Category: Interesting Things

The Robes of Theravadan, Mahayanan, Tibetan Monks

It occured to me that people don’t know one type of Buddhist monk from the other and a post was needed to explain this. First a little bit of history. Theravada is the closest thing as one can get to the original form of Buddhism and is based on the Pali texts. The countries that have Theravada as their national religion are; Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. It dates back to the Buddha from 5th century BCE Later, came Mahayana – Chinese Buddhism of the 1st century BCE. The texts are based on Chinese and Sanskrit. It is […]

Murder He Won’t

A friend of mine once told me his story about how he had a knife in his hand and was raging with anger. He was going to kill his wife and her new found lover. Below is a short retelling of the story in third person. The Story My friend from the former Soviet Union did his first Goenka meditation retreat in 1999. The retreat was free and was very popular around the world. (dhamma.org). Before that, he was already into martial arts and Taoism and although they talked about meditation and controlling the mind, he did not really feel […]

Free PTS Sutta eBooks

The Pali Text Society has made its Vinaya, Sutta and Abhidhamma books available for non-commercial use since 2013. The Sutta books have been extracted from the Buddhadust Website which is still considered as “work in progress.” However, the work was good enough to reformat as eBooks in its current state. Stephen Torrence and myself did most of the work to reformat the web pages into eBook versions. There were thousands of webpages which required many scripts to remove the web content. We used the open source project called Sigil. What is special about these books? These are the unabridged editions […]

An Old Kauai Favorite: KKCR Interview

Here is the link to the 2015 KKCR radio show. We were interviewed on Kauai Community Radio for about one hour instead of the scheduled 20 minutes. We all had fun doing it.  It will give you a good taste of what we did on the island in 2015 and what I am doing now. I often enjoy revisiting this recording, and I hope you do too. Archive page: https://archive.org/details/oasis111518-2 Download the MP3 here: https://archive.org/download/oasis111518-2/KkcrInterviewOfMonksInKauai.mp3 The radio station is kkcr which is Kauai Community Radio.http://www.kkcr.orgProgram 10am -12pm

Kauai Monk Update 3

Kauai Update #3 I have moved from the Botanical Gardens recently.  I was able to stay there for 5 months and the majority of the time there was wonderful.  However things were changing and it was time for me to look for another place and now I am staying in a new long term location in Kilauea. It all happened after a wonderful person picked me up on the side of the road holding my signs the day my parents, brother and in-law dropped me off (I’ll get back to that family-visit part later).  So this guy I knew from […]

How To Pronounce Theravada

How to Pronounce Theravāda Have you ever wondered if you were pronouncing Theravāda correctly? Read this article to find out how to properly pronounce Theravāda. Most of the resources out on the web mispronounce the word Theravāda, and Google has failed me when I did a search too. However, it was a good excuse to write this small article. The “Th” sound in Theravāda is not the English “Th” like “Them” or “Think.” It is a “T” sound with a puff of air. It is phonetically called an “Aspirated-T”. Sometimes the word that is given as an example is “Tough.” If […]

Free Book: Going For Broke

  Going For Broke: Travelogs On Becoming a Buddhist Monk is a compilation of travel stories.  It is an anonymously written book about a lay person who quit his job in order to travel the world and then become a Buddhist Monk.  Most people either love it and read it in a few days or never finish it. Here is the back cover: “Going for Broke” consists of travel stories written by a young American man who gave up his lucrative job to travel the world and decide if he would fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a Buddhist monk. […]

The Seeds From Long Ago

The Seeds From Long Ago I remember when I first learned how to meditate on my breath some time in 1990, during my university years. Back then, meditation was not so well known. The beat generation’s Zen trend in the 60’s had died out with disco in the 70’s. Barnes and Noble maybe had only a few shelves in a single bookcase labeled with “Eastern Philosophy” that covered all Eastern religions, including Buddhism. Ram Das’s cryptic book, Be Here Now was the only book I had read prior to reading my World Religions book, which had included a chapter on […]