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Allocate a special space, seat, and time of day just for meditation. Although you can meditate anywhere and at any time, consistency ensures a greater likelihood of success. Begin with sitting for 15 minutes a day. First thing in the morning or just before bed are good times when external disturbances are likely to be minimal. You decide what works best for your life. If it feels appropriate after some time, you can gradually increase the duration of your practice to 30, 45 or 60 minutes.
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.
theravada The Clear Water Zen group is developing a strategy for greatly increasing the number of Zen groups in the area. A pamphlet entitled "How to start a Catholic Zen group" is being distributed to Catholic churches in the area. It includes quotes from such Catholic leaders as Father Robert Kennedy, among others, and provides practical advice on how to get a group started. Future pamphlets will be modified to address other faiths but the practical advice on how to start a Zen group will be common to all faiths.
New Zealand was stunning, once I got there; the twenty-six hour flight seemed endless. About eighteen hours out, we hit a cloudbank that continued all the way to Auckland, and only later was I to discover that it was more or less a stationary phenomenon over the rain soaked islands. Miraculously, the sun came out the day I arrived and remained for my entire 400-kilometer train trip from Auckland to the rainforests of Wellington, which was nothing short of a spectacular series of picture postcards. Every bend in the tracks, from mountains, to ocean, to pastoral pastures of grazing sheep, was breathtaking.
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.
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.
The Leshan Giant Buddha is regarded as the biggest carved stone Buddha in the world. Carved from the Lingyun Mountain, this statue is found in the Dadu, Qingyi, and Minjian rivers in Sichuan, China. It stands 71 meters (230 ft) in height and spans 28 meters (92 ft) between its shoulders. At 14.7 meters (48 feet) high, the head alone is large enough for 100 people to sit on.
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?
