Explore every episode of the podcast Virtual Sangha Podcast

This is an extremely brief intro to the Five Hinderances. My hope is that it can provide an entry point for your reflection and further study in understanding which obstacle may be holding back your practice at any moment.

The Buddhist "Devil," Mara, aka The Wicked One, reads the Buddha's bucket list and encourages the Fully Enlightened One to leave our world behind.

Can lay folks also make progress in the path? Read along:

https://suttacentral.net/an8.23

https://suttacentral.net/sn41.5

Mike reads Chapter 2 of the Vimalakirti Sutra.

https://virtualsangha.org

The Buddha gives advice for lay people, how they can have happiness in this life and the next.

Read along: https://suttacentral.net/an8.54/en/sujato

Join in our morning practice, modeled after our regular practice at the temple. Follow along at https://virtualsangha.org/practice

Incense Offering, Three Refuges, Heart Sutra, Five Precepts, Meditation with Gatha, Sharing the Merit

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Mike learns about Jay's journey. They discuss the importance of connecting with a community, and how they experience the relationship between secular and traditional Buddhism.

Why keep the precepts?

Study and practice with our online Buddhist Sangha at https://virtualsangha.org

Chris shares a talk on the subject of Right Effort.

Study and practice with our online Buddhist Discord at https://virtualsangha.org.

Always avoid speech that is untrue, pointless, or harmful, and be mindful of proper timing when explaining what you know to be true and beneficial.

Right Intention, samma-saṅkappa, also called Right Thought, is the wholesome application of the mind, described in MN 19.

Read along at https://virtualsangha.org/right-intention-mn-19/

Nick-Chöden shares his deep connection to both Buddhism and Christianity. His Buddhist roots trace back to his mother's practice of Nichiren Shōshū, which was followed by a decades-long practice of Tibetan Buddhism that began in his early thirties. The pinnacle of his Tibetan practice was his ordination as a novice monk in 2012 by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in India, who granted him the ordination name Tenzin Chöden. Nick-Chöden is also a dedicated participant in the Thích Nhất Hạnh Plum Village Zen tradition. Complementing his Buddhist path, he holds a Master of Divinity degree from the San Francisco Theological Seminary, was ordained a Reverend in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and currently an Associate Pastor in San Francisco as a self-described Buddhist-Christian.

Warning: This episode contains a description of self-harm. If you or someone you know is struggling, please visit https://virtualsangha.org/helpline

This is how we chant the Heart Sutra at our English services.

Pam and Mike talk about the Dhammapada.

Check out Pam's Dharma Art Journal at:

https://www.dharmaartjournal.com/

Dhammapada app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.intradarma.dhammapada.en_buddharakkhita&pcampaignid=web_share

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How important is Right View? What does Right View even mean?

Read along in the suttas and find out:

https://suttacentral.net/an1.306-315/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=none&highlight=false&script=latin

https://suttacentral.net/mn9/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=none&highlight=false&script=latin

Find other resources and connect with our Buddhist Discord server at https://virtualsangha.org

Mike here... feeling burnt out today. Let's take another look at SN 45.8, especially the section on Right Effort, and see if I can take some motivation from it.

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https://suttacentral.net/sn56.11/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=main&highlight=false

Join our Buddhist Discord: https://virtualsangha.org

Mike reads the discourse on non-self, and the heart sutra.

Maybe you've heard of the Eightfold Path: Right view, right intent, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

But have you heard of the Threefold Training? This divides the Eightfold Path into three sections:

• Paññā (wisdom, as in wise view and wise intention),
• Sīla (moral ethics, as in ethical speech, ethical action, and ethical livelihood), and
• Samadhi (meditative practice, such as meditative effort, meditative mindfulness, and meditative concentration).

When those three are perfected, the path is realized, and freedom (vimutti) is attained.

In this sutta, the Buddha teaches about these four things: Panna, Sila, Samadhi, and Vimutti.

Read along: https://suttacentral.net/an4.1/en/kovilo?lang=en&layout=linebyline&reference=main&notes=sidenotes&highlight=false&script=latin

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The Buddha spends a night in the woods, confronting fear.

https://suttacentral.net/mn4/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin

Is "the path" endless?

https://suttacentral.net/sn51.15/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin

https://suttacentral.net/mn21/en/sujato

Even is someone is trolling your Discord server, you should train like this: ‘My mind will not degenerate. I will blurt out no bad words. I will remain full of sympathy, with a heart of love and no secret hate. And with them as a basis, we will meditate spreading a heart like the earth to everyone in the world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.’ That’s how you should train.

Mike gave his "Milk and Water" talk via Zoom to his friends at the Phap Nguyen Temple.

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How do you handle difficult conversations or situations, both inside and outside of the practice community?

One of the phrases that helps me is "Dear friend, I love you more than I love being right."

I hope we will always love each other more than we love the sound of our own voices, and that we will always be honest, especially to ourselves, about our intentions in any conversation: are we seeking mutual understanding, or are we seeking to win some kind of one-sided victory?

How do you handle difficult conversations or situations, both inside and outside of the practice community?

One of the phrases that helps me is "Dear friend, I love you more than I love being right."

I hope we will always love each other more than we love the sound of our own voices, and that we will always be honest, especially to ourselves, about our intentions in any conversation: are we seeking mutual understanding, or are we seeking to win some kind of one-sided victory?

https://virtualsangha.org/milk-and-water-harmony-in-the-sangha/

The Buddha answers a trick question, and teaches about Right Speech.

• If something is not true and/or beneficial, don't say it.
• If something is true and beneficial, then depending on whether it will be liked or disliked by other people, know when to speak in the proper time.

Additional resources on Right Speech:

• https://zenstudiespodcast.com/right-speech/
• https://www.deepdharma.org/beliefs/right-speech/

Read along: https://www.lifelonglearningcollaborative.org/silkroads/articles/diamond-sutra-translation.pdf

Read along: https://www.lifelonglearningcollaborative.org/silkroads/articles/diamond-sutra-translation.pdf

With continued humility, Mike gropes blindly through more chapters of the Diamond sutra.

Read along: https://www.lifelonglearningcollaborative.org/silkroads/articles/diamond-sutra-translation.pdf

Read along: https://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/book/jataka-tales-english/d/doc80068.html

With great humility, Mike stumbles through a reading of the first few chapters of the Diamond sutra.

Read along: https://www.lifelonglearningcollaborative.org/silkroads/articles/diamond-sutra-translation.pdf

Mike gives some historical context about the Heart Sutra.

Historical Context - Up To The Fourth Council

This is our first episode in our series on Mahayana Sutras, starting with the Heart Sutra.

I’ll start by giving some historical context, starting with the traditional, orthodox suttas of the Pali Canon.

During the lifetime of Shakyamuni Buddha, His teachings were preserved through chanting, instead of being written down. The integrity of the oral tradition was kept by having multiple groups of monks chanting the same teachings, and counting the number of syllables, cross checking to make sure they were still chanting identical recitations with the same number of syllables. Thus the teachings were primarily organized by length, as in shorter discourses, middle length discourses, and longer discourses, according to the number of syllables.

Some discourses were also grouped by connected themes or numbered lists, but they were not connected in a way that made a compelling narrative story. This often makes it difficult for beginners in Buddhism to know where or how to start their study of the scriptures. I hope that by providing some context I can avoid adding to that confusion or making it any worse.

After Shakyamuni Buddha made his final passage into Nirvana, His disciples gathered to compare notes, discuss rules for the Sangha, and so on. These gatherings were called Buddhist Councils, and they happened around 400 BC, 300 BC, and 200 BC. Around 100 BC, there was a fourth council, called the Theravada Council, which is where the canonical teachings in the Pali language, or Pali Canon, began to be written down. The oral tradition of chanting didn’t go away, and is still practiced today, but thanks to the Theravada Council in Sri Lanka towards Southern India, the chanting is complemented by a vast written library of discourses.

About 200 years later, around the first century of the common era, there was another group of Buddhists, the Sarvastivadan, who also held a council and called it the fourth council. The Sarvastivadan Fourth Council is part of the tradition that gave rise to Mahayana in Northern India.

In studying Buddhism, you might hear references to the Northern Tradition and Southern Tradition, especially when it comes to scripture. That’s a reference to this pair of Fourth Councils, and the influence they had on the direction of Buddhist authors and teachers in the centuries that followed.

Now, I’ll highlight some of the differences between the traditional Theravada and the emerging Mahayana. Much of this will be an oversimplification for the sake of time.

Language is one simple difference. When you see a term in Pali, such as Dhamma, Kamma, Nibanna, those are used in the context of Theravada and the suttas of the Pali Canon. When you see Sanskrit terms, such as Dharma, Karma, Nirvana, those are used in the context of the sutras of the Mahayana.

The Theravada focuses on Shakyamuni Buddha, and considers any past life of Shakyamuni to have been a Bodhisattva. The Mahayana gives more attention to numerous Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, including others besides just Shakyamuni.

The Theravada taught the three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering, and nonself. The Mahayana emphasized the importance of understanding emptiness as a way of understanding the three marks.

One last difference I’ll mention is that the Theravada have a more strict definition of what counts as canonical scripture. The Theravada canon of scripture follows what I described above, seeking to preserve the words of The Buddha accurately. The Mahayana were more open to including teachings written here and there throughout the centuries, thus the realm of Mahayana scripture can be even more vast and overwhelming than the Pali Canon.

For all of these reasons, it’s important to understand some context about the sutra being studied, so that the meaning isn’t simply lost.

In the case of the Heart Sutra specifically, we need to look at the Sarvastivadin Buddhists, and something they were doing with a field of study called the Abhidharma.

Buddhist scripture is typically divided into three collections, or baskets, called Pitakas. There’s the Sutta Pitaka, the basket of discourses, which record the Buddha’s teachings. There’s the Vinaya Pitaka, which contains the rules for monastics. Then there’s the Abhidharma Pitaka.

By now you’ve probably seen the word Dharma, with a capital D, meaning the teachings of the Buddha. Another word you may have seen less often, or not at all in your studies yet, is dharma with a small d. Dharma with a small d has a meaning more like “phenomena,” something observed and experienced.

By studying and describing the phenomena, or stuff of the world, the Sarvastivadins aimed to explain how the world and all the stuff (or your experienced perceptions of all the stuff) in the world works, at the most subtle level possible.

I will take a deep dive on the Abhidharma at a later date, but for now the important part is to know that they were focused on understanding and describing how we perceive the world, starting with the existence of phenomena, to the perception of phenomena, and our thoughts and reactions (as well as the consequences of those thoughts and directions) in relation to phenomena. And again, I’m saying phenomena, but they would say dharmas, plural and with a small d.

The Heart Sutra is, in a way, a response to the Abhidharma. There was a concern that an obsession with describing phenomena, or dharmas, was going against the Buddha’s teachings.

The Buddha taught impermanence, but was it possible that the Sarvastivadins were maybe taking impermanence the wrong way? Because, and this is a very subtle point, when we say something exists impermanently, we’re ultimately saying that the thing does, indeed, exist. Even if only for a moment, we’re saying that thing, whatever it is, is real, in that moment.

This is where emptiness comes in.

Take an example of a chair, for example. Anybody can see that a chair is a collection of parts, and if we disassemble the parts, there’s no “essence of chair” anywhere to be found. When you look at what appears to be an assembled chair, and watch it fall apart over the course of a few years, would you say that the chair actually existed for a brief impermanent time, or would you say there never really was a chair at all, just a form that resembled a chair, which we thought of as a chair, but was never really a chair, not even for a moment? The lack of any ultimately existing, independent chair essence, that can be said to exist even impermanently, is the emptiness described by the Heart Sutra.

The Heart Sutra doesn’t just stop there, however. In order to really drive the point home, it applies the same logic to all of the Buddha’s teachings, the Dharma with a capital D. The Heart Sutra describes the Four Noble Truths, the Five Aggregates, The Twelve Links of Interdependence, The Eighteen Dhatus, and says even they are marked with emptiness.

Ultimately, even the capital D Dharma itself is empty. It’s just a finger pointing at the moon, not the moon itself. Clinging to the Dharma is just another form of attachment, an obstacle created out of one’s own mind. When we stop looking at the finger, stop creating our own obstacles, and instead see the moon directly, we find there are no more obstacles to overcome, thus we can overcome fearful delusion and declare that we have arrived on the shore of enlightenment.

Timothy reads a pair of suttas on overcoming resentment.

Only after understanding the Five Aggregates did Shakyamuni declare Himself to be fully enlightened. Maybe we should try to understand them as well...

Ted reads the Pali and English translation of iti 92, looking at what it means to be close to The Buddha.

https://suttacentral.net/iti92/en/sujato

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Political discussion doesn't cause arguments. A lack of compassion does. If we stop trying to control, but instead try to understand, what would happen?

Touching grass is nice, but being a good person in body, speech, and mind is even better.

Near Varanasi, in the deer park at Isipatana, the Realized One, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha rolled forth the supreme Wheel of Dhamma. And that wheel cannot be rolled back by any ascetic or brahmin or god or Māra or divinity or by anyone in the world. It is the teaching, advocating, establishing, clarifying, analyzing, and revealing of the four noble truths.

SN 45.8 defines the aspects of the 8-fold Path.

Read the Sutta on suttacentral.net.

Join the discord and find other resources at https://virtualsangha.org

What is the Middle Way?

What are the 4 Noble Truths?

What is the 8-fold Path?

The Buddha said, “It is intention (cetana) that I call karma; for having willed (cetayitva), one acts by body, speech, and mind.”

Mike shares why this passage challenged him in his early practice: "Sometimes people have good intentions, but end up hurting others... so do we really only look at the intentions, and ignore the hurt?"

Today's sutta (AN 36.5) was read by our friend Timothy, covering an often quoted but perhaps dangerously misunderstood passage, where the Buddha famously says not to rely on traditions or teachers, but on one's own direct experience.

Gosh, how could we possibly misread that message? Tune in and find out!

• A basic gift, given thoughtfully, is worth more than a fine gift given carelessly.
• A gift is only great when it is given to a worthy cause.
• Giving a simple meal to one accomplished in right view is worth more than a river of gold.
• Going for refuge with a confident heart is worth more than any material gift.
• Actually having a heart of love is better than just following training rules.
• Realizing impermanence is the ultimate gift to all beings.

In AN 6.10, the Buddha encourages six contemplations, or “recollections,” that steady the mind and strengthen faith:

1. Recollection of the Buddha: Reflecting on the Buddha’s awakening, his qualities, and his role as an exemplary teacher of liberation.
2. Recollection of the Dhamma: Contemplating the teachings’ clarity, directness, and the peace they bring when truly understood and practiced.
3. Recollection of the Saṅgha: Remembering the community of noble disciples who have practiced well, serving as inspiring examples on the path.
4. Recollection of Virtue: Reflecting on one’s own ethical conduct, valuing harmlessness, honesty, and moral integrity.
5. Recollection of Generosity: Pondering acts of giving and the joy that arises from a generous and open-hearted spirit.
6. Recollection of Deities: Considering the qualities that lead heavenly beings to their fortunate rebirth, encouraging similar wholesome qualities in oneself.

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