Author Archives: vinaire

I am originally from India. I am settled in United States since 1969. I love mathematics, philosophy and clarity in thinking.

Helping Somebody in Need

January 23, 2012 – 10:49 PM

All of us encounter situations when somebody is really hurting and our heart goes out to them. We wonder how we can help them most effectively.  Here are some of my thoughts on this subject.

  1. Assess your own ability to help. Extend your help only when you sincerely feel that you can help that person.

  2. As your first action get into a sincere communication with the person.

  3. Be a good listener. Listen carefully to what the person is telling you, without interrupting.

  4. Acknowledge appropriately so the person knows he or she is being listened to.

  5. Do not offer any advice. Do not comment on what the person is telling you.

  6. If the person asks for advice do not give any opinion. Simply provide him with your honest experience in a similar area, but also tell him  that  it is your experience and it may not apply to his situation.

  7. If the person asks any questions then answer him honestly without injecting your opinion. Answer in a manner, which encourages the person to look more closely at his situation.

  8. Introduce the person to mindfulness. Explain that resolution comes rapidly when one looks at a situation non-judgmentally, without resistance, and with enough patience.

  9. Guide the person to study about mindfulness from the essays presented at the Course in Subject Clearing.

  10. If the person is distressed mentally and cannot use KHTK material on his own, then get the help of those who are taking care of that person and apply the materials in the section CLEARING MENTAL DISTRESS.

  11. If the person’s attention is too fixed on some unwanted condition then guide the person through the processes in the section CLEARING UNWANTED CONDITIONS.

  12. If the person is able to study and apply KHTK materials then supervise him through the materials in the section MINDFULNESS. Discuss and answer any questions the person may have about KHTK. Then supervise him through the subsequent sections.

  13. Please note that the contents of what one looks at are individual and private to the person. These contents need not be discussed except in broad terms. What may be discussed are the KHTK materials.

  14. Set up a schedule when you are to make yourself available to supervise the person. As much as possible, let the person continue with the KHTK exercises on his own.

  15. Always treat the other person gently with humility when helping him in his need.

  16. Your reward will come from the improved conditions of the people you have helped.

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Pariyatti Timeline

January 21, 2012 – 5:57 PM

At this “hinge of history” that we occupy—the arising of the Second Sāsana—the teaching of the Buddha is available to untold numbers of people. We may take for granted the proliferation of Dhamma practice centers and resources for Dhamma study, and the unprecedented means to find them. Only 70 years ago, practice of the Noble Eightfold Path was confined to a tiny number of renunciates and aspirants in a few countries. Computers, the internet, cell phones, online libraries, websites, social networks, eBooks—harbingers of the Digital Age—were unimagined. The flowering of “numerous arts and sciences to serve human needs under the canopy of civilization” that we live in, is a fleeting wonderment.

The timeline below features noteworthy events of pariyatti (theoretical knowledge of the Buddha’s teaching) as well as examples of advances in communications. Not intending to be comprehensive, we offer this timeline as food for thought and to underscore the great good fortune of our era. For a blink in cosmological time, the possibility of freedom from samsāra is robustly alive and able to be conveyed and dispersed to vast numbers through a myriad of carriers; in this dispensation Pariyatti (the non-profit organization) has its role to play.

“May all beings be able to muster immense zeal!”

A selective timeline of pariyatti

  • c 563 to 483 BCE—Life of Gotama Buddha: in 45 years of teaching the Dhamma the Enlightened One is said to have given over 84,000 discourses
  • 483 BCE—First Council convened outside Rājagaha 3 months afterMahāparinibbāṇa of the Buddha; first compilation of authenticated Pāli Canon (known as Tipiṭaka—literally, “three baskets,” also translated as “three treasuries”)
  • 483 BCE to 1954—Second Council through Fifth Councils were held to recite, redact and authenticate the Tipiṭaka for prosperity. Second in Vesāli, India; Third in Paṭaliputta, India, under the auspices of Emperor Asoka; Fourth in Tambapaṇṇi, Sri Lanka; Fifth in Mandalay, under the auspices of King Mindon. More info.
  • c 1871—Completion of “the world’s largest book” in Mandalay: contemporaneous with Fifth Council, entire Pāli Tipiṭaka inscribed on 729 marble slabs at Kuthodaw Pagoda. Historic temple intact and a place of reverence to this day.
  • 1881—Pali Text Society (PTS) founded in Oxford, England to foster and promote the study of Pāli texts
  • 1900—Printed copy of Pāli Tipiṭaka published (in 38 volumes of 400 pages each) by Hanthawaddy Press, Burma (established 1879); described as “true copies of the Piṭaka inscribed on stones by King Mindon”
  • 1944—One of the first computers (Harvard Mark I) is designed
  • 1952 to 1963—The Union of Burma Buddha Sāsana Council in Rangoon publishes The Light of the Dhamma magazine; a sister publication The Light of Buddha is published from 1956 to 1965 in Mandalay
  • 1954 to 1956—Sixth Council (Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana) convened in Rangoon 2,500 years after Mahāparinibbāṇa; publishes authenticated Tipiṭaka and Commentaries in printed books
  • 1955—Date recognized by many Theravādins as the beginning of the SecondSāsana (arising of the teaching of the Buddha)
  • 1955—S.N. Goenka takes first Vipassana course under Sayagyi U Ba Khin at International Meditation Center (IMC) in Rangoon
  • 1958—Buddhist Publication Society (BPS) founded in Kandy, Sri Lanka “to make known the teachings of the Buddha”; becomes a leading publisher of Theravāda works in English, publishing over 800 titles
  • 1969—S.N. Goenka travels from Burma to India to teach Vipassana; he carries printed Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Tipiṭaka books, thereby bringing both paṭipatti(practice) and pariyatti (scriptures)
  • 1969—ARPANET (the precursor to the internet) is created
  • 1973—First cell phone is invented
  • 1985—Vipassana Research Institute (VRI) is established in Igatpuri, India to conduct research into sources and applications of Vipassana
  • 1986—Pariyatti Book Service is started in California to import books from India and Sri Lanka on Buddha’s teaching for North American meditators
  • 1986—First book on nanotechnology is published
  • 1990—VRI starts project to publish Tipiṭaka and Commentaries in Devanagiri script
  • 1992—Electronic Buddhist Text Initiative started in Berkeley CA, to assist digital preservation and organization of Buddhist canonical texts
  • 1993—Access to Insight starts, growing into free online Theravāda library offering over 1,000 suttas and hundreds of articles
  • c 1994—VRI makes Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Tipiṭaka CD-ROM available free of charge; sets of Tipiṭaka books in Devanagari script (over 100 volumes each) are printed for free distribution to monasteries, universities, meditation centers, temples, libraries
  • 1995—Vipassana Research Publications of America (VRPA) is started in Seattle, sanctioned by S.N. Goenka; mission to make Vipassana literature more available in West through importing of Pāli Tipiṭaka books (for free distribution to scholars) and English-language titles from VRI
  • 1996—VRPA purchases Pariyatti Book Service; new book publication and import entity is incorporated as Pariyatti
  • 1997 to 1999—Pariyatti becomes North American distributor of Buddhist Publication Society (BPS); Pariyatti and BPS co-publishes first of series of classic titles: Visuddhimagga, the Path of Purification
  • c 2000—Entire Tipiṭaka and Commentaries in 14 scripts available to anyone in the world with access to the internet (www.Tipitaka.org)
  • 2000—Wikipedia is created
  • 2002—Pariyatti becomes North American distributor for Pāli Text Society; Pariyatti has largest North American inventory of PTS titles and one of world’s largest English-language Theravāda collections
  • 2004—Facebook is created
  • 2005 to present—Pariyatti’s expanding online resources “Treasures of Pariyatti” offers permanent repository of and free access to Dhamma literature in danger of being lost; painstaking optical character recognition technology allows rare copies of The Light of the Dhamma and The Light of Buddha to be preserved
  • 2010—Vipassana centers in tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin as taught by S.N. Goenka offer over 2,000 10-day Vipassana courses annually, and serve about 120,000 people annually. 
  • Present—Buddhist Publication Society continues digitization of extensive parts of its collection for free online access (at BPS Online Library and accesstoinsight.org)
  • Present—In continuous service since 1881, Pāli Text Society: publishes Pāli texts in Roman script, English translations, and ancillary works including dictionaries and concordance; keeps nearly all its publications in print; provides research scholarships in Pāli studies in various countries; supports the Fragile Palm Leaves Project (identification and preservation of Southeast Asian manuscripts)
  • Present—Vipassana Research Institute continues research into Pāli texts and personal effects of Vipassana meditation; many titles are available via free download; monthly newsletter in Hindi and English has 25,000 subscribers worldwide
  • 2012 January 19—41st anniversary of demise of Sayagyi U Ba Khin (1899 to 1971) who proclaimed: “The time-clock of Vipassana has now struck!” and “May all beings be able to muster immense zeal!”

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Guilt

January 12, 2012 – 10:56 PM
[Revised January 28, 2012. Revisions are in blue.]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of remorse.

Remorse is an emotional expression of personal regret felt by a person after he or she has committed an act which he deems to be shameful, hurtful, or violent.

Personal guilt occurs when someone compromises one’s own standards. One experiences conflict at having done something that one believes one should not have done (or conversely, having not done something one believes one should have done). It gives rise to a feeling which does not go away easily. Freud came to consider ‘the obstacle of an unconscious sense of guilt…as the most powerful of all obstacles to recovery’.

At the root of guilt is the conflict between what one expects of oneself and what one finds oneself to have become. This is essentially a confusion. The feeling of guilt starts to go away as one starts to recognize this confusion. Guilt cannot be “mastered” by repression, projection, rationalization, denial or blaming the victim.

To address the feeling of guilt, the following may help:

  1. Look at the things that you expect of yourself .
  2. Trace these expectations back to when and how you acquired them.
  3. Look at what you have “become” per the beliefs and ideas that you now practice.
  4. Trace them back to when and how you acquired them.
  5. Compare the expectations above to these beliefs and ideas.
  6. Spot the inconsistencies between these two sets of notions.
  7. Look at these inconsistencies thoroughly but non-judgmentally.

‘What one expects of oneself’ can be traced back to the standards that were laid down before one by one’s parents or loved ones when one was very young. ‘What one finds oneself to be’ can be reduced to ideas and beliefs that have become rather fixed, and which now define one’s self.

These two sets of notions can be put side by side. And, while doing so one may start looking at them non-judgmentally and without resistance. As this action is continued, and inconsistencies are spotted, the sense of guilt is very likely to start dissipating.

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Siem Reap, Cambodia 2011

January 12, 2012 – 12:06 AM

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Penetrating Mystery

January 7, 2012 – 6:28 PM

Meditation is a journey from mystery to knowing. It happens through many iterations of continual unveiling.

Each unveiling itself is a little jaunt from mystery to knowing.

Suppose you practice looking using Process #1:

“Look around in your mind and spot something that is trying to grab your attention.”

And suppose you are faced with a barrage of items. You start noticing and recognizing them one by one. Most of them may fade into the background, but some may continue to linger on.

It is some mystery attached to an item that makes it linger.

True mystery is that which must for ever remain a mystery. One can never find what lies behind a true mystery. But for a mystery to be a mystery there does not have to be anything mysterious underlying it. All that is needed is a belief that nothing can be found out about it, and sticking to that belief.

Thus, there is no future postulated where a mystery is concerned. The moment you accept this non-judgmentally without resistance an interesting journey begins. Suddenly, there is hope that you can understand this item that has been lingering in your consciousness; there is possibly a future here.

A string of considerations, such as the following, might occur:

  1. What gains might be there by understanding this!
  2. This understanding is necessary for my well being.
  3. Let me figure out what it is!
  4. Let me just feel it and then I’ll know.
  5. Won’t it be just wonderful to know it!
  6. Alright,why not I simply look and see what it is.

Then, boom, any distance between you and that understanding would suddenly vanish, and you would know in your very being what that thing was that had been trying to grab your attention all these days, months or years.

The above is just a crude approximation of the journey from mystery to knowing. It may happen differently for different people.

But it surely will happen when one simply accepts non-judgmentally whatever comes up, and does not resist it.

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Glossary

Mystery
Origin: “secret rites, to initiate.” A mystery is anything unexplained or unknown. It is basically an inconsistency of a gap. It is an unknown consideration.

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