Marketing Can Be A Long-Term Investment

Before I left for the Southern Hemisphere, however, I needed a place to practice for awhile, to get back on track, and I knew the perfect place; at Bhante Gunaratana's monastery outside of Washington, DC. The Bhavana Society (bhavana in Pali translates as mental development) is tucked away in the picturesque hills of West Virginia just down the road from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Bhante Gunaratana is the founder of Bhavana, a Sri Lankan monk who has been in robes for almost seventy years, and a world recognized meditation teacher.

Its construction was a result of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. As part of the Maitreya Project, the initial budget was $55 million. It is composed of 1,100 copper cast pieces and was finished in 2002. The colossal statue weights approximately 1,000 tons.

It is a tradition in Thai theravada Buddhism to cultivate compassion, loving kindness, and mindfulness through many spiritual practices of prayer and meditation. The art of Thai massage is no exception. Thai massage without compassion and mindfulness is like a car without a driver.

In yoga and in Thai massage, the hips are believed to hold a lot of emotions. For this reason, innumerable techniques have been developed over the centuries of Thai massage practice to release the hip muscles and joints.

BN: Laughing. We may be getting some goats soon. You know the economics of this? They milk the goats. The female goats give birth to billy goats, but there is no use for the billy goats. So after 40 days, they kill the male goat to eat. So we are going to adopt a male goat. And see from there if we can add more. We do eat seafood here, but I'd like the monastery to become completely vegetarian. We still follow the practice of not eating after noon.

BN: But in the Tipitaka, you have so many references from the Buddha himself that refer to rebirth. Even in the Dhammapada we have these two verses that the Buddha announced after he became enlightened which refer to rebirth and the ending of rebirth. And doesn't "dependent origination"--which Batchelor accepts-- include the notion of rebirth?

He goes through the Pali Canon and separates what was new to the Buddha and what was also held in Indian philosophy before the Buddha. He can then pinpoint what's unique to Buddhism. So he doubts rebirth and different realms of existence. He pinpoints as distinctively Buddhist: dependent origination; the practice of mindful awareness, being focused on the totality of what is happening in our moment to moment experience; the Four Noble Truths & the Eight Fold Path; the principle of self-reliance, not to be dependent on some authority figure.

Also I think that Batchelor has to be clearer about his criteria for what is to remain and what is to be taken out of the Tipitaka. Just because the idea of rebirth was previous to the time of the Buddha doesn't mean that the Buddha did not accept a form of rebirth. Yes, the Buddha taught rebirth in a completely different way. In Buddha's first discourse he says that regarding the Four Noble Truths that he realized things before unknown to him. That means he found out from his own experience; nobody taught the Buddha. He did not take the teaching from other people. One of his insights was that there is a rebirth in the sense that there is a continuity of mind.