Teaching Awareness in the Buddhist Tradition - Essays in Honour of Professor Corrado Pensa - Chiara Neri

Teaching Awareness in the Buddhist Tradition - Essays in Honour of Professor Corrado Pensa - Chiara Neri

1. The Meditative Cultivation of Joy

Teaching Awareness in the Buddhist Tradition - Essays in Honour of Professor Corrado Pensa - Chiara Neri

Bhikkhu Analayo [+-]
Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies
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Bhikkhu Anālayo completed a Ph.D. thesis on the Satipaṭṭhanasutta at the University of Peradeniya in the year 2000 and a habilitation thesis at the University of Marburg in the year 2007, comparing the Majjhimanikaya discourses with their Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan counterparts. The main focus of his more than 400 publications is on comparative studies of 30 early Buddhist texts. He recently retired from a position as a professor at the University of Hamburg and currently resides at the Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies in the USA, where he spends most of his time in meditation.

Description

In what follows I explore the significance of joy (pīti/prīti) in the context of descriptions of early Buddhist meditation, based on a comparative study of the discourses found in the Pāli Nikāyas and their counterparts in the Chinese Āgamas. After a survey of selected passages in order to gain a general impression of the role of meditative joy, I explore in particular an apparent tendency to reduce the scheme of sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing to its first tetrad, as a result of which the importance of the meditative cultivation of joy is no longer evident and the practice itself loses part of its potential to lead to a state of mind free of distraction.

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Citation

Analayo, Bhikkhu. 1. The Meditative Cultivation of Joy. Teaching Awareness in the Buddhist Tradition - Essays in Honour of Professor Corrado Pensa. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 3-13 Jan 2024. ISBN 9781800503311. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=44239. Date accessed: 11 Dec 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.44239. Jan 2024

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