Buddhist History (Week 8) - Tibetan Buddhism (part 2)

Our conversation on 11 October (Week 8 of Buddhist history) was the second of two sessions looking at the history of tantra and Tibetan Buddhism, and also completing Conze's book "Buddhism: A Short History" by looking at Buddhism in the West and the modern world. We also revisited Alan Wallace's article "The Spectrum of Buddhist Practice in the West" (available here). The recording is available here.

Buddhist History (Week 7) - Tibetan Buddhism (part 1)

Our conversation on 27 September (Week 7 of Buddhist history) was the first of two sessions looking at the history of tantra and Tibetan Buddhism. The recording is available here.

Buddhist History - Week 6

Here's the recording from our meeting on 5 September. We took a break from Conze's review of early Buddhist history to look at Alan Wallace's review of trends in contemporary Buddhism, specifically "The Spectrum of Buddhist Practice in the West" (available here). The parallels between the development of the Mahayana in India and the transition of Buddhism to the West are quite remarkable, and suggest that the development of a new form of Buddhism adapted to the pre-existing Western social, cultural and intellectual environment is inevitable. We started to look at some aspects of what this might include. Some topics we discussed include:

• The challenges of adaptation: the risk of over-simplifying by throwing too much out, and the risk of including elements from other cultures that aren't relevant to the West
• The importance for the current generation of Buddhist practitioners in ensuring an authentic transmission of dharma to the West
• In Tibet, the ecumenical (rimé) movement sought to overcome divisiveness among the four Tibetan schools. In the West, these four are also interacting with all the other Buddhist traditions such as Zen, Vipassana, Japanese Buddhism etc, in a way that is historically unprecedented. What might a rimé movement look like in the West?

Buddhist History - Week 5

Apologies for belated posting. Summer holidays and retreat beckoned. Here's the recording of our meeting on 30 August, continuing our study of the second 500-year period of Buddhist history (from Conze's "Buddhist History"), from 0 AD to 500 AD. Among other topics, we covered:

• Mindfulness in the Mahayana and mindfulness in "insight meditation" traditions
• The integration of practice into daily life
• The importance of nonduality and going beyond extremes

Buddhist History - Week 4

This week's teaching and discussion (Sunday 12th July) can be downloaded here (Hit the blue "Download Now" button). In a lively conversation with a large group, topics we covered included:

• Path and view: What's the difference between path and view in the Theravada and the Mahayana? How can we bring our practice more into our everyday lives?
• The nature and meaning of compassion: what's the connection between everyday "touchy-feeling" notions of being a "good person" and the Buddhist understanding of compassion? How can compassion become a trap and turn into just another manifestation of ego-clinging? What does it mean to practice compassion?
• "All emotions are pain": Rinpoche uses these words to convey the essential meaning of the second of the four Dharma seals. But does he really mean it? How are we to interpret this? What does this mean in the light of all the current interest in emotional intelligence, positive psychology and therapeutic interventions?
• Can we consider "Fight Club" to be a Buddhist movie? It deconstructs eternalism in the guise of salvation through consumerism, but it falls short of Buddhist view. Why?

Buddhist History - Week 3

This week's teaching and discussion (Sunday 5th July) can be downloaded here (Hit the blue "Download Now" button).

Buddhist History - Week 2

On Sunday 28th June, we reviewed what we covered last week (to p.10 of Conze's "Buddhism: A Short History"), and then continued to p.22, covering the Three Jewels and the history of the "18 sects", including the three most important splits among the early Buddhist schools between ~340BC-240BC. A recording is available here (Hit the blue "Download Now" button. I hope quality issues have been resolved). Among the topics we covered this week:

• These schools correspond to our emotions, as Rinpoche points out when teaching Madhyamika. For example, the notion of "no self" offends everyday commonsense, and also Buddhist ideas of karma and reincarnation (how can we speak of a "person" taking rebirth unless there is some continuity between this life and the next life?), so the Vatsiputriyas (the Personalists) invented the notion of a real "Person" in order to explain this. We reflected that many of us have a similar emotional clinging to the notion of our own rebirth/next life.
• The essential view of the Tibetan Buddhist path was established over 2,300 years ago - so it's not at all a recent invention or reinterpretation. Even around 340BC, the Mahasanghikas had established a view that holds the seeds of the later Mahayana and Vajrayana. They believed: (i) the 'real' Buddha is transcendental, and the historical Buddha was simply a manifestation or magical emanation for the sake of teaching and benefiting sentient beings. In fact, Buddhas are manifesting at all times in all realms. (ii) the nature of thought/mind is pure, and all impurities (such as ignorance and negative emotions) are adventitious, i.e. they are not part of mind itself. (iii) the ultimate truth cannot be expressed in words or concepts - they can only ever refer to relative truth.

Buddhist History - Part 1

On Sunday 21st June, we began Edward Conze's "Buddhism: A Short History", completing the Introduction and up to p.9 of chapter 1. A recording of our conversation may be found here (hit the blue "download now" button). Among the many topics of conversation, there was a particular focus on the role of magic in the Vajrayana (Conze refers to its "cosmic" focus), and how we might best interpret and understand that in the context of the modern, scientifically-minded Western world.