Ch. 6 - Why the Buddha Sat Under a Tree from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

IMMEDIATELY AFTER HOVER’s departure I had begun another retreat, and on New Year’s Day Goenka’s chanting brought to an end forty continuous days of meditation behind walls for me. An hour after the meditation ended, my monastic woolen shawl and white cotton pajama suit were tucked away in my bag, and I marveled at the strange feel of denim against my skin once again.

by Eric Lerner

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An interview with Rivers Cuomo

This a Pariyatti Presents... event interview with Rivers Cuomo, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the band, Weezer. He is interviewed by Kory Goldberg, co-author of Along the Path.

Rivers Cuomo

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Ch. 5 - Right Effort from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

TOWARD THE END OF the first week of the course, Hover introduced a new schedule for vipassana meditation which he had been shown on his recent trip to Burma. It consisted of six hour-long sittings each day in which the resolve was made not to move at all: two in the morning, three in the afternoon, and one at night after his discourse, plus some hours in the early morning and after tea. It didn’t take long for this regimen to produce some very deep pain. Shortly after we began it, a rock-hard knot about the size of a grapefruit surfaced in my neck. It grew in intensity during each hour-long sitting until I could no longer hold my attention on any other part of my body. When I focused right on the pain, my body would be gripped by enormous tension and the knot would suddenly disappear. This thrilled me the first time, but it soon became clear that it only meant that the knot would be back the next hour, stiffer, larger, and more difficult to deal with.

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 4 - Noble Silence from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

BENARES, THE SPIRITUAL CAPITAL of Hinduism, and the site of our next retreat, had been one of the most exciting places I’d visited in India or anywhere else in my travels around the world four years earlier. It’s a city of death and rebirth. Pilgrims gather there to bathe away their sins in the holy Ganges River waters and then patiently await the end of this life in order to be cremated beside the Mother of Waters. Saddhus and holy men mingle freely with the poor and the well-to-do. Everyone is a beggar at the end. The fires of cremation along the river banks produce eerie, smoky sunsets while the holy chanting of “Hare Krishna,” “Hare Krishna” goes on night and day.

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 3 - A Peacock is More Than a Bird from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

IN MID-NOVEMBER, after nearly three weeks of waiting, I finally took a train to a small city in Gujarat state in the far west of India. It was the nicest time of the year in that part of the country. The weather was warm and dry with an empty blue sky all day, and the area had a different feel to it than any place I had been. It was less intense, almost relaxed, and without the air of desperation that much of India had those days, as its economy teetered toward collapse.

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 2 - Siva’s Smile from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

IT TOOK A COUPLE of months to get used to the lack of drama that each hour of the ten-day retreat had contained. Hover had not given me much advice as to what to do next, except to keep sitting. Often I had no idea what I was doing, but I kept doing it at least one hour a day and although P, my wife, didn’t participate, she respected my effort. I hadn’t sat this evening, though, due to the rush of getting dinner before P and I went out. Now I wished I had. I wished I could be somewhere dark and quiet where I could close my eyes.

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 1 - The Dharma of an Aerospace Engineer from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

About a dozen of us sat cross-legged in a darkened living room in a Massachusetts country home, attentive to the speech of a man whom all present including myself would agree was a highly unlikely candidate for a meditation teacher. His name was Robert Hover, and he was an aerospace engineer from Los Angeles. He had the incongruity of a centaur. The bottom part of him looked right, seated comfortably on a cushion, wrapped in a Burmese style lungi, a cloth cylinder tied at the waist. Above that, though, was a 1950’s style short-sleeved sport shirt and a prominent, clean-shaven face and balding head with a fringe of gray hair cut as close as possible. He didn’t radiate beatitude, only practicality. He reminded me of my junior high school football coach. Something about his sparkling eyes, though, the slight hint of otherworldliness, reassured me.

by Eric Lerner

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Introduction from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

AS THE WORLD ADVANCED into the early seventies I felt strangely dislocated. I really couldn’t accept that the sixties had so quickly become an “era” in the past tense. I tried to remind myself that, if only for a brief time, the mind of my generation had been wide open to experiences, perceptions of the universe and modes of life whose power and truth contradicted a lifetime of convention. For a while, through chemicals, a wholly other state of being seemed possible. In the initial hour’s rush of my first dose of mescaline, that surge in which my perceptions set out on their own, I was freed for the first time from my conceptions, and the world of accomplishment and prestige became someone else’s bad dream. But somehow, I was still the same. Despite the incredible visions of Truth I had experienced, I was no more peaceful or loving than ever, and as the visions became memories, I began to experience the most profound disorientation.

Nothing made sense. Almost overnight I had given up most of the beliefs and operating principles of twenty years. I was ready to give up old explanations as long as I had a new one. ...

by Eric Lerner

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Review of Buddhism without Beliefs by Bhikkhu Bodhi

It has often been said that Western Buddhism is distinguished from its Asian prototype by three innovative shifts: the replacement of the monastery by the lay community as the principal arena of Buddhist practice; the enhanced position of women; and the emergence of a grass-roots engaged Buddhism aimed at social and political transformation. These three developments, however, have been encompassed by a fourth which is so much taken for granted that it is barely noticed. This last innovation might be briefly characterized as an attempt to transplant Buddhist practice from its native soil of faith and doctrine into a new setting governed by largely secular concerns. For Asian Buddhists, including Eastern masters teaching in the West, this shift is so incomprehensible as to be invisible, while Western Buddhists regard it as so obvious that they rarely comment on it.

Stephen Batchelor, however, has clearly discerned the significance of this development and what it portends for the future. Having been trained in Asia in two monastic lineages (Tibetan Gelugpa and Korean Soen) and relinquished his monk’s vows to live as a lay Buddhist teacher in the West, he is acquainted with both traditional Buddhism and its Western offshoots. His book Buddhism without Beliefs is an intelligent and eloquent attempt to articulate the premises of the emerging secular Buddhism and define the parameters of a “dharma practice” appropriate to the new situation. ...

narrated by Jonathan Nelson

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A Household Tradition by Patrick Given-Wilson

This talk by Patrick Given-Wilson was given for the European Dhamma servers' meeting in Spain, June 2024. The talk is followed by a Q&A session.

by Patrick Given-Wilson

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