Andrew Olendzki
An Organic Spirituality
We are accustomed in the West to think of spiritual matters as having to do with placing ourselves in relationship with something greater than ourselves, something “other,” and something “out there.” At best it is something beautiful, wise, and willing to love us dearly. At worst it is powerful, fearful, and capable of judging us harshly. Some come to know of it through texts of revelation, the teaching of prophets, or the edifices of tradition built upon these foundations. Others intuit it in … [Read more...]
Advice to a Dying Man
Advice to a Dying Man: Anāthapindikovāda Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya, 143) This systematic exploration of the phenomenal field of human experience is a powerful exercise in non-attachment. No need to wait until lying on your death bed to undertake it. Put aside an hour, find a quiet place, and try working through this map of the inner landscape, step by step. On one occasion the householder Anāthapindika was afflicted, suffering, and gravely ill. The venerable Sāriputta dressed, and taking his … [Read more...]
Fully Quenched
When Anāthapiṇḍika, the wealthy merchant from Sāvatthī, visited Rājagaha one time on business, he found the household of his wife’s family in great commotion and unable to greet him with their characteristic style. He was told by his host that the Buddha had been invited for a meal the next day, and all the preparations were for this momentous event. The sound of the Buddha's name, we are told, stopped Anāthapiṇḍika in his tracks. “Did you say ‘Buddha?'” he asked three times, as if sensing some … [Read more...]
The Case Against Racism
The tendency in human nature to discriminate against people because of their skin color, social standing or birth, and to consider one racial group to be more pure than another, is probably as old as mankind itself. Racism was alive and well in ancient India, where pale-skinned Indo-European brahmins placed themselves at the pinnacle of a caste system that included nobles, merchants, workers and the universally denigrated outcasts. In this discourse the Buddha offers a series of cogent … [Read more...]
Beyond Joy and Sorrow
These bantering verses, exchanged between the Buddha and Kakuddha, the “son of a deva" or a forest sprite, are replete with subtlety, word play and double meaning. Notice the matching structure of the verses, a very common device of early Buddhist poetry. The fourth stanza mirrors the third, line by line, and the theme is echoed again in the fifth stanza. The Buddha follows the poetic lead of the sprite, but reverses the meaning of his words. Kakuddha assumes delight (nandi) to be the requisite … [Read more...]
Meditation on the Elements (Majjhima Nikaya 62)
Making the Best of It
Sensory information hurtles upon our eyeballs at the speed of light, crashes into our eardrums at the speed of sound, and courses through our body and mind as fast as an electro-chemical signal can flash from one neuron to the next. How do we deal with all this data without getting overwhelmed? By blocking out most of it, and stepping down the voltage on what little is left. The brain freezes the world into discrete mind moments, each capturing a barely adequate morsel of information, then … [Read more...]
No Harmful Thought
Is it really impossible to imagine that such an attitude is attainable? We so often hear such sentiments dismissed as idealistic or impractical. It seems taken for granted that humans are just hateful creatures, that animosity is an adaptive instinct and that “of course" we will hate those who threaten us. Who could blame us? The Buddha was showing us a more noble way of being human. Yes, the impulse to lash out against those we fear does lie within us all as a latent tendency, and it is all … [Read more...]
Where the Action Is
There are two aspects to every moment’s experience. One is the content, what it is you are aware of; the other is the intention, what your emotional response is toward that object of awareness. In the Buddhist way of looking at things, the first is largely irrelevant, while the second is immensely important. According to Buddhist psychology, human experience is constructed anew every moment as consciousness of one of the six objects (a form, a sound, a smell, a taste, a touch or a thought) … [Read more...]
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