Suttas which say we should oppose people who say bad things or distort dhamma?

[mikenz66]

Yes, I'd be inclined to say that focusing on the present unreactively is a good start, but it's not the goal of the Buddha's teachings.

But mindfulness means to remember. We have to remember that we need to solve the problem of suffering. It's also not a passive process where you just watch things come and go. If something unpleasant arises in the mind for example, you have to react to it in some way. You have to investigate why it has arisen, why it's causing suffering and how you can let go of it. That's Buddism, not Western mindfulness which people claim to be a Buddhist teaching.

Remembering as you describe is certainly one way that "mindfulness" can be interpreted. I don't really have a strong opinion, since, to me, the different arguments around the definitions seem to be mostly over where to classify those different aspects. Some would say that the mindfulness is more about the watching ("keeping the object in mind") and the other things come under right effort.

But in any case, being aware of things coming and going is part of the practice:

It’s when a mendicant understands mind with greed as ‘mind with greed,’
and mind without greed as ‘mind without greed.’ ...

But not the whole practice:

It’s when a mendicant who has sensual desire in them understands: ‘I have sensual desire in me.’ When they don’t have sensual desire in them, they understand: ‘I don’t have sensual desire in me.’ They understand how sensual desire arises; how, when it’s already arisen, it’s given up; and how, once it’s given up, it doesn’t arise again in the future.

It's probably unfortunate that in secular meditation, and even in Buddhist practice, "mindfulness" is so emphasised. It's just one factor, and it often see (sati)ms to be conflated with other factors, and also used as a synonym for insight (vipassanā).


Mike

[SarathW]

If mindfulness means Samma Sati, it entails Samma Vayama, Samma Sati and Samma Samadhi.
So it is insight meditation. Even though we discuss these three as separate it is very difficult to differentiate.

[sunnat]

Believing there is an I that remembers, that the way of sati is to remember, is I-making. It is the training to focus on the object of meditation that makes sati arise rather than ignorance or other unwholesome sankharas. At some point, sooner rather than later, the idea or view that one must remember (as opposed to by training have the right view re sankharas arise) must be abandoned.

[asahi]

Sati and samma sati should be differentiated . Mindfulness and right mindfulness should be differentiated .

[Dhammanando]

A reminder of the thread's topic:

Recently I was discussing with Sarath about when it's appropriate to rebuke someone for falsifying the dhamma, or for giving really bad teachings.
I found some sutta quotes which basically say Do Not Rebuke and Do Not Get Involved.
Do you know of any suttas which say we should actively oppose the anti- dhamma teachers, and rebuke the people spreading fake dhamma? Or maybe report evil monks who steal and abuse.

Many thanks.

[frank k]

https://lucid24.org/tped/d/dhamma/book/ ... l#flink-41
Alphabetized sutta citations from essay
AN 1.130: Teaching distorted Dharma harms world.
AN 1.140: exposing fraud is an important part of spiritual life. We have to stand up against untruth.
AN 2.23: All of this reminds us of our duty of right speech, our duty of care to the Dhamma.
AN 2.47: In a community where such counterfeits prevail, people forget the training in intelligent and critical inquiry.
AN 4.180: How to check if it's genuine Dharma.
AN 5.79: And that is how corrupt training comes from corrupt teachings, and corrupt teachings come from corrupt training.
AN 6.61: group of monks discussing the interpretation of a verse in Metteya’s Questions. (KN Snp 5.3)
DN 16: same as AN 4.180
DN 29: When someone in the Saṅgha appears to get the text wrong, there’s an obligation to check and correct them.
MN 26: But if it did turn out that someone was presenting a serious distortion of the Dhamma, [Buddha] didn’t hold back [in criticism].
MN 103: In the case where there is a disagreement over the text, there is an obligation to try to resolve it by identifying the cause of the problem and the nature of the disagreement.
SN 16.13: Mahākassapa asks why there are now more training rules but fewer enlightened beings.
SN 20.7: Dharma will disappear when people revere poetic derivatives over suttas