book or sutta club??

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

The modern section seems to make sense to me because it aims to cover all Theravada perspectives, from Buddha to Buddhaghosa to Buddhadasa... just like 'real-life' Theravada circa 2009, rather than circa 509.

Metta,
Retro.

[jcsuperstar]

sounds good

[David N. Snyder]

Sounds like an online Kalyana Mitta (spiritual friends) group. Some Dhamma centers have those where various topics or books are taken and discussed one at a time for more in-depth analysis.

[Dhammanando]

Hi JC,

we could ask Dhammanando to lead it. maybe he knows some sutta learning scheme or what not so we'd have an order to do them in. also he could help with pali terms.

Due to the very limited time at my disposal, I would prefer to stick to chiming in rather than leading discussions. If leading, I would feel obliged to be online every day and to reply to every question, which I don't anticipate will be possible in the coming months.

I do, however, have one suggestion for group study: Ñāṇamoli's Life of the Buddha. This would be a good complement to Bhikkhu Bodhi's In the Buddha's Words, consisting in like manner of passages from the Suttas, but with the first rather than the second refuge as its focus.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu

[mikenz66]

I'm not sure that the sequence matters too much, since people will come and go, but I'd go for some of the Suttas from the Majjhima Nikaya. They are a nice size to discuss, and there is a lot of information in the form of talks and writings that could be used as background.

There are Bhikkhu Bodhi's talks:
http://www.bodhimonastery.net/bm/about- ... ikaya.html
BSWA talks (Ajahns Brahm, Vayama, Brahmali, etc)
http://www.bswa.org/audio/podcast/DhammaTalks.rss.php
Talks by Bhante Vimalaramsi
http://www.dhammasukha.org/
Pressing out Pure Honey, by Sharda Rogell
PDF here: http://www.dharma.org/bcbs/Pages/publications.html

Shaila Catherine has been running courses on the MN. She's up to the last fifty here:
http://www.imsb.org/programs/MajjhimaNi ... tFifty.php

A small group here has done the first two fifties (I only joined midway through the second) and I guess we'll start on her notes for the last fifty in a month or two.

All of the above use the Nanamoli/Bodhi translation. They all take rather different approaches.

My suggestion would be to just have someone compile a list of maybe 50 suttas from the MN in some sort of order and discuss one per week. The easiest way to compile a list would be to just use Bhikkhu Bodhi's ordering:
http://www.bodhimonastery.net/bm/images ... llabus.pdf
Once we had a list assigning Suttas to weeks it would basically run itself... Anyone could "kick off" the next week.

Metta
Mike

EDIT: Of course using Nanamoli's book or In the Buddha's Words would also be fine...

[jcsuperstar]

well the good thing about the MN is that i have a copy, wait i mean that there are alreay other places online we can get inspiration... and various monks who we can read from on how to see these discourses.

i'd be fine with that.

EDIT: i dont care what order theyre in, so i sugesst that those who have some sort of preference about this speak up and it'll be you guys who pick the order.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings JC,

I think Mike's idea about following Bhikkhu Bodhi's program is a good one.

I'll start knock up something based on this.

Metta,
Retro.

[jcsuperstar]

im excited... kinda makes me feel like a dork... but i'm excited

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

Now open for business...

Dhamma Wheel Study Group
viewforum.php?f=25

Please provide comments and feedback in this thread.

Thanks everyone for your ideas and input.

Metta,
Retro.

[jcsuperstar]

oh oh if theres a bodhi talk on it, can the link to that be put in the thread too?

[Will]

Hi JC,

we could ask Dhammanando to lead it. maybe he knows some sutta learning scheme or what not so we'd have an order to do them in. also he could help with pali terms.

Due to the very limited time at my disposal, I would prefer to stick to chiming in rather than leading discussions. If leading, I would feel obliged to be online every day and to reply to every question, which I don't anticipate will be possible in the coming months.

I do, however, have one suggestion for group study: Ñāṇamoli's Life of the Buddha. This would be a good complement to Bhikkhu Bodhi's In the Buddha's Words, consisting in like manner of passages from the Suttas, but with the first rather than the second refuge as its focus.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu

Too bad your idea was ignored Bhante. I had the impression that it was part of a Bhikkhu's job description to guide lay folk and our job to follow the Bhikkhu's lead.

It would help clear up a lot of odd notions folks have about the Dhamma if we spent time drawing close to Buddha, which study of his ife would do.

I did not find the biography online though - will have to buy the book, I reckon. I do have In the Buddha's Words though. Perhaps, if enough interested folk have that title, that can be studied also.

Bhikkhu Bodhi's outline of MN study will be helpful too, of course

[David N. Snyder]

Bhante, like many other bhikkhus has many, many other duties that are off-line that we do not see, such as pastoral duties at his temple.

I am happy about the wealth of time that we do get with great monks like Bhante Dhammanando and the others who post here. We cannot expect the monks here to take on even more time than they already give us.

[Cittasanto]

HI Bhente,
Maybe you know of a couple of very good sites which translates selected words thoroughly so if you are unavailable these can be looked at?
and do you know a link to the book By Nanamoli ? I have heard some good things about this book but keep forgetting about it!
WM
Manapa

Hi JC,

we could ask Dhammanando to lead it. maybe he knows some sutta learning scheme or what not so we'd have an order to do them in. also he could help with pali terms.

Due to the very limited time at my disposal, I would prefer to stick to chiming in rather than leading discussions. If leading, I would feel obliged to be online every day and to reply to every question, which I don't anticipate will be possible in the coming months.

I do, however, have one suggestion for group study: Ñāṇamoli's Life of the Buddha. This would be a good complement to Bhikkhu Bodhi's In the Buddha's Words, consisting in like manner of passages from the Suttas, but with the first rather than the second refuge as its focus.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu

[Dhammanando]

Hi Manapa,

Maybe you know of a couple of very good sites which translates selected words thoroughly so if you are unavailable these can be looked at?

There is the PTS Dictionary, but I don't know the link. I'm sure someone here will know it. Other than that I'm not very familiar with what's available online and would be relevant to your question. When I want to ascertain a word's meaning I prefer to go to the primary sources — the Tipitaka and its commentaries.

and do you know a link to the book By Nanamoli ? I have heard some good things about this book but keep forgetting about it!

Yes, everyone should get a copy of it. Unfortunately, as far as I know it's not one of the books that the BPS has permitted to be placed online.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu

[tiltbillings]

Pali Text Society's Pali Englih Dictionary:

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/

[retrofuturist]

Greetings Will, all,

I was thinking we could do a sutta weekly, and in parallel, a book monthly for those who were interested.

Best I think for us to make the first book we review one which is also available to read online because sometimes books take a while to order and post. For the second text onwards it won't matter so much.

Anyhow, I'm going to close this thread now, so that future brainstorming can take in...

Suggestions, Comments and Feedback for the Study Group
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=352

Thanks again everyone for your input.

Metta,
Retro.

[Dhammanando]

Hi Manapa,

I should add that chapter 12 of Ñāṇamoli's book — the one giving a summary of the Buddha's teaching — is available:

http://www.buddhanet.net/cmdsg/bt-1.htm

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu