Reflections

There’s something very humble and straightforward about taking the precepts. It’s a major step in one’s commitment to peace, and one of the first really active steps. Before this step people tend to be quite critical of precepts and the idea of giving something up – even frightfully destructive things like killing, stealing, and lying. […]

You don’t have to be a college graduate to know that being selfish and self-centered causes stress in your own life and makes you a pain to be around. This is a common teaching and understanding in the world. Finding a way out of our ego and self-centered ways of thinking is one of the

The recording of Venerable Santi’s talk and Q & A session at Vihara Parivara Dhamma Acala is now available on “The Resident of Dhamma” YouTube channel.

My grandfather passed away when I was nine years old, and I remember attending the funeral service and hearing my father get up in front of a large group of friends and family and give a moving eulogy. It really struck me at the time because he was such a good speaker, so confident and

Over the last few weeks, there has been a strange bug with my laptop’s keyboard. It was very subtle at first. Every now and then the ‘o’ key would stop registering. I was puzzled by it for a little while but eventually found that I could get out an ‘o’ by rapidly hitting a nearby

On the Uposatha Full Moon night of Magha Puja, Tahn Pamutto gives a dhamma reflection encouraging keeping of the uposatha precepts and practicing ‘As the Enlightened Beings Live Their Lives’.  

The Vipada Sunday Session this week: talk by Bhante Pamutto, “Good and Bad Karma”. Q&A with Bhante Jayasāra follows the talk.  

The tea time conversation this last week turned into a lively discussion of our transient mindstates. Every day, we see our thoughts coming and going, and with them our moods rise and fall. As practitioners encouraged to develop wholesome thoughts and patterns, it’s easy to be confused as to which direction ‘wholesome’ lies in. We

You’ll be seeing gradual improvements in the format of the www.Upavana.org page over the next few days. While Facebook was the ideal platform for quickly getting news out and piecing together a community, and no monastic looks forward to having to sink into learning website design, given enough time it was bound to happen. Such

Hanging out with Buddhist monastics is not always what one might consider uplifting. The conversation will start amicably enough, the weather or what so-and-so said, but it’s really just a matter of time before it wanders into areas where most casual conversations abruptly die. Aging, sickness, death, and loss. Inevitably, the conversation will move to