Nidahas: Gone Forth
As a deer in the wilds,
unfettered,
goes for forage wherever it wants:
the wise person, valuing freedom,
wanders alone
like a rhinoceros.
Writings
- Escape: A Letter (.pdf 34KB)
Inspiration
Only in a vertical view, straight down into the abyss of his own personal existence, is a man capable of apprehending the perilous insecurity of his situation; and only a man who does apprehend this is prepared to listen to the Buddha's Teaching. But human kind, it seems, cannot bear very much reality: men, for the most part, draw back in alarm and dismay from this vertiginous direct view of being and seek refuge in distractions.
Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera, Notes on Dhamma
To those who are complacently perched on their cosy conceptual superstructures regarding the world, there is no more staggering a revelation than to be told that the world is a void. They might recoil from the thought of being plunged into the abysmal depths of a void where concepts are no more. But one need not panic, for the descent to such depths is gradual and collateral with rewarding personal experience.
Ven. Ñāṇananda Thera, Concept and Reality
Investigation
When I go into a Buddhist bookshop or library, I'm often struck by how many books there are. Shelves crammed full of people's opinions about 'what the Buddha taught'. But try to find something that actually contains the Buddha's teaching and you're in for a much harder time. It seems to be okay to be a Buddhist, attend talks, read books, meditate, chant, and go on retreat, without ever bothering to ask oneself the question: what did the Buddha really teach?
Ven. Sujato Thera, What the Buddha Really Taught
The Buddha's tough-minded approach toward the theories of knowledge, conceptions of reality, morals, and language made him adopt a middle standpoint avoiding the extremes of absolutism, both eternalistic and nihilistic. Yet this was not a very comfortable modus operandi for some of his disciples, who had been born and reared in absolutistic Brahmanical surroundings. The emergence of absolutistic tendencies can be perceived both during the Buddha's lifetime and after his death.
David J. Kalupahana, A History of Buddhist Philosophy
Contact
Bhikkhu Yogananda, Na Uyana Forest Monastery, Pansiyagama 60554, Sri Lanka.