theravadin

[theravadin]

[theravadin]

hi! as you may know i have just acquired the bhikku nanamoli/bhikku bodhi english translation of the majjhima nikaya! i would like to ask anyone willing to comment on this, what order should i read the suttas in? i was initially going to simply read them from 1 to 152 in the order they are presented in the book, but i also found this study guide which offers perhaps a more coherent/cohesive order in which to progress through the suttas. for anyone who has spent time with these texts, which of these two reading orders would you recommend?

[theravadin]

forgot to mention this yesterday but my majjhima nikaya came in yesterday :3

[theravadin]

"Each of us lives in a reality we take to be the real one. This is how it is, we insist. End of story. But isn’t even the consensus reality we share as human beings just a projection of our human sense perceptions? Animals don’t have the same perceptions as we do; therefore, they don’t share the same reality. So what is the “real” reality? Is it ours? Is it a dog’s? A bird’s? A fly’s? The answer is, there isn’t one “real” reality. Reality is wherever we find ourselves in the moment, and it’s not as solid, not as certain, as we think."

Pema Chodron, in Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change

[theravadin]

i'm thinking about when i was younger, before i'd even really learned much about buddhism beyond the very basic summary you learn in a basic social studies class in grade school, how i didn't understand meditation at all. i only understood it as the stereotypical idea of "clearing your mind of all thought." i didn't understand how that was possible; how could you just empty your mind? how could you not think of anything?

it wasn't until i was maybe 15 or 16 that i discovered the concept of ānāpānasati, mindfulness of breath. that made it click for me. you're not chasing away your thoughts, because especially without practice that is a pretty futile endeavor. instead, you're bringing in something you already have, your breath, and focusing your mind on it. it doesn't chase away your thoughts; in a sense it replaces them, but more accurately, it transforms them. thich nhat hanh once compared the effect of mindfulness to the effect of light: light does not destroy shadows; it transforms them into more light. just so, mindfulness of breath does not destroy your errant thoughts, but transforms them into more mindfulness. you are able to use your breath as a lever into mindfulness (pali: "sati"), into concentration ("samādhi"), into insight (vipassana), into peace (i believe the pali for what i mean here is "passaddhi").

[theravadin]

watching one of thich nhat hanh's old dhamma talks (2012 or 2013 i think) where he is teaching in vietnamese (obviously with english subtitles) and i feel like i enjoy this better? i feel like i'm learning more. i completely understand that english was not his first language (or his second, which was french i believe) but i've always struggled to understand him when he spoke english, and i think you can tell it's more difficult for him to translate his thoughts into it. he was still a wonderful english speaker and writer, but you can tell how much more at home he was speaking his native language

[theravadin]

Some of the rakan statues at Otagi Nenbutsu-ji in Arashiyama, Kyoto. The temple was originally located in Gion, and most of it was destroyed by natural disasters and war. The remains of the building were moved to Arashiyama in 1922 to preserve it, but it was partially destroyed by a typhoon in the 1950s. Many of the statues were restored by Kocho Nishimura from 1981 to the early 1990s.

[theravadin]

[theravadin]

1424 pages. i’m assuming they’re rather thin, mn has like 150 suttas right? and several are rather lengthy despite being the “middle length discourses”

[theravadin]

i realized it’s $40 bc it’s half off rn so i panicked and ordered it now 😔 and it’ll take up to a week and a half to arrive 😔

[theravadin]

oh it’s only like $40 nevermind. maybe i can get it sooner than i thought

i really want that single-volume english translation of the majjhima nikaya (the translation by bhikku ñāņamoli and bhikku bodhi) so i can really dig into it and take notes on every sutta. ideally eventually i’ll do this with every nikaya but i’ll start with mn. i foresee filling many notebooks with notes on mn alone

[theravadin]

i really want that single-volume english translation of the majjhima nikaya (the translation by bhikku ñāņamoli and bhikku bodhi) so i can really dig into it and take notes on every sutta. ideally eventually i’ll do this with every nikaya but i’ll start with mn. i foresee filling many notebooks with notes on mn alone

[theravadin]

[theravadin]

[theravadin]

[theravadin]

[theravadin]

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

-Rumi