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Dear friends,
It is again time for our end-of-the-year fundraiser campaign, where we ask you to make a donation to ensure that Pariyatti will continue through 2019. Your donation (Dhamma Dāna) supports this charity's efforts to inspire practice and commitment to the Noble Path for people around the world. The goal for this year-end campaign is $75,000. Any donation amount is so valuable.
Venerable Ledi Sayadaw mentions in the Manuals of Dhamma:
"The pariyatti Sāsana consisting of the Tipiṭaka is the base—the foundation—of the paṭipatti (practice of the Dhamma) and the paṭivedha (realisation) Sāsanas. Only when the pariyatti Sāsana stands firmly established can the other two Sāsanas be also firmly established. The burden of preserving the pariyatti Sāsana for 5000 years is indeed great, since these are times of a waning kappa (world‐cycle) when
the life-span of men is also on the wane."
Since 1985 we have been striving to bolster this pariyatti sāsana through our wide-ranging and unique offerings. We protect and provide an enormous catalog of Dhamma resources in many languages and formats that otherwise wouldn't be as easily available. In recent years, we have expanded our services and developed both free online and residential Pāli language programs, as well as pilgrimages to allow Vipassana meditators to visit and meditate at sacred sites of the Buddha and Sangha.
We wish you a Dhamma-filled December,
Pariyatti
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Let me take you on a Buddhist pilgrimage. Let us visit the main places where Gotama Buddha lived and taught the Dhamma. Let us see what they look like now, recall what happened there in the days of the Buddha, and practise his Dhamma at these sites.
Before he attained Parinibbāna, the Buddha told his attendant monk, the Venerable Ānanda, “There are four places which should be (visited and) seen by a person of devotion.” He then named his birthplace, the place where he attained Enlightenment, the place where he first taught the way to Enlightenment, and the place where he attained Parinibbāna.
In the coming four newsletters we will highlight the places mentioned in the above excerpt from Bodhi Leaf 118 (Collected Bodhi Leaves IV), On Pilgrimage by Susan Elbaum Jootla. We will take you on a digital journey to Lumbini (Nepal), Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar (India) and touch on the life and teachings of Gotama the Buddha along the way.
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Buddhist monks and devotees meditate outside the Mayā Devi Temple. Just visible between the most left corner of the temple and the ruins of the monastery complex is the pillar Ashoka placed
to mark the location as significant.
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Excerpt Bodhi Leaf 118:
The first place the Buddha urged his followers to visit was Lumbini, where he was born, the son of King Suddhodana of the Sakyan clan. At present Lumbini is in southern Nepal, less than half an hour’s drive from the Indian border. Very little remains here today to remind us of the Buddha. But Emperor Ashoka, who ruled much of India several centuries later, marked a hillock with a pillar proclaiming that he had come here on a pilgrimage because of the place’s importance as the location of Gotama’s birth.
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His mother, Queen Mayā, had left her husband’s home in Kapilavatthu to travel to her parents’ residence when she knew her child was soon to be born. But on the way, quite unexpectedly, she gave birth while standing in a forest of sal trees, near Lumbini village.
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Upon entering the Lumbini UNESCO World Heritage Park, or the ‘Panchasila Zone’, visitors
(here: Pariyatti pilgrims) are reminded of what those Pancha Sīla are. The five precepts (of moral conduct) are commitments to abstain from killing living beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication.
They are the basis for samādhi (concentration) and paññā (wisdom).
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Along the Path, The Meditator's Companion to Pilgrimage in the Buddha's India and Nepal is a wonderful guidebook, written by one of the guides involved in facilitating Pariyatti pilgrimages. Created for people wanting to travel in India to sit and serve at Vipassana centers, or with the Dhamma as leading part of the journey in general, the book functions as a travel guide with information on topics like transportation and accommodation, but it also traces the Buddha’s life as it unfolded across the sacred sites. It incorporates information on 'site-sitting' throughout, recommending sites to meditate at.
Excerpt: Site-Sitting (Lumbini)
The atmosphere, as S.N. Goenka says, is “charged with the vibrations of purity, the vibrations of the Himālaya.” Innumerable beings have been meditating in the place where the Bodhisatta took his last birth. Go and take part!
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A nice way to spend your days in Lumbinī is to go temple-hopping by foot, bike or rickshaw. The sacred garden is a peaceful haven, free from the noise and commotion at other religious sites in India and Nepal.
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PHOTO: Peace Pagoda with lotus pond, Lumbini.
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The Mahāmāyā Temple is said to have been built over the exact spot where Sid-dhattha was born, which, according to the Nepal Department of Archaeology, is the encased stone slab with a semblance of a rather large baby’s footprint on it.
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Excerpt Bodhi Leaf 47 Women in ancient India (Collected Bodhi Leaves II):
Within a week after the birth of Prince Siddhattha who was to become the Buddha, his mother, Queen Mahā Maya, died, and from his infancy the young prince was tended and cared for by his step-mother Mahā Pajāpatī Gotamī who had become the
consort of King Suddhodana, the ruler of the Sakya kingdom. Mahā Pajāpatī’s affection towards Prince Siddhattha was the same as for her own children and she took the greatest care of him.
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A Pariyatti pilgrim meditates in the Sacred Garden, Lumbini. The garden is adjacent to the Mayā Devi Temple and Puskarni, the Sacred Pond (where Siddhattha was washed after his birth).
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The Life of the Buddha is a unique biography of the Buddha, drawn from the original Pāli texts, with recollections of his personal attendant Ananda and other disciples.
Excerpt Chapter One: The Birth and the Early Years.
“When the Bodhisatta came forth from his mother’s womb, he did not touch the earth. The four deities received him and set him before his mother, saying: ‘Rejoice, O queen, a son of great power has been born to you.’ “When the Bodhisatta came forth from his mother’s womb, just as if a gem were placed on Benares cloth, the gem would not smear the cloth or the cloth the gem—why not?—because both are pure, so too the Bodhisatta came forth from his mother’s womb unsullied, unsmeared by water or humours or blood or any sort of impurity, clean and unsullied. “When the Bodhisatta came forth from his mother’s womb, two jets of water appeared to pour from the sky, one cool and one warm, for bathing the Bodhisatta and his mother.
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Statue of the Boddisatta in Lumbini
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“As soon as the Bodhisatta was born, he stood firmly with his feet on the ground; then he took seven steps to the north, and, with a white sunshade held over him, he surveyed each quarter.
He uttered the words of the Leader of the Herd: ‘I am the Highest in the world, I am the Best in the world, I am the Foremost in the world; this is the last birth; now there is no more renewal of being in future lives.’
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명상가의 핸드북(PDF)
지금 한국어로 가능합니다!
A Meditator's Handbook (PDF)
now available in Korean!
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Many employers will match donations to nonprofit organizations; if yours does, please take advantage of this to double the value of your gift!
During December PayPal adds 1% to every donation made (USA & UK only) via PayPal Giving Fund. If possible, we encourage you to make use of this option. There are no fees on donations given via the PayPal Giving Fund; we receive the full 100% —and until the end of the year we will receive 101% of your donation!
Pariyatti is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, and all donations are tax-deductible in accordance with U.S. tax law. All gifts will be gratefully received and promptly acknowledged.
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Last chance to apply for the (English/Chinese - 中英文双语) Golden Path pilgrimage to Burma from February 9 - 26, 2019 (2019年2月9 - 26日)
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Daily Pāli Words
tiṇṇa — one who has reached the other shore (fig.), gone through, overcome, one who has attained nibbāna
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