Asides

Aside

Introduction to Satipatthana: a meditation retreat with Bhante Sujato

The Satipatthana Sutta, or “The Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness” (MN 10, DN22) is perhaps the most influential of all the discourses in the Early Buddhist Texts.

Bhante Sujato has been practicing mindfulness based on this sutta for over 20 years, as part of which he researched and wrote one of the most innovative and comprehensive texts on the subject, A History of Mindfulness. His approach to satipatthana pays full attention to teachings on mindfulness found outside the Satipatthana Sutta, and indeed outside the Pali canon.

This retreat will be your last opportunity to learn and experience these teachings before Bhante leaves on an 18 month retreat. There are only a few places left.

This is way to convergence, for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the extinguishing of suffering and grief, for realizing the correct method, for the witnessing of nibbana, that is to say, the four kinds of mindfulness meditation.

  • Dates: Friday 10th of July to Saturday 18th of July 2015. (7 days and 8 nights).
  • Venue: Castlecreag Academy, Old Castlecreag Raod, Castlecreag NSW 2749 (1.30 hours from Sydney, in the Penrith Valley).
  • Cost: $440.00 per person. Covers accommodation, facility hire, food cost and other logistics. (Bhante’s time and teachings are freely given).
  • Contact: Deepika Weerakoon, meditateasy@gmail.com.
Advertisement
Aside

On aliens

Last night I did a talk at the BSWA on “Loving-kindness and aliens”, which will be up on the website soon. By pure chance, I came across this article today, which discusses the issue, how would different religions cope with the discovery of aliens?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/religion-extraterrestrials-jesus-save-klingons/

Of course Buddhism is mentioned as a religion that is chill with aliens. But it doesn’t really acknowledge the fact that Buddhism, like other Indian religions, has a cosmology that not merely allows aliens, but assumes without question that life, sentient life, is found in countless places throughout the vast universe.

One thing aliens will, I have no doubt, share in common with us: they’ll suffer.

Aside

Heinz fruit juice: made with meat

My friends at the Hindu Council have just let me know of a letter they received from Heinz, which admits that some of their juices contain animal products:

The clear apple juice used in the Golden Circle ambient (long life) juice and drink range is made clear using a variety of clarifying agents one of which is from a beef source

It really is kind of gross, when you eat things you just don’t have a clue what’s in it. Juice is the last place you’d expect to find animal products, but there you go.

Aside

Comments are temporarily disabled

Dear friends,

I have been assailed in recent months by a seemingly unstoppable cascade of abusive comments on this blog. The commenter is someone who I do not know, but has obviously had some sort of psychotic break, and I am their obsession. They have in addition been repeatedly harassing places across the country, including Bodhinyana, Santi, and I’m sure many other places.

Just today I opened up my blog to find some 230 abusive comments in the past couple of days. It’s too much, and I can’t block them as they regularly change their user name and IP address. So I have temporarily disabled all comments as best I can; although I am not quite sure how it will work, as WordPress does not provide a specific “Disable all comments” function. My apologies to all bloggists, and I will re-enable the comments as soon as the situation is sorted out.

I have been in contact with the NSW police, and we hope to get the matter resolved. Clearly this is someone who needs help, and hopefully we can do something.

Aside

Old comments

Just to let you know, I’ve gone through the old comments that built up during my long absence from this blog earlier this year. Hopefully if you’ve left a comment it should appear now, and my apologies for taking so long to get around to it. If you’ve raised a question that I haven’t answered, please be so kind as to remind me!

For those who asked for copies of the metta meditation study, I will email you soon.

If your (relevant and meaningful) comment doesn’t appear, it’s probably my mistake. This blog gets lots of hateful, idiotic, abusive, and plain old crazy comments. You don’t see them, because I filter them before they appear. Sometimes it’s from people who are ideological warriors in defense of their imaginary tradition; but mostly it’s people with messed up heads just blatting it out there. Being a monk is like being a lightning rod. Mostly the energy is illuminating, but sometimes it’s just awful.

Anyway, so this is just to invite you to resubmit if I’ve overlooked your comment. Most likely I accidentally deleted it along with the rubbish.