August 2005 Newsletter

Vipassana Fellowship Newsletter

from vipassana.com

August 2005 Edition

“The friend of good counsel is good-hearted on four counts:

He restrains you from the unskilful

He encourages you in the skilful

You learn from him what you did not know

He shows you the path to bliss”

- Digha Nikaya 31

September Meditation Course starts soon

Vipassana Fellowship's online meditation courses have been offered since 1997 and have proven helpful to meditators in many countries around the world. Registration is now available for our final course of 2005 which begins on September 26th. The main text is based on a tried and tested format and serves as a practical introduction to samatha (tranquility) and vipassana (insight) techniques from the Theravada tradition of Buddhism. Intended primarily for beginners, the 90 day course is also suitable for experienced meditators who wish to explore different aspects of the tradition. The emphasis is on building a sustainable and balanced meditation practice that is compatible with lay life.

The course is suitable for users of any major operating system (Windows, Apple Mac, Linux) provided they have a recent web browser that can display Macromedia Flash files. The course uses our Online Course Campus which adds additional flexibility and permits greater interactivity. Participants also receive an audio supplement on CD-Rom containing guided meditations and chants to support the online material. (Please register before September 7th to ensure timely despatch of the CD-Rom.)

The course is led by Andrew Quernmore, an experienced meditation teacher based in England.

Registration details are available at:

http://www.vipassana.com/course/

Parisa: Develop Your Practice; Explore the Tradition

We've often been asked to provide follow up courses and supplementary material for those who have completed our 90 day course. To coincide with our September course we are beginning our new Parisa support and encouragement scheme for former participants. If you have taken one or more of our online courses during the past 8 years you are eligible to subscribe. The scheme provides ongoing access to the latest edition of the 90 day course (there are 3 of these each year), new material to aid your practice and understanding of the Dhamma in the form of monthly themed "parisa packs" and a similar level of access to personal support from Andrew as available to regular course members. This is a flexible scheme that can be joined throughout the year for as long or as short a period as you wish. It is hoped that regular contact during the three courses we run each year and added inspiration from the parisa packs will help to provide a support network for those who do not have access to a local group or who would like to further explore our tradition.

If you have already taken one of our courses, Parisa details can be found here:

http://www.vipassana.com/parisa/

Way and Means

The aim of a human is to free himself, if possible, in this life from the intoxicants, the lust of being born again in this world, or in the world of subtle matter, or the world without matter, and the ignorance of the Four Noble Truths. His aim is to break the chain of causation, to destroy any one of its members and thus end the whole; to free himself from desire or appetite, aversion and dullness. There are, it is clear, two sides involved: there is the extinction of desire, and the extinction of ignorance; true the two are intimately related; there can be no extinction of desire if ignorance prevails, and therefore the extinction of ignorance is fundamental. But it is not surprising that a purely intellectual solution for the removal of ignorance is not accepted by Buddhism; the training of conduct may be, and indeed is, a lower plane of endeavour, but it is essential, and, unlike the sage of the Upanisads, the seeker for liberation must accept the duty of a strict morality. Hence the doctrine that conduct (sila) concentration (samadhi) and wisdom or insight(panna) are all essential; that concentration pervaded by conduct is fruitful; that insight pervaded by concentration is fruitful; and that the self, pervaded by insight, is freed from the corruption of desire, becoming, false views and ignorance. But concentration is rather a stage in the attainment of insight than an independent entity, and a sutta of the Digha Nikaya mentions conduct and insight as the essential pair, both inseparably united, since neither without the other performs its part.

Conduct, it follows, from the end of man, must be such as to aid him in his end; it must secure for him either progress to Nibbana or rebirth at least in a superior form of life. The action of Kamma may not be unbroken or absolutely regular, but it is assumed for practical purposes to have these qualities, and man will profit or suffer according to his own deeds and deserts. Moreover, man has the power to act; strange as it may seem when one ground of the denial of a self is remembered, and the apparent determinism of the chain of causation, the Buddha has no doubt whatever that the determinism of Makkhali Gosala is the most detestable of all heresies. The position is the more remarkable, because one of the arguments in the Canon (and later) against the existence of a self is that such a thing must be autonomous, while all in the world is conditional and causally determined. But the issue is solved by the simple process of ignoring it, and Buddhism rejoices in being freed from any error of determinism to menace moral responsibility.

Nothing illustrates better the true character of Buddhist ethics that the conception of friendship or love (metta)... The Buddhist will endure injuries and insults; he will seek no revenge and offer no resistance; but he does so because selfmastery is greater to him than anything else. As part of his meditations to secure the saving grace of indifference to the world, he will in a lonely place practise the generation of a feeling of friendship for all things, hostile or not; the practise has potent magic powers: by it the Buddha stayed the onslaught of the elephant instigated against him by the traitor Devadatta, and the mere ordinary man can guard himself against snake-bite by it. Moreover, the power deprives others of the ability effectively to injure us; the wise man can build round himself a protection which the enemy cannot pierce.

The due observance of the rules of conduct brings with it the assurance of the power of self-restraint and corresponding satisfaction. But there are still further matters to be observed by the disciple, which cannot be formulated, like the rules of conduct, in precise directions but must be carried out at his own discretion. He must be watchful over the sense intimations which come to him whether direct or as ideas; he must practise a disinterest himself in them, and to prevent any evil states of mind arising which would foster desire. Secondly, he must be mindful and self-possessed; in all his deeds he must keep ever before him the nature of the act; its ethical significance; whether or not it conduces to the end at which he aims; and the real facts underlying the mere phenomenon of the outward act. Thirdly, he must study contentment. In diverse fashions these principles are inculcated; the habit of self-observation is ever insisted upon as the most effective way to root out those evil cravings which lead to rebirth and its miseries.

(Adapted from 'Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon' by A. Berriedale Keith, 1923)

The View Depends Upon The Point Of View

The Elder Mahatissa was meditating near Anuradhapura one early morning, when a beautiful and richly-dressed woman passed him and laughed back at him, seeking to captivate. Seeing her flashing teeth, he was reminded that the body is a set of bones and impure.

The Elder saw her teeth agleam,

And straight disgust surged up within:

'How foul this body, rightly seen!

So think, and ye to Truth shall win.'

Soon her husband in pursuit came up with the Elder and asked, 'Did you, O reverend sir, see a woman pass this way?' To whom he made the answer:

'Or man or woman passed me now,

Good sir, I cannot rightly say:

But this at least is sure, I trow,

A skeleton hath gone this way!'

(Adapted by K.J. Saunders from the 5th century Visuddhimagga)

The Vipassana Fellowship Newsletter is published about 10 times each year and is sent only on request and to previous participants of our courses. Vipassana Fellowship is an organisation dedicated to the dissemination of accurate and useful information on Buddhist meditation practices as found in the Theravada tradition. Our next mailing will be in September. Our site can be accessed via the vipassana.com and vipassana.org domains.

Vipassana Fellowship, BCM Box 4398, London, WC1N 3XX, United Kingdom.