Dear Friends,
We are excited to share our June issue of the BCBS Insight Journal with you. This issue includes: an interview with Bhikkhu Bodhi on being called, as Buddhists, to respond to contemporary suffering; an essay by Bhikkhu Anālayo, in which he reflects on Christian uses of insight meditation; and an interview from the archives with Ruth Denison on her extraordinary life and teaching of the dharma.
Bhikkhu Bodhi is widely known as a scholar-practitioner. His translations of the Pāli suttas are a major contribution to contemporary Buddhism. Bhikkhu Bodhi, for some decades now, has also been very engaged in responding to the suffering of the world as a Buddhist. In this interview, “Buddhist Ethics for a World in Crisis,” Bhikkhu Bodhi reflects on how the early discourses of the Buddha inform his thinking about engaging with the world around us and his own transformation from a monk focused solely on scholarship and meditation to a monk who understands engaging with the needs of the world as integral to Buddhist practice. He also discusses how he came to co-found Buddhist Global Relief and the Buddhist Action Coalition, and how we, as Buddhists, can more fully embody Buddhist ethics by joining efforts to reduce suffering based on exploitative economic systems, the degrading of ecosystems, the war in Palestine and Israel, oppression based on social identity, and other forms of violence and injustice.
Bhikkhu Anālayo has long been interested in the ways that different Buddhist traditions as well as different spiritual traditions more generally can learn from each other. He begins the present contribution, “Christian Insight Meditation,” with an overview of comparative studies of Christian and Buddhist contemplative practices. Some have argued that despite the obvious metaphysical differences, the quality of mind that these two traditions aim for may be very similar, or perhaps even identical. Some Christians have recommended insight meditation to support a Christian spiritual life, and in particular, the goal of a loving union with the Divine. Bhikkhu Anālayo points out that some Buddhist practices—the cultivation of mindfulness and mental tranquility through mettā meditation, for example—may support a Christian path. Others, however, such as insight practices in the Mahāsī Sayādaw tradition that cultivate a direct experience of momentariness through labeling and slow walking that allow us to see, or construct, the fragmented quality of our experience, Bhikkhu Anālayo argues, do not, in fact, support the aspirations of Christians aiming for a mystical union with God.
Finally, we are including a 1996 interview with Ruth Denison from the Insight Journal archives. Ruth Denison, raised in East Prussia not far from the Polish border, escaped the Red Army, several times, as it marched westward toward the end of the Second World War. She describes one harrowing event after another. Eventually, she made it to the United States. In the early 1960s Denison and her husband traveled to Asia, where she studied with Mahāsī Sayādaw and eventually U Ba Khin, who became her primary teacher and who gave her dharma transmission. She also trained extensively as a Zen practitioner in Japan. Denison started teaching at IMS in the early years and led her own saṅgha, Dhamma Dena Desert Vipassanā Center in Joshua Tree, California. Following U Ba Khin, she made awareness of bodily sensations central to her teaching. The interview gives some sense of the remarkable life of one of the early teachers who brought vipassanā meditation to the West.
We hope you find these pieces provocative and inspiring. And we look forward to seeing you at a residential retreat or online program soon!
Sincerely,
William Edelglass
Director of Studies
