Wise Awareness (​Kumāra Bhikkhu's Blog)

Sometimes I meet people who suffer because they are unknowingly living or working with someone who has a personality disorder. It’s important to be aware of such disorders, as being with individuals who have them can be distre ssing. When we think of mental illness, we usually think of conditions like schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorders—conditions that are either very obvious or that people usually seek help for. We don’t usually think of another category of mental illness: personality disorders . There are many kinds of personality disorders, but let me speak of two which are not so obvious but surely worth knowing for our own protection: Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) . Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) “Antisocial” here does not mean “unsociable”. In fact, individuals with this disorder may appear highly sociable. They are antisocial in the sense that they are hostile or disruptive to social norms. They lack empa...

What You Might Not Know about Jhāna & Samādhi Author: ​Kumāra Bhikkhu Do you wonder about the conflicting teachings on Buddhist meditation? Are you uncertain if you should practice jhāna ? Have you tried to practice concentration and found it stressful ? This is an invaluable contribution to the modern discussion among both practitioners and scholars concerning exactly what jhāna, samādhi and related terms mean. Confusion about these terms has been endemic in the Theravada tradition, probably for many centuries. Āyasmā Kumāra extracts the relevant passages of the earliest texts, the Buddha’s discourses, and—with particular sensitivity to the semantics of the Pāli—argues that the original intent of these terms is quite different from how they came to be most widely understood in the Theravada tradition. The result is persuasive if not conclusive. This is a must-read for all practitioners and students of Buddhist meditation. Bhikkhu Cintita Dinsmore To me this is a ‘God-sent’ revel...