Buddhist Teachings

This web­site sprung pri­mar­ily from a wish to share the teach­ings and trans­la­tions of Ven­er­a­ble Ajahn Payutto (Phra Payutto), one of Thailand’s most respected and revered monks. His mon­u­men­tal work titled Bud­dhad­hamma is con­sid­ered by many to be one of the most impor­tant com­pendi­ums of the Bud­dhist teach­ings of the mod­ern era. An ambi­tious project is under­way to com­plete the trans­la­tion of this text into Eng­lish. It is my priv­i­lege to be at the fore­front of this project, after hav­ing spent some time liv­ing with Ven. Payutto when I was a monk and now receiv­ing his bless­ing to trans­late his books.

The Bud­dhad­hamma Foun­da­tion in Bangkok, a non-profit pub­lish­ing com­pany, has invited me to work for them, with the aim of com­plet­ing this trans­la­tion before the end of 2013. At the moment, three chap­ters of Bud­dhad­hamma have been pub­lished as sep­a­rate vol­umes, and two more books are being pre­pared for pub­li­ca­tion. Excerpts from all of these books are avail­able on this web­site, along with infor­ma­tion on how to acquire the com­plete volumes.

In addi­tion, I hope this web­site can be a resource for infor­ma­tion on the Buddha’s teach­ings. It is my inten­tion to use the blog to dis­cuss such ques­tions as:

• What is Bud­dhism? Is it a reli­gion or a philosophy?
• What is the role of med­i­ta­tion in the Bud­dhist teach­ings? Is there a con­flict between insight med­i­ta­tion (vipas­sanā) and con­cen­tra­tion med­i­ta­tion (samatha)?
• What are some of the chal­lenges of trans­lat­ing Bud­dhist texts? For exam­ple, is it more effec­tive to use Pali terms (e.g., Dhamma, kamma, Nib­bāna), or prefer­able to use the more com­monly encoun­tered San­skrit ver­sions (e.g., Dharma, karma, Nirvana)?
• What are the Bud­dhist teach­ings on enlight­en­ment and awak­ened beings (Sangha)?
• What are the chal­lenges for con­tem­po­rary Bud­dhists and what are the solutions?

 

Robin