesia.

Arahants are like fertile fields. Givers are like the farmers, and what they offer is the seed. The combination of these three will produce a fruit of merit.

The seed, the planting of the seed, and the field are helpful to the givers and their departed relatives. The departed relatives experience happiness from the merit and the givers will receive more merit.

By doing wholesome deeds and sharing the merits that they receive with departed relatives, they are reborn in heaven to enjoy the results of their good deeds.


Pv 1.1 Khettupama Sutta: Like a Field

6. Salàbham nátimaññeyya
n'áññesam pihayam care
Aññesam pihayam bhikkhu
samàdhim n'ádhigacchati. 365.
7. Appalàbho' pi ce bhikkhu
salàbham n'átimaññati
Tam ve devà pasamsanti
suddhájãvim atanditam. 366.

BE CONTENTED

6. Let him not despise what he has received, nor should he live envying (the gains of) others. The bhikkhu who envies (the gains of) others does not attain concentration. 5 365.

DESPISE NOT WHAT ONE GETS

7. Though receiving but little, if a bhikkhu does not despise his own gains, even the gods praise such a one who is pure in livelihood and is not slothful. 366.

Story

A monk, accepting an invitation from a monk who was a follower of the Venerable Devadatta, spent a few days enjoying his hospitality. When he returned to the monastery the other monks mentioned the matter to the Buddha. Thereupon the Buddha uttered these verses in admonition to him and other monks.
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Wat Phra Dhammakaya, largest Buddhist temple in Thailand, enshrines over one million Buddha statues, North Bangkok, Thailand.

These are the seven powers.

The powers are faith and energy,
conscience and prudence,
mindfulness and immersion,
and wisdom as the seventh power.
Empowered by these,
an astute mendicant lives happily.

They should examine the teaching rationally,
discerning the meaning with wisdom.
The liberation of their heart
is like a lamp going out.”

Partial excerpts from AN 7.4 Vitthatabalasutta: Powers in Detail

Free Buddha Dharma ebook

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By Thanissaro Bhikkhu

A complete collection of Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu’s writings since 2009 on the validity of recent attempts to reinstitute bhikkhunī ordination.

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Free Buddha Dharma ebook

The Question of Bhikkhunī Ordination
By Thanissaro Bhikkhu

A complete collection of Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu’s writings since 2009 on the validity of recent attempts to reinstitute bhikkhunī ordination.

Free download here:

https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/Ebooks/QuestionofBhikkhuniOrdination_251113.pdf
===

Do we really give the Buddha a bath in the ceremony? No, it is rather to cleanse the Buddha within by way of a ceremony involving the external Buddha, and the emphasis is on purifying the heart. Therefore, the celebration of the birth of the Buddha should be conducted with solemn attitudes encompassing moral development, compassion and respect.

Seeking the Path of Wisdom, The Path of Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein

Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions

How approaches from different Buddhist traditions can complement and support each other on the path to awakening
By Joseph Goldstein

Part 1 of 3


When I first published the book One Dharma in 2003, I was grappling with a spiritual existential dilemma: what to do when great meditation masters in different traditions offer contradictory perspectives on the ultimate nature of reality. At the time, it felt as though the entire trajectory of my spiritual life hung in the balance. After months of inquiry, two simple notions resolved the issue—at least for the time being.

First, I realized that until I was fully enlightened (and perhaps not even then), I had no way of knowing which perspective was ultimately correct. I simply could not know what final liberation would reveal. Resting in this unknown proved to be a great relief. Rather than causing confusion, it allowed my mind to settle into an openness that fostered further inquiry and exploration of dharma understanding.

Second, I realized that one way to approach the diverse philosophical descriptions across traditions was to explore a common understanding of what frees the mind. My interest in this theme is spurred by the ongoing sectarian divides that persist to this day. Many traditions claim to be the best, quickest, or most authentic path to spiritual enlightenment. Bhikkhu Anālayo addresses this phenomena in his book Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions.

One modern expression of this sectarianism arises in conversations about dual and nondual awareness. Just as mindfulness has gained prominence as a tool for easing suffering, both in its broad secular applications and in the deepest aspects of meditative understanding, the framework of nondual awareness has become a popular way to describe both the method and, for some, the goal of practice. At times, there is a tendency to privilege the experience of the nondual as being deeper or more complete than what are deemed dualistic practices. Ironically, this creates its own duality.

What, then, do the terms dual and nondual refer to, and is this distinction important on the path to liberation? Each of these terms can refer to a variety of experiences, and confusion often arises when the same word or phrase carries different meanings in different contexts. As in many dharma discussions, clarity in defining terms is crucial.

There are different understandings of dualistic perception: One is the perception of distinctions between this and that, between existence and nonexistence, between samsara and nirvana; the other is the experience of an observer separate from the observed. Similarly, the term nondual awareness can refer to different levels of experience. It may point to the inseparability of knowing and known (not a vague “oneness” in which all distinctions dissolve). It can refer to the Dzogchen view of mind as the union of clarity and emptiness, with nondual wisdom being their inseparability. It can also refer to the nonseparation of observer and observed.

On the surface, dual and nondual may seem like fundamentally different understandings of reality and how we perceive it. Upon further investigation, however, we may arrive at a more holistic understanding of how these two perspectives complement and support our path of practice. By emphasizing a particular perspective on experience rather than the essential qualities of a liberated mind, we risk overlooking those essential qualities across traditions.

Despite differences in understanding, there are some fundamental commonalities that capture the essence of dharma. In the Pali canon, and perhaps in later traditions as well, when the Buddha was asked what he taught, his reply was often some variation of “suffering and the end of suffering.” This is the point of it all.

The Buddha made clear in so many different ways that craving and clinging to anything at all is the cause of suffering. Most Buddhist traditions agree that liberation is experienced in the mind free of clinging—to the body, the mind, to awareness itself. The great Indian adept Tilopa expressed the importance of this to his disciple, Naropa: “It is not appearances that bind you; it is your clinging that binds you. Cut through your clinging, Naropa.”

I began to see non-clinging and its precursor, the cessation of craving, as central to liberation across nearly all Buddhist traditions, the foundation upon which different final goals may be realized. Depending on one’s particular aspiration, this might be the arahant of early Buddhism or buddhahood as taught in the later traditions.

Building on this understanding, which is succinctly expressed in the first three noble truths—suffering, its cause, and its end—we can then explore the fourth noble truth: the way to the end of suffering. If craving is the cause of suffering, and liberation is through the cessation of craving and clinging, the question then becomes how different traditions accomplish this, even when their metaphysics and end goals differ.

There are many methods for achieving non-clinging, and different doorways open to this freedom, each highlighting one particular Buddhist perspective or another. One comprehensive framework for exploring these methods is the three universal characteristics: impermanence, dukkha, and nonself. Although these characteristics are intimately connected, one or another of them may become more predominant in different traditions or for different practitioners, even as all of them are realized in the end.
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8. Sabbaso nàmarupasmim
yassa natthi mamàyitam
Asatà ca na socati
sa ve bhikkhu' ti vuccati. 367.

HE IS A BHIKKHU WHO HAS NO ATTACHMENT

8. He who has no thought of "l" and "mine" whatever towards mind and body, he who grieves not for that which he has not, he is, indeed, called a bhikkhu. 367.

Story

A devotee offered alms to the Buddha when He stood at his door and wished to know what constituted a bhikkhu. Briefly the Buddha described the attributes of a bhikkhu.
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Furthermore, when a mendicant is walking they know: ‘I am walking.’ When standing they know: ‘I am standing.’ When sitting they know: ‘I am sitting.’ And when lying down they know: ‘I am lying down.’ Whatever posture their body is in, they know it.

And so they meditate observing an aspect of the body internally, externally, and both internally and externally. They meditate observing the body as liable to originate, as liable to fall, and as liable to both originate and vanish. Or mindfulness is established that the body exists, to the extent necessary for knowledge and mindfulness. They meditate independent, not grasping at anything in the world.

That too is how a mendicant meditates by observing an aspect of the body.


Partial excerpts from MN 10: Mahasatipatthanasutta

The Chatra (or Chhatra) is the "umbrella" or parasol-like structure found at the very top of a Buddhist Stupa. It is one of the most recognizable features of Buddhist architecture, serving as a powerful symbolic crown for the monument.

Symbolic Significance

In ancient Indian culture, the umbrella was a symbol of royalty and protection. When placed atop a stupa, it signifies the Buddha’s status as a "Universal Monarch" (Chakravartin) of the spiritual realm.

Three stacked chatras represent the Triratna while seven stacked chatras represent the seven factors of enlightenment.

Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions

How approaches from different Buddhist traditions can complement and support each other on the path to awakening
By Joseph Goldstein

Part 2 of 3

Nonduality and the Teachings on Nonself

One of the liberating insights common to all Buddhist traditions is the realization of nonself (Pali, anatta): the absence of any permanent essence in this mind/body process that can be claimed as “I” or “mine.” An oft-repeated instruction in the Pali texts says to see all things with perfect wisdom: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not myself.” In this realization, the “I” or “self” as subject disappears—or rather we realize that, except as a cognitive distortion, it was never truly there.

In many explicitly nondual practices, which are often prominent in Mahayana and Vajrayana, this nonself perspective is often emphasized. Such teachings are effective for glimpsing and deepening this realization. While impermanence (Pali, anicca) and dukkha are easily recognized and can also lead to non-clinging, nonself is such a radically unique way of understanding ourselves and the world that it can profoundly alter our practice. Yet the point is to see through the illusion of self as a way to end our suffering and not to get attached to any particular method of doing so.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of the great Tibetan Dzogchen masters of the last century, highlighted the importance of this:

The idea of an enduring self has kept you wandering helplessly in the lower realms of samsara for countless past lifetimes. It is the very thing that now prevents you from liberating yourself and others from conditioned existence. If you could simply let go of that one thought of “I,” you would find it easy to be free, and to free others, too. Use any practice you do to dissolve this idea of “I” and the self-oriented motivations that accompany it. Even if you do not succeed in the beginning, keep trying.

Another way of understanding nonduality—one widely discussed today—is through resting in awareness as various mental objects arise. A simple example occurred for me during a walk when I heard a bird singing. Initially, there was a distinction and separation: the bird in the sky and me walking. Then, a subtle shift happened, and the experience was spontaneously expressed as a haiku:

Bird song
In the empty sky
Of mind

In that moment, all sense of separation dissolved—only birdsong remained. It was interesting to toggle between these two ways of perceiving. Using the analogy of the mind as an empty sky, one perspective emphasizes the sound itself, while the other highlights the awareness that knows it. In both cases, however, sound and knowing are present. The question, then, is not which approach is superior, but how each can support the deepening of wisdom and the freeing of the mind.

Yet here is where some confusion can arise in contemporary discussions of nonduality. While experiences like “bird song in the empty sky of mind” may offer a taste of the nondual, something essential may still be missing in terms of the practice of liberation—namely, the direct realization of the selfless, empty nature of both knowing and what is being known. It is common to be resting in awareness yet still maintain a subtle identification with the act of knowing, which sustains a preverbal sense of self. The essential point of nonduality in the context of liberation, then, is seeing through the particular duality of a “self-as-subject” knowing an object.

As we consider this meaning of nondual awareness—the collapse of this subject/object dichotomy—there are still objects being known. Although there is no self-as-subject apart from the object, two distinct processes remain: knowing and what is being known (whether one calls them objects or appearances), and these two cannot be separated. Different traditions may emphasize one aspect or the other, but in either case the reality of what is happening is the same.

An interesting reflection here is what term we would use for two distinct but inseparable things. Are they two or are they one? For example, when we see something, we perceive both color and shape; the color has shape, and the shape has color. Two distinct attributes that cannot be separated in our perception, even as we might emphasize one aspect or the other.

It might be helpful to consider “dual” and “nondual” not as metaphysical statements describing some ultimate nature but as different ways of perceiving that serve a particular end—as complementary ways of understanding that each has its own value and efficacy. Both duality and nonduality are simply modes of viewing experience, and the measure of which is appropriate at any given time is whether the outcomes are beneficial or detrimental. To this end, there is an apt phrase often used in Madhyamaka and Zen teachings that emerged from the “thunderous silence” of Vimalakirti in the sutra of the same name: “Not one, not two.”

Stabilizing the Experience of Nonduality

I recently received an email from someone who asked an extremely important question. He wrote, “I consider myself quite fortunate to experience nondual awareness, but I’ve been hung up on the endeavor of what to do now.” This raises a question that many teachers have addressed over the centuries: how to stabilize this realization so that it informs the way we live and the choices we make. It is one thing to have experiences that provide a different perspective from our usual way of perceiving the world, and another to have those experiences transform our lives in a meaningful way. Many of us are familiar with having deep insights only to easily fall back into habitual modes of perception and understanding.
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A Heart Full of Peace by Joseph Goldstein

Aloka, the peace dog, is a stray dog which followed the monks during dhutanga in India in 2022. The monks then adopted the dog and brought him back to the United States. He has a distinctive heart‑shaped marking on his forehead. Aloka follows the monks on 108-day, 2,300-mile Walk for Peace Dhutanga journey starting from Fort Worth, Texas, passing through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.

The Path of Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein

Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions

How approaches from different Buddhist traditions can complement and support each other on the path to awakening
By Joseph Goldstein

Part 3 of 3

Mindfulness

The question then becomes: How to proceed? How do we practice stabilizing our glimpses of selfless awareness? We begin by strengthening the quality of mindfulness. Unless we have trained ourselves to observe our minds and what happens within them, we may not realize just how prevalent the continuous streams of thought are throughout the day. The effect of these unnoticed thoughts on the mind can be compared to a movie soundtrack. Often, we are hardly aware of it, being totally engrossed in the storyline. Yet the soundtrack is designed to manipulate our feelings in various ways—happy, tense, frightened, amused—all conditioned by a process we hardly notice.

Through practice, particularly in sessions of formal meditation, we may become somewhat adept at recognizing dramatic thoughts, those with a particular emotional charge. But much more frequently there are light thoughts that are brief and hardly leave a trace. While doing walking meditation on one recent retreat, I began to pay particular attention to these light and quickly passing thoughts. I was surprised to realize how often they arose and how many of them referenced a sense of self: a memory, a plan, a comment, or a judgment. It became clear that each time I was lost in one of these ephemeral thoughts, I was reinforcing a felt sense of self.

Dudjom Rinpoche, one of the most highly revered Dzogchen masters of the 20th century, wrote in A Heart-Jewel for the Fortunate:

When you are meditating, it is easy to identify your coarse thoughts when they arise suddenly. But until a few of your subtle thoughts have arisen and are recognized, you do not know that they are there. These are called “undercurrents of thought.” They are the sneaky thieves of meditation, and for that reason it is very important to post the guard of mindfulness.

All traditions teach the importance of cultivating and strengthening mindfulness. The Pali canon underscores the critical role of mindfulness in the well-known opening of the Satipatthana Sutta:

Bhikkhus, this is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of the true way, for the realization of nibbana—namely, the four foundations of mindfulness.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche likewise highlights the importance of cultivating mindfulness in his commentary on The Lamp that Dispels Darkness:

Let the mind remain in a relaxed and open state. . . . Just as a young child cannot be left on its own but needs the constant attention of his parents so he won’t get lost, mindfulness is necessary so that the mind does not get lost in distraction. Mindfulness is not something that is acquired right away; perseverance is needed. It is necessary to be mindful not only while resting in the state of meditative evenness, but that mindfulness needs to be kept in any circumstances. While eating, while walking, etc., it is important to be constantly alert and vigilant in watching the condition of the mind.

Rinpoche continues:

So do not be satisfied by a mere glimpse of awareness but allow it to become unchangingly present. This is achieved through mindfulness and vigilance. At the beginning, vigilance means to pay constant attention to one’s state of mind, examining whether the mind is distracted or not from the recognition of awareness. This is a somewhat fabricated or contrived mindfulness. Mindfulness will develop gradually. . . . When the point is reached where a thought of desire or aversion arises, awareness is there at the same time, without having to purposefully arouse it. That is uncontrived, absolute mindfulness. At this stage, all thoughts will be liberated as they arise.