Thank you pilgrim for the video. I didn't travel too much, but it seams that in the western wold viharas only exist where there are asian communities. There are a lot of good western ajahns in the Thai Forest Tradition, but most of the support comes from the Thai diaspora. As I said in an earlier po...

Thank you bhante for the story. It is sad to see experienced practitioners fighting over leading positions (I presume that person that assumed the teaching position had many years of practice). maybe al of us have that nasty seed in our mind, but if we do not overcome it, what is the fruit of our pr...

I know that traditionally devotees support the monks with their material needs, so they do not have to worry about it and focus on realizing Nibbana. That solely is the purpose of dana, but I think opening other's eyes to the Dhamma is also a cause worthy of support.
Best wishes!
Ciprian

I was wondering the same thing... I live in Romania, a predominant christian country. Since almost 5 years ago I call myself a Buddhist and I try to follow Lord Buddha's teachings. Most of my neighbors don't share my spiritual preferences, so I am pretty much on my own. Recently, the interest in spi...

thanks! I was sure that this topic must have been discussed somewhere

Thanks for the replies! If you have the time, please take a look to this sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.101.than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and tell me if you think it is relevant to the subject. A little quote from the translator's Introductio...

I am not saying that what Mr. Goenka teaches is jainism. I said that is the way it looks to me. There is a very strong possibility that I misunderstand Mr. Goenka and an even stronger one that I misunderstand Jainism. The reason I am writing this is because I want to understand better. So please ass...

from my understanding of the book, the author suggested that old sankaras - that is defined as conditioning resulted from past reactions to stimuli - can manifest trough certain burnings or pains or other sensations in the body and by not reacting to those sensations you don't create new sankaras an...

I have a question about this technique. I read Wiliam Hard's book, The Art of Living and I understand that by not reacting to painful sensation you burn sankaras. This looks to me more like a jain thing.... Is there any sutta that can explain it? I found Devadaha sutta (MN 101) stating exactly diffe...

of course.

thank you very much Ben

I want to subtitle some video dhamma talks for my fellow countrymen that do not understand English (of course free of charge), but I don't want to violate any copyrights, so I need some video dhamma talks under creative commons license. Do you know any links? So far I only found some of Bhante Sujat...

I am downloading Ubuntu right now. And I am planning to be very careful with file-sharing too. Most of the time I don't really need that stuff anyway. An opportunity to practice restraint.
Thank you very much for helping me

:embarassed: I have to admit that from time to time I download music, movies from the internet. I usually thought that I do no harm so I never paid too much attention to it. Now, at the end of 2009 I made a resolution to get rid of the pirated software, music, movies. I got stuck at firs step: a gen...

thank you all very much.
I have read a book about kamma and rebirth and assisting the dying. A lot of things came back into my head while reading Mr. Goenka's article.
you are all so nice and compassionate. thank you again