Email Wonderful Or Is It

Siddhartha Gautama believed that he had attained a state of being, where he fully understood all of the ins and outs of the human condition. He referred to this level as 'nirvana,' which meant that the termination of his desires ended all of his suffering. He began to spread the word, claiming that through his teachings, this state of bliss could be achieved.



Here are some tips you can use to help decipher whether the Thai amulet you are about to purchase is an original from a theravada Buddhist temple in Thailand - or, a fake worth a couple of pennies because they are made and sold in tremendous bulk.

BN: The word Buddha can mean knowing, knowing something. The five skandas may be the object of meditation (and we come to see their impermanent and dependent characteristics) and there is the awareness of them. Yet still the awareness is part of the characteristics of phenomena. I agree. I don't think that awareness can be truly separated from the characteristics of phenomena. Of course awareness is fundamental and essential to mindfulness.

Does the Seller Reside in Thailand? The seller of authentic Thai amulets is almost certainly still living in Thailand. You can almost immediately weed out anyone not physically residing in Thailand at the present moment. If your amulets aren't shipped from Thailand there is an even better chance you are not getting genuine articles.

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.

MZC: I saw in your schedule that you have talks and question and answer times. What are talks that you have been giving, and what are some of the questions being asked? Do you feel the retreatants have the chance to get past the academic and ask the questions they really want to ask?

BN: Yes, that's the key. This retreat we taught some of the stories from the Dhammapada, and people asked a few questions about the stories. The questions are longer than the talk, and most of the questions are about the person's individual life. So these are even more important than the questions about the stories. The stories are a springboard to get to what the people really want to ask. I talk for about an hour and then we have dialogue for about an hour and a half. People get to bed about 10 o'clock and then get up at 3:45 a.m. At 4 o'clock in the morning, the retreatant begins meditation.