Updated October 21, 2025 from the original in 2022. Introduction: Halloween is bad according to Theravāda because it involves dressing up, acting and embodying the costume one is wearing, often involving unwholesome characters. This can lead to a bad destination, and I will explain why. It is like Acting: Acting as a career, generally is not so wholesome. If there is any movie or play that is considered “good” by literature and Hollywood standards, there are going to be one or more of the five precepts broken. The content might consist of the actions listed below:

Introduction Many people think that hiri (moral shame) and ottappa (fear of wrongdoing) are too heavy for meditation. However, we will discuss not only why they are good qualities but beautiful ones too. These two mental factors are known as the protectors of the world (lokapāla-dhammā). Why Are They Beautiful? In a previous post and video, I discussed the sobhana cetasikas — the beautiful universal mental factors that arise in all wholesome states. There are 19 of them, and among them are hiri and ottappa (Moral Shame, and Moral Dread).

What does it technically mean to have a “beautiful mind” in meditation—beyond vague metaphores or mysticism. Defining the Beautiful Mind When modern teachers describe deep samatha (concentration) meditation as “beautiful,” they speak in mystical metaphors. However, real Theravāda Buddhism involves the Abhidhamma. The Abhidhamma is not for scholarly proliferation. It is for knowing how the mind works and applying the mind in that way. The Abhidhamma provides a precise definition: sobhāna cetasikā, or beautiful mental factors.

Introduction One of the most famous Theravāda dhamma books would be The Dhammapada. It is a book of Buddhist Poetry consisting of 423 verses. It has been translated numerous times in English and might be the most widely translated Buddhist Book in the world. Some of the translated titles are below: The Teachings Of The Buddha Footprint Of The Buddha The words Of The Buddha The verses Of The Buddha YouTube Video Of This Article Free downloads You can find some translated versions of the Dhammapada text here (as shown in the video):

AmericanMonk.org has a new free home! I started the process last week and if you are a subscriber who gets this email, the task is 90% complete. There is still some refinement to do. Why Move? Originally, I was using a WordPress framework on a hosting company called NameCheap. While NameCheap sounds like a small company, they are one of the top ten names in hosting and DNS services (where you get a registered website name). My sister who started a cooking website called, CookingWithAlisa.com was so kind to host me for a few years on her own account. However, I started getting notification messages that my website was getting shut down, sometimes a few times per day. My sister’s website was fine and it was just my own site that was affected. NameCheap’s Tech Support claimed I was using too many resources and they were shutting me down. They told me that an address located on Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) was causing extensive amounts of traffic. They helped me block them, but I was still getting shutdown messages. My website does get a lot of traffic. As I said before, I got nearly 60,000 real person web page views in 2023. That is quite a lot for a small website account, so I’m not sure what the real reason for going beyond my resource allocation was. Was it an attack or was my site too heavy or was my site getting too much natural traffic? I don’t know, but I needed to take action.

Buddha by Numbers Introduction The Buddhist teachings are often organized by various lists. Various matrices of interlinked lists to organize the teachings are one of the distinctive features of Buddhism. In my studies, I find myself learning many different types of lists for memory. By doing so, I can see the benefit and how they can be expanded and interlinked. While it may seem like dry minutia and uninteresting at first glance, the lists run very deep when you start to understand how the whole system works.1 It is a complete system, and once you understand the basics, you can understand that they are all connected to each other with only a few degrees of separation.

https://unsplash.com/photos/j3R9C-Xqe1w Warning: This is a long but clear and interesting religious post on what happens after death according to Classical Theravāda Buddhism. Key Points: The Fully Enlightened do not take a rebirth after death. Immediate rebirth takes place after the death moment for all other beings. Kamma is what determines your next birth. Lifetime and Momentary suffering. Be careful what you wish for. There is no such thing as a guaranteed intermediate stage (Bardo Plane). There is no such thing as Near Death Experiences. It is very rare to read or hear Buddhist talks in English about what happens after death because topics on the “after life” encroach into the category of Religion. Most Western Buddhists, including monks, only wish to explore the “here and now”, general psychology and philosophy which is included in Buddhism. However, that limited subject matter makes one an Atheist who likes some Buddhist teachings rather than a Theravāda Buddhist who likes the sum of the Buddhist teachings. Today we will put the “ism” back into Buddhism. The material spoken about in this article is usually complex and terse. Usually you don’t get to this type of material until you have memorized many lists and pivot tables. I have taken these complex readings and put it into clear and digestible format. I hope you find this interesting and useful. Although this article is long, it is really a shortcut to learning the basics of what happens after death.

Free Book: Abhidhamma Lessons PDF Abhidhamma Lessons Here is a book I wrote long ago that relates the Abhidhamma to Computer Science. As a programmer from the nineties, I “clicked” with the abhidhamma after reading just a small amount. When I learned that the mind does only one thing at a time, it instantly clicked with a graduate class I had taken on digital circuits. It gave me the faith in the Abhidhamma early on which is very rare among Western Monks and Western Theravada Buddhist lay people. Most of the Western scholars are outspoken against the Abhidhamma. I am no scholar by any right, but I hope this can create an interest and restore some faith.

September 11th and Jeremy Glick I have a personal story I want to tell you about Jeremy Glick and September 11, 2001. The short story is that my name is Jeremy Glick and I was a computer programmer. However, I had left my regular world in 1999 and people who have lost track of me remembered me when 9/11 happened. About seven months after I ordained as a Buddhist Monk in 2001, the famous 9/11 or September 11th event happened. During that time, I was living in Myanmar which was one of the 6 countries that were embargoed. Myanmar was specifically embargoed for Human Rights Violations and they were one or two slots above North Korea for human rights. There were full on malaria warnings (by the locals) and I had just given up a career in the computer field that used to pay me loads of cash to do a job I loved with passion.

That is me going for alms on Aalona Street Kilauea. Collecting alms, also known as piṇḍapāta by Theravāda Buddhists, is a legal activity in the USA. There are some restrictions though. I spoke with a lawyer who seemed to know civil liberties quite well, but there are no guarantees with what I say. However, this information should make sense and seem legal to you. It is legal to ring the doorbell of any house and preach to them or talk to them about politics under the freedom of speech rights. One can even ask them to support or give money to a cause. One can sell them vacuum cleaners too. However, if they have a sign that says, “No Solicitation” or “No Trespassing” or “Private Property,” or any other derivative, then one needs to stay clear away from the property lines or at least up to the sign location.

Vegetarianism and Theravāda Buddhism I have been asked to write a little something on vegetarianism and Theravāda Buddhism. I am qualified to be quite objective, and to see both sides of the issue because I was a vegetarian for a total of ten years as a lay person and I had vegetarian eyes. That meant that when I looked at meat, cooked or not, I saw a dead animal in front of me. Now that I am a monk, I am no longer a vegetarian although I have lived at vegetarian monasteries for many years, so I know both sides of the coin.

Are You A Buddhist? Introduction Being a Buddhist is quite open because if you believe in certain aspects it is better than not believing in anything. We take what we can get. However, here are the more traditional aspects of being Buddhist. One should believe in The Triple Gem – ie**: The Buddha, The Dhamma and The Sangha).** This can be expanded to include The 4 Noble Truths. This can be expanded to include the Eightfold Noble Path as well. The Four Noble Truths also include a belief in cause and effect and past lives (aka **Saṁsāra).** Lastly, one should live by these ideals and follow the five precepts for morality, and follow the Eightfold Noble Path which includes meditation for the purpose of gaining Buddhist wisdom with the goal of reaching Nibbāna. If one is a Bodhisatta (Skrt. Bodhisatva), and wishes to attain full Self-Enlightened-Buddhahood, one should still have an ultimate goal of Nibbāna but delaying it to attain the full perfections. However, a Bodhisatta should strive to attain mundane insight knowledges while they are available in this lifetime. 

The Buddha in the clouds Does the Buddha Live in Nibbāna? Many people believe that the Buddha is alive and living in some sort of transcendental realm called Nibbāna where he can hear your prayers and eat and drink the food and water that you offer to Him. We Buddhist monks smile when we hear that people have such beliefs because nobody lives in Nibbāna, not even a Buddha. This is wrong view, and any teacher or monk who believes and teaches this is surely not enlightened because permanently removing wrong view is part of enlightenment (in Theravāda). “So where is The Buddha then?” you might ask. The Buddha as far as a “being” is concerned dead and gone. There is only (dead) material form from his bodily remains that exist today. When The Buddha died, He did not take another birth. He achieved the final goal of Buddhism, which is to not be reborn ever again. His Arahant disiples have also achieved that goal too. There is no difference between a Buddha and an Arahant disciple after death. Any trace of them, is nowhere to be found. However, their physical remains may have been saved to represent the power of those who have achieved the final goal. There is no remainder other than that dead and lifeless material.

This is a spoken English version of the Discourse on Loving-Kindness (Metta Sutta), mixed with the Pāi chanting of One Voice (EkaSara). I like it and I think you will too. Enjoy! If you get a chance, It is best listened with headphones. There is quite a bit of stereophonic separation included. Feedback welcome. The audio is uploaded here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMpSVv2ZdvI

[![fetus](/images/fetus.webp" >}}](/images/2016/12/fetus.webp" >}} What do Theravada Buddhists believe in terms of abortion? Much of what has been written are liberal beliefs and overturning what is written down in the texts. They claim “Modern Buddhism” as a section heading, but there is no such thing as “Modern Buddhism” since there is no such thing as “Modern Kamma.” The rules of kamma do not change over time, and abortion has been around since the time of the Buddha. My job is not to make decisions or advice for others, but to give a “pure” classical Buddhist explanation on abortion.