Paṭipadā: Venerable Phra Ajahn Mun's Path of Practice

Click the link below to download the book:

Ven. Acariya Maha Boowa Nanasampanno: 'Paṭipadā (Venerable Ajahn Mun's Path Of Practice)'.

Cambodian Court Dance

Angkor had been a part of the Khmer past. Khmer folktales and the Cambodian royal chronicles had mentioned the monuments, yet Cambodia had to learn the history of Angkor from the French historians. In the 1930s, the Khmer intellectuals obtained opportunities to talk about Angkorean dance through the publishing media. Along with the translation of the Thai texts, an integration of French discourse on Angkor and the existing Khmer narratives was attempted.

Due to the fact that colonial discourse on Angkor was incorporated into Cambodian nationalism, the court dance which had been connected with Angkor was utilized to serve the nation-state. Moreover, the French “academic” writings reinforced nationalistic discourse on the “tradition.”

“Tradition” was invented by the colonizers, for the purpose of differentiating themselves from the colonized, and it was imitated by the latter. A social fluctuation caused the invention of “tradition”. Discourse which regarded the Cambodian court dance as the Angkorean “tradition” was also invented under such a fluctuation of colonial encounters.

Reference: Sasagawa Hideo, 2005.

"Merely Transitional"

Very often, for most practical reasons, people are being asked to introduce themselves, or provide a little bit of information which, in short, tells something about who they are. These conceptual ways of thinking about what represents our personality have become habitual ways of thinking and function as means to express what, and ultimately, who we (think we) are. 

Of course, there is nothing wrong with thinking and acting according to certain worldly concepts in and of itself at all. However, if we look a little deeper into the meaning and "existence" of conditionings in the mind, then we shall realize that they all just consist of mental formations, some coarse and some subtler ones, that are based on our perceptions. Notions of existence and non-existence, then, are also just created by the mind. 

All phenomena can thus be percieved as one. Likewise, modern science has percieved the truth that not only matter and energy are one, but matter and space are also one. In fact, not only matter and space are one, but matter, space, and mind are one, because mind is in matter and space.

'Matter', in this context, refers to form; form is emptiness, and it is precisely emptiness what makes form possible to exist, it is the ground of everything. Form can be either physical (matter) or mental (mind); body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness - none of them have a separate existence. When said that form is emptiness it means that it is empty of a separate self / identity.

Everything has emptiness as its own nature, and that is why everything can be. Emptiness is impermanence, it is change. And because of change there is only continuation.

Thus, the name 'Merely Transitional' refers to an interpretation of the Buddhist concepts of impermanence (anicca in Pāli) and emptiness (śunyata in Sanskrit), for any other blog title would just be of irrelevant importance anyway.

Redesign

For your information: this blog will be completely redesigned in the coming days and weeks.