– Inside and Outside – Across Time (based on sutras SN 35.1-35.12) You can read them on your own here https://suttacentral.net/sn35-aniccavagga?view=normal… When people—whether monks, students, or laypersons—met the Buddha, they often asked him for teachings. In response, the Buddha would ask: “Now, tell me: Is what you are feeling right now permanent or impermanent?” Take…

Sensations – Feelings – Emotions An Extensive Dive into Human Sensitivity According to Buddhist Scriptures Based on: Are We Helpless Victims of Sensitivity? This is a question posed by the renowned teacher Ajahn Sumedho (video link).Everything we know, experience, think, feel, and live through—everything in the world—is accessible to us only through our six sense…

The beautiful fall retreat has come to an end. Eighty hours of fasting, meditation, hiking, and camping allowed me to immerse myself in nature, listening to the trees whispering the tune of dying leaves. I had hoped to stay for the full five days, but it seems that rural Missouri’s police aren’t accustomed to people…

Conclusion I’ve titled this series “Five Steps Before Enlightenment” because, before we can experience total freedom, we would need to first take these small but significant steps to understand where we become entangled along the way. The Buddha taught that the five aggregates—body (rupa), sensation (vedana), perception (sanna), mental formations (sankhara), and consciousness (viññāṇa)—are the…

The last aggregate—consciousness—is even harder to separate from the sense of self. Consciousness refers to the basic awareness of experience—awareness of sights, sounds, thoughts, emotions, etc. It’s the container that holds everything together, but it doesn’t exist independently of the other aggregates. Consciousness arises based on contact between the sense organs and their objects, yet…