Introduction

Monks who are teachers of monks frequently ask me to explain how to write an essay because it is part of the monks' training to be able answer examination questions in essay form, and I usually give them a book I have written on this topic called English Composition and Essay Writing, published by Chulalongkorn University Press (1997).

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The Noble Eightfold Path
The Heart of Theravada Buddhism

This book explains the actual words that the Lord Buddha said and taught to his disciples, over 2500 years ago, about following the path to enlightenment and nibbana, with an emphasis on personal discipline, in daily Buddhist practice, in the thoughts and actions of life, avoiding causation of harm and developing the moral and spiritual purity needed for achieving higher-levels of concentraton and understanding on the path to the cecessation of the needs which cause the sufferings of the world.

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Reminisences on talks with great living Buddhist teachers in the Kandy-Peradenia region in the late 1980s into the early 1990s, such as Venerable Nyanaponika, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Venerable Sri Rahula Ampitiya, Lily de Silva and others.

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What the Buddha said about the Caste System in his own time is every bit as relavent in our own world
today.

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"Bare Awareness " in insight meditation as it is described by Venerable Nyanatiloka and Venerable Nyanaponika in the Theravada tradition as opposed to some of the meditation vocabulary used by various schools today.

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Introduction

The Buddha gave us a formula or prescription to follow to help free us from the ills of this generation, which applies equally, as well, to all men who suffer from mental affliction in any generation. This book analyses the problem of Wrong Understanding and, then, outlines the steps of the proccess one may take on the path to liberation and purity, based upon extensive references and quotations from a spectrum of Sri Lankan BPS monastics and scholars who were contemporaries of Nyanaponika Maha Thera.

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Introduction

Insight meditation generates healing power, and while this sounds somewhat mysterious, the explanation is simple. A person who can control his mind through refining the practice of sila (morality) and sati (mindfulness) will not be as stressed in performing his daily tasks, and, so, will be more positively balanced, and, therefore, more effective in his efforts, on both mental and practical levels.

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Introduction

A lot of meditators and practitioners have a problem understanding the term ‘ sankhara ,' especially when it is translated from the original Pali as ‘formations' or ‘volitional formations.'

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Introduction

Nyanaponika Maha Thera had a deep respect for Mahasi Sayadaw, (the highly-celebrated scholar-monk and teacher who was his close contemporary), and was more directly influenced by the Burmese Meditation Master's method of practice than most people might realize.

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Introduction

Much wisdom may come from discerning and correcting our own mistakes and mental misapprehensions, but the only way to understand the continuum of the mind is to follow its intentions and movements and thought-processes, through close, continued, concentrated-observation and analysis of the way the mind actually works, through vipassana meditation. Knowledge from books doesn't help us much in watching what is going on in our own minds. Good guidance from competent teachers of the Dhamma, however, can help set us and guide us on the right path of mental- development in our own practice.

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Introduction

Before beginning this text, we respectfully request our reader to remain open to the possibility of undergoing an unexpected ‘mental twist-of-mind'- a paradigm shift - to the exact opposite way - in which ‘so-called' normal, human beings are accustomed to ‘seeing' so-called ‘things' in this ‘so-called' world.

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Introduction

Most modern-day philosophers and scientists would be reluctant to accept that the Buddha and his followers (both in the Buddhist era and in later commentaries) had explained and clarified the causal dependent arising of all conditioned phenomena, for the simple reason that the cause and effect explanations and relations outlined in the Abhidhamma wholly transcend the logical and rational limits of the methodology of modern science.

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Introduction

Before beginning our text, today, we shall, first, respectfully urge our readers [unless they happen to be Pali scholars] to remain open to the possibility of undergoing a total, mental ‘twist-of-mind’─ a paradigm shift ─or in other words, to be prepared to see phenomena in the exact opposite way in which, we, as ‘so-called’ normal human beings, are commonly-accustomed to experiencing ‘so-called’ solid things in this ‘so-called’ world, ‘supposedly seen” around us.

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Introduction

This book was written, compiled and edited at the request of the World Buddhist University , which is a part of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, which has its world headquarters located in Bangkok , Thailand . Part of the WFB and WBU programs is to sponsor both written publications and public lectures. This present text was planned, originally, to become a series of lectures and, then, ended-up becoming a full-length book. After an opening essay on contemporary relevancy, the rest of the essays and textual material follows a gradual process of awakening much in the manner of the gradual sayings.

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Introduction

If we may be allowed some comments, based upon our own individual observations, once we take an experience to be “I,” we build upon this latent and inherent tendency and make the mistake of assuming a personal entity [rather than a mere agglomeration or aggregate of phenomenal experiences], and we make the mistake of building up an image of “I” and “self” (and eventually maybe even an idea of an on-going-soul-entity) and thereby create the delusion of a duality between conceiving what is going on outside externally and what is going on within experience on the inside, ─ conceiving them [falsely] to be two different and extant realms of existence.

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