Affiliate Marketing What Is This And Why Use It
Janet returned from the U.K. (over my protests) and we eventually moved from Johnstown to Winchester, Virginia, hoping for a better chance for employment, even though none of these small Appalachian towns could offer much. Winchester was only an hour's drive from the Bhavana Society and Bhante G, who was just over the line in West Virginia and a couple of hours from my mother's nursing home in Pennsylvania, so we were able to deepen our practice and at the same time keep an eye on Mom.
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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.
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?
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.
Close your eyes and first bring your awareness to the sensation of sitting. Feel your seat and your legs. Feel the support beneath you. Don't try to visualize anything. Just notice what is there. Do this for a few minutes, until a feeling of physical and mental steadiness and presence arise.
This information is nothing new. The Buddha knew this more than 2,500 years ago when, after much diligence, he successfully found lasting happiness by extinguishing the root of all suffering within himself. The Buddha then dedicated the rest of his life to teaching and spreading a non-dogmatic, systematic method to inner liberation, which he called Vipassana Meditation (Vipassana means "Insight" in Pali, the canonical language of Southeast Asia's theravada Buddhism). During the time since, this method has since proliferated drastically; today its presence spans around the world.
Why do they do that? What is the meaning of this worship? Well, the Buddha isn't a god. He isn't even present in this world anymore. After his Parinirvana, he passed from the cycle of death and rebirth. He doesn't exist anymore like us. He can't influence this world, at least directly. That is exactly what these worshipers believed.
