Dhamma Talks At Wat Yannawa In English

[camerata]

Celebrating its 240th anniversary, royal temple Wat Yannawa is to start a series of Dhamma talks for the international community on August 21st, given by a British monk (Cittasamvaro) resident in Bangkok. The talks and guided meditation are free and start at 6.30pm on Thursday evenings. The temple is close to Saphan Taksin skytrain station. Take Exit 4 and turn right on Charoen Krung Road.

Details here and schedule here.

[orchis]

Thanks! I ll go as often as I can. say Hi!

[sabaijai]

Thanks for posting that, I hope to attend. I noticed from the website that Sayadaw U Jotika spoke in Bangkok on 31 July. Had I known, I wouldn't have missed that one.

[camerata]

Thursday August 28: The Wheelwright

There is a lot of interest in “Buddhist Psychology” these days - psychologists are taking isolated practises from Buddhism and using them, with varying results, in therapy and stress management. What would the Buddha have made of the psychological approach ? What kind of ‘therapy’ did he recommend? Broadly speaking he recommended a twin approach; character stabilization techniques, and a deeper complete emptying out of the personality. There is only so much you can do, and then much of the remaining practise involves stopping - a kind of passive pervasive growth that will attain far more than ones desire driven ego can.

[camerata]

The notes for Week 2's talk on punya are here.

Thursday September 4: The Gatekeeper

Mindfulness: The Gatekeeper. Or Why rock climbers do not get enlightened. ‘Mindfulness’ is a term pervasive throughout Buddhism, but what does it actually refer to? The English term is somewhat vague, and the Pali term is commonly misunderstood. How exactly does it relate to the present moment, or to paying attention to what you are doing - both qualities the rock climber practises in the extreme. But we are told to go to the roots of trees to meditate, not to climb cliff faces. ‘Mindfulness’ refers to a highly specific state of consciousness, of which the rock climber knows nothing.

[camerata]

Thursday September 11: The Hook and Bait

‘Feeling’ in Buddhism refers to the condition of liking and disliking. While common stress relieving practises and New Age Therapies focus on positive thinking, at bottom they are only generating pleasant feeling as opposed to unpleasant (positive over negative states of mind). But what lies on the other side of pleasant/unpleasant? These two are the hook that pulls the id - the pleasure seeking principle of the psyche. Many people avoid meditation practise fearing they will have to give up everything they like - but when liking and disliking cease in awareness, what is the resulting experience?

[camerata]

Thursday September 18: The Hero

From Gawain and Parsifal, to Luke Skywalker the spiritual path has always been represented as the way of the warrior. How and where is the battle fought? Right Effort is the seventh part of the Eightfold path, and often overlooked in favour of its oft mentioned older cousins mindfulness and concentration. Despite what Eckhart Tolle and similar gurus claim, there is an effort to be made, and there is a self (a character) to be developed. How to make the effort without the battle being fought with one's ego is the knack.

[IMA_FARANG]

Celebrating its 240th anniversary, royal temple Wat Yannawa is to start a series of Dhamma talks for the international community on August 21st, given by a British monk (Cittasamvaro) resident in Bangkok. The talks and guided meditation are free and start at 6.30pm on Thursday evenings. The temple is close to Saphan Taksin skytrain station. Take Exit 4 and turn right on Charoen Krung Road.

Details here and schedule here.

Just out of curiosity, will any of these talks be published or placed on the internet in English?

[camerata]

The notes for the talks are posted on the author's blog at littlebang.wordpress.com a few days after each talk. They aren't full transcripts but they cover the main points raised.

[camerata]

One of the books they were giving away last night was a collection of Ajahn Chah's talks called Bodhinyana. It's available online at accesstoinsight.org.

[camerata]

Thursday September 25: Facing the Tormentor

Dukkha is the Universal Tormentor; the stick that drives the Holy Life. Sooner or later, this demon has to be faced down. It is the nature of a mistake to flee when it is looked at - but with Dukkha it is the last thing we want to see. Should not the Path be filled with beautiful things and not ’suffering’? There are all kinds of clever schemes that humans employ to avoid facing the demon. They are called ‘Defense Mechanisms’, and were most thoroughly expounded by the brilliant Anna Freud (the earthy and pragmatic daughter of Sigmund). We look at how they relate to human’s avoidance of Dukkha.

[Sarathi]

Great info

[camerata]

Thursday October 2: Disenchantment

This world is endlessly enchanting. The myriad of beautiful things to chase, the bad things to avoid - the world seems firmly based in the ‘Real World’. But the truth is the content of experience enchants, casts a spell on the mind that becomes clouded and full of its desires, fears and self. But giving up desire is impossible, even for an hour. There has to be a strategy for breaking the spell, for disenchantment. In Pali it is called Nibbida, and is neither something that you can generate with desire, nor something that you can progress on the Path without.

[sabaijai]

Thursday October 2: Disenchantment

This world is endlessly enchanting. The myriad of beautiful things to chase, the bad things to avoid - the world seems firmly based in the ‘Real World’. But the truth is the content of experience enchants, casts a spell on the mind that becomes clouded and full of its desires, fears and self. But giving up desire is impossible, even for an hour. There has to be a strategy for breaking the spell, for disenchantment. In Pali it is called Nibbida, and is neither something that you can generate with desire, nor something that you can progress on the Path without.

Aj Buddhadasa explained the concept of nibbida to me many years ago when I was working on a translation of one of his lectures, and it has stuck with me ever since. It was a strong theme in his teaching. I wish I could attend this one. The carrot is nibbana; the stick is nibbida.

[camerata]

I found a good definition of nibbida in Buddhadharma magazine. In part:

“What is this word, anyway?” you wonder. A little rummaging around in the footnotes and glossaries yields the information that the word being translated as “utter disgust” and “revulsion” is the Pali word nibbida. The word is derived from the prefix nis- (“without”) and the verbal root vindati (“to find”), and so most literally means something like “without finding.” So how do we get from “without finding” to “disgust”?

There is a story in the texts that usefully illustrates the meaning of this important term. A dog stumbles across a bone that has been exposed to the elements for many months and has been therefore bleached of any residual flesh or marrow. The dog gnaws on it for some time before he finally determines that he is “not finding” any satisfaction in the bone, and he thus turns away from it in disgust. It is not that the bone is intrinsically disgusting; it is rather the case that the dog’s raging desire for meat just will not be satisfied by the bone. He is enchanted by the prospect of gratification as he scrapes away furiously at the bone, but when he finally wakes up to the truth that the bone is empty of anything that will offer him satisfaction, he becomes disenchanted and spits it out in disgust.

[camerata]

Thursday October 9: Ballast of the Ocean

Karma is future looking, and is not concerned with the past. Modern misinterpretations of Karma suggest that what happens to you is caused by your own actions in the past. But this negates the effect of the central character of Karma - the Will. ‘Intention’ is the driving force of Karma, and always relates to the future. Setting up and using will is called Resolution (adhitthana), and is one of the 10 perfections to be developed. This talk puts karma in its proper place, and suggests ways to use resolution to integrate a meditation practise in daily life.