March 2024

Katame dve puggalā dullabhā lokasmiṃ? Yo ca pubbakārī, yo ca kataññū
katavedī.
– Puggalapaññatti Niddesa 2. Dukapuggalapaññatti

Which two persons are rare in this world?
The one who serves others selflessly (without expecting anything in return)..
And the one who is grateful for a kindness done. 

Local Area Group Sittings

Deepening our practice in Vipassana includes daily practice and annual courses.  Another way is to join other meditators in regular practice, whether that be weekly one-hour group sits or one-day courses in another meditator’s home.

We are grateful to our old students who have opened their homes to old students for meditation. You can find a list of group sittings here. We are also aware that there are likely others doing similarly, in Norfolk, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. If you host a regular sitting in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, or southern New Jersey, we invite you to share that with [email protected] for inclusion on the website and other locales you might want it known. 

If you do not see a group sitting listed near you and are interested in hosting one, please review the guidelines and application here and reach out to an AT that you know or to [email protected] and we’ll get you started. 

We look forward to ensuring that our community practice strengthens throughout the region served by Dhamma Pubbananda. 

Server Needs for Upcoming Courses at Dhamma Pubbananda

Dhamma Pubbananda is currently looking for Old Students to help serve on the following courses: 

10 Day course starting April 3:  Need 2 full-time male and 2 full-time female servers.

10 Day course starting April 17:  Need 4 full-time male servers. 

10 Day course starting May 1:  Need 3 full-time male and 4 full-time female servers. 

Dhamma Story: Cooling down the fire within

 

In the East, when a housewife prepares food, she uses a brazier filled with burning charcoal. Once the food is cooked, the fire is not needed but the housewife wants to keep the charcoal for the next meal. To extinguish the fire, she takes a handful of water and throws it on the burning coals. The charcoal is burning hot; the water is cold. When the two come in contact, there is a great impact, a great reaction: choong! The housewife throws another handful of water and again there is a sound of choong. Each time she throws a handful of water, the sound comes. It stops only when the temperature of the charcoal comes down close to the temperature of the water. It is no longer hot. Then even if she throws a bucketful of water, there will be no choong.

Understand that the difficulties you have faced today are the choong, the reaction of your body. In one hour of meditation, you may have only a moment when your mind is just with your breath coming in, going out, observing the reality of this moment. There is no ignorance because the breath is a truth, with no imagination involved. And there is no craving or aversion.. You don’t start craving more breath or decide you don’t want breath. You just remain equanimous, you just observe.

That moment when your mind equanimously observes the truth is a wonderful moment. A part of the mind is pure but there is still garbage deep inside. The pure mind of this moment comes in contact with all that impurity and negativity in the depths of your mind, and there is a volcanic explosion, a big choong. And that manifests as a pain in the leg, or the back or head. You feel so much discomfort and think, “I’d better run away, this is not good for me.”

Make a strong determination: This is the operation of my mind. When you have a physical operation, it is performed by a surgeon and you are kept under anesthesia. You don’t know what is happening. But here, you have to perform your own operation, without anesthesia. You have to face everything that comes up now. Be brave and face it. It is for your good. This is how you start changing the behavior pattern of the mind.