Buddhism

Attached are the readings for our next session discussing Buddhism

Rather than recommending a single book for us to read on Buddhism, I thought I’d throw together a number of short writings (see attached) and one audio recording, from a variety of different sources, as a sort of Buddhist salad, as see what interests you all in discussion.

I kept it all quite short and divided it into parts 1,2,3 as a suggested reading order. The suggestion is a couple of Zen 'shorts' as a warm up, and brief historical overview of Buddhism (13 pages) and an introduction to Buddhist practice (meditation) (10 pages)

Although I've set-up parts 2 & 3 to go in a particular direction - a discussion about Buddhist chanting: Just a theistic ritual? , I'm happy for the discussion and your interest to go any which way depending on your inclinations.

As well as the readings, there is a mp3 audio recording - which I've given as a transcript in part 3 of the readings.

I would say doing the readings first before listening to the audio, however, of course, its up to you.

If you do listen to it - it's at http://www.khyentserecordings.org/namo/Podcasts.html

go to this URL and scroll down to recording ...

#27: Siddhartha's Intent (27) Interdependent Origination (Kuala Lumpur,2014)

and click to stream. Click the downwards arrow at top right (Under the SOUNDCLOUD icon) to download the mp3

The recording is about 1 hour long. If you want you can start at 20:00 min into the recording, when the meat of the talk really starts. Note however if you do start here, that there is a brief but nasty bit of feedback just at this spot in the recording.