Sujato, Bhikkhu

A Buddhist sutta urges us all to check in with our successes and failures. I'll look at how this advice pertained to the Buddha's evil cousin Devadatta, as well as how it might pertain to contemporary cryptocurrency kingpin Sam…

"All dharmas are not self" is perhaps the deepest wisdom in Buddhism. How should we understand it? We'll look at both a traditional interpretation and a new understanding based on the suttas by monastic scholar Bhikkhu Sujato.

With war, terrorism, and inhumanity seemingly in the news every day now how are we to respond appropriately? We will look to key Buddhist practices as well as thoughts from the Buddha and Bhikkhu Sujato for a route forward.

We may have heard discussion of "mind moments" in Buddhism and how things last for only a moment and then are replaced. Did such ideas originate from the Buddha? We will look at their history, and what the Buddha had to say about time and…

I'll look at a recent paper by Bhikkhu Sujato, and its claim that the Buddhist doctrine of "two truths" deprecates the Buddha's own teachings. What is the doctrine, and why might he think so?

One of the highlights of the early Buddhist teachings is their relative openness to investigation and inquiry. This is a point made in a recent paper by scholar and monastic Bhikkhu Sujato. I'll discuss the point with reference to a few…

In this video we'll take a look at the idea of finding a "Buddha Before Buddhism," an idea suggested by a recent translation of the Chapter of the Eights (Aṭṭhakavagga) by Gil Fronsdal. I'll talk a bit about his book, then we'll turn to…

How do you become a Buddha? You work at perfecting several different virtues or "pāramīs". I'll give a brief history of the practice and then go through a list of ten of them from the Theravāda tradition. Then we'll look at some…

There seem to have been differences between Theravāda belief and practice and that found in early Buddhism, however figuring this all out is a matter of some debate and controversy. Translator and scholar Bhikkhu Sujato has written an…

Should we look at ancient stories and myths historically, or as inspirational literature? I'll look at both options through the lens of the Aggañña Sutta, a famous, early Buddhist creation myth.

In the past few decades a controversy has arisen over the restarting of nuns' orders in two schools of Buddhism. We will discuss the controversy as it relates to the Theravāda school, and note in passing that a similar controversy exists…

A book purporting to translate poetry of the first Buddhist women was released last year to great fanfare. More recently discussion has arisen as to whether what the book presents is actually a translation, and whether instead it erases…

There has been a recent disagreement over how deep meditative concentration practice should go, and over how deep the early Buddhist texts claim it was. We will look at that disagreement and help illuminate it by looking at some…

What is early Buddhism? On this channel I highlight early Buddhist teachings from a contemporary perspective. We will look at early Buddhism and its sources and consider some of its doctrines and pitfalls.

In mindfulness meditation it's said we should practice with the internal, the external, and both. But what do these mean? We will take a look at some possible interpretations and how they can aid in mastering our practice.

What are the seven Factors of Awakening in early Buddhism? We will look at their importance to the path, and grapple with a couple of different ways they can be understood.

What is the history of Buddhist meditation practice? In this video we'll look at some changes that have taken place in mindfulness practice in particular, following some recent research. We'll also look at some other forms of meditation…

Did the Buddha really exist? It's a question that concerns some of us today, given the paucity of hard evidence from the early period of the Buddha's lifetime. We'll look at some of the issues involved in reconstructing that early history…

What is authentic Buddhism? We'll take a look at that question from the point of view of the early texts. We'll see that they present us with two different ways we might approach the question.