Teaching Awareness in the Buddhist Tradition; Essays in Honour of Professor Corrado Pensa; Sferra; Neri

Edited by

Chiara Neri [+–]

University of Cagliari

Chiara Neri, PhD, is Honorary Associate in Sanskrit Language and Literature at the University of Cagliari, Italy. Her research predominantly focuses on the study of Pāli canonical and commentarial literature from a linguistic, historical and philosophical point of view and on tracing the conjunctive and disjunctive linguistic-cultural connections between Vedic and Pāli canonical literature (specially with T. Pontillo). She has published numerous research papers in conference proceedings and international journals and a monograph:Compendio dell’essenza. Studio e traduzione di capitoli scelti del Sārasaṅgaha di Siddhattha Thera (Dell’Orso, 2020).

Francesco Sferra [+–]

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Francesco Sferra (b. 1965) is full professor of Sanskrit language and literature at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale,’. His primary areas of expertise are connected to Sanskrit philology, history of Indian religions, tantric studies, and classical Indian philosophy. His works include the critical edition and translation of the longer Ṣaḍaṅgayoga by Anupamarakṣita with its commentary by Raviśrījñāna (2000), the Sekoddeśaṭīkā by Nāropā (2006) and (together with H. Isaacson) the Sekanirdeśapañjikā by Rāmapāla (2014). He is founder and co-editor of the series Manuscripta Buddhica (first vol. 2008).

Teaching Awareness in the Buddhist Tradition provides important contributions to understanding the teaching of mindfulness or awareness (Pāli sati, Sanskrit smṛti) in Buddhism and related traditions, examined in original ways through a collection of articles that approach this theme from different perspectives including philosophical, philological, exegetic, and anthropological. This volume is dedicated to Professor Corrado Pensa, a well-known Buddhist scholar and practitioner who has played an important role in spreading Buddhist practice through Italy and internationally.

The majority of this book is based on the scholarly output of Professor Pensa’s former students, who engage in research on various topics concerning Buddhist awareness and other related topics. The last section consists of essays by contemporary meditation teachers offered as tribute to Corrado Pensa through reflections on practical topics such as developing attention in ordinary life, mindfulness of breathing, and awareness as wisdom.

This volume integrates the theory and practice of the Buddhist tradition, and will be a valuable resource to both academics and practitioners of Buddhism.

Foreword

Foreword vii-viii

Joseph Goldstein FREE

Barre Center for Buddhist Studies

Joseph Goldstein is one of the most important teachers of vipassanā meditation; co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS); and author of numerous popular books, including The Experience of Insight: A Simple and Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation (1976); One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism (2002); A Heart Full of Peace (2007); Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening (2013).

Preface

Tracing the Path of the Dharma ix-xxiii

Chiara Neri,Francesco Sferra FREE

University of Cagliari

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Prelims

Bibliography of Corrado Pensa: Works from 1962-2020 xxiv-xxxi

Chiara Neri,Francesco Sferra FREE

University of Cagliari

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

I. Words on the Dharma

1. The Meditative Cultivation of Joy [+–] 3-13

Bhikkhu Analayo £17.50

Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies

View Website

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.

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.

2. The Concept of Pariyogāhaṇa in the Epistemology of the Paṭisambhidāmagga: An Immersion in Knowledge and Liberation [+–] 14-28

Giuliano Giustarini £17.50

Mahidol University

Giuliano Giustarini is Lecturer in Buddhist Studies and Pāli Grammar at Mahidol University (Nakhon Pathom) and translator of the Pāli Nikāyas for the Fondazione Maitreya (Rome). His main interests include the Suttapiṭaka and Abhidhammapiṭaka with their commentaries, and Buddhist philosophy and meditation. Among his recent publications are: ‘Intrauterine Dependent Origination: A Translation of the Indakasutta and its Commentaries’, Journal of Indian Philosophy 2021, and ‘On Some References of the Buddhapādamaṅgala to the Suttapiṭaka and the Abhidhammapiṭaka,’ Kervan, International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, 2021.

In an attempt to condense the contents of Pāli Suttas and Abhidhamma, it is relatively safe to affirm that they consist in the teachings of the Buddha on the path to liberation – from the cycle of births (saṃsāra) dominated by suffering/unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). According to these teachings, the goal of this path is ultimately achieved by means of a dramatic shift of the cognitive paradigm, preceded by a gradual development and refinement of cognitive factors. In this regard, an early exegetical Pāli text included in the Sutta Piṭaka, the Paṭisambhidāmagga, introduces the concept of ‘immersion-awareness’ (pariyogāhaṇa-ñāṇa) and ascribes a crucial role to it, strictly related to the exertion of contemplative and investigative techniques. This study aims at exploring the notion of pariyogāhaṇa and its contribution to the understanding of Pāli Buddhist epistemology.

3. Buddhist Awareness as a Means to Unveil the Past and Emancipate the Future: The Buddhist Awareness Camps Project in post-1990 Nepal [+–] 29-57

Chiara Letizia £17.50

Université du Québec à Montréal

Professor of South Asian Religions at the University of Québec in Montréal, Canada. She is a research associate at the School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford and an associate member of the Centre for Himalayan Studies of the CNRS.

This paper deals with the theme of this book, Buddhist awareness, from a particular point of view and perhaps in an eccentric way. The context is the arrival of a modernist Theravada Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley in the 1920s, which involved a reform of the local Newar Buddhism, and the missionary work of Newar Theravada monks and laypeople some seventy years later. They were involved in campaigns to have the religious diversity of Nepal recognized by what was then a Hindu state, and they wanted to increase the number of Buddhists in the national census. Thus, they started spreading Buddhism among other Nepalese ethnic groups. Their work was met with interest by intellectuals belonging to the Tharu and Magar ethnic groups who were involved in their own ethnic activism and claims against the Hindu state. This synergy led to the organization of Buddhist Awareness Camps, where Buddhist teachings with a modernist and engaged flavour mixed with ethnic and political activism. In this paper, I will focus on the ways the notion of “Buddhist awareness” was used and understood in the discourses of these activists: awakening and unveiling the memory of a forgotten Buddhist past, and emphasizing the value of Buddhist teachings and soteriological path as a means of achieving the social emancipation of their respective ethnic group.

4. An Unshakeable Awareness: Siddhas and Jīvanmukti According to the Mokṣopāya [+–] 58-81

Bruno Lo Turco £17.50

La Sapienza University of Roma

Bruno Lo Turco is Associate Professor at the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies (ISO), Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. He teaches Religions and Philosophies of India, and Sanskrit Language and Literature. Recently he completed the critical edition of all fragments of Bhāskarakaṇṭha’s commentary on the sixth book of the Mokṣopāya. He also works on the relationship between modernity and Indian philosophic-religious thought, and on orality, aurality and literacy in India.

This study returns to the question of the jīvanmukta (“liberated while still living”) in the Mokṣopāya, a Hindu work heavily influenced by Buddhism and composed around the 9th century CE, in order to add some details that have been neglected to date. In particular, the chapter 6.259 along with Bhāskarakaṇṭha’s commentary (Ṭīkā) has been edited and translated here for the first time. This chapter shows that the figure of the jīvanmukta in the Mokṣopāya is comparable to the figure of the siddha (“perfect”) of the dohās (vernacular poems belonging to Buddhist Tantrism). Thus, he lives fully an ordinary life — he can even belong to a low social class —, or even a very peculiar life, for example “in the sky”, always without flaunting his achievements. At the same time he never abandons the supreme kind of awareness: “the perceivable exists only through one’s own perception”. This supports the hypothesis, put forward in the recent past, that the Mokṣopāya itself originated from the preaching of a siddha-like figure.

5. Framing the Other: Mindfulness, Photography, and a Reflexive Approach to Comparative Religions [+–] 82-98

Filippo Marsili £17.50

Saint Louis University

Filippo Marsili (PhD from UC Berkeley) is Associate Professor of History at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on cultural translation and the impact of Greco-Roman historiography and Abrahamic traditions on contemporary conceptualizations of early Chinese realities. His Heaven is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to “Religion” and Empire in Ancient China (SUNY Press 2018) offers a reconceptualization of Chinese experiences of the sacred before the arrival of Buddhism. His current project rethinks European discourses on institutionalized violence in light of early Chinese mythological and historiographical narratives concerning the relationship between the state, individuals, and communities.

This essay documents the ways in which Corrado Pensa’s approach to mindfulness was essential in the development of a new methodological attitude towards the study of the sacred in ancient China. During my first research trip to China among the ethnic minorities of the southwestern region of Yunnan during the mid-nineties, I realized how my training in classic art and civilizations prompted me to elaborate photographic compositions that responded to non-indigenous aesthetic and cultural priorities. After applying mindfulness to the very process of image production, I was able to trace back my “individual creative choices” to specific intellectual expectations, which were in turn intrinsic to the ethnocentric context of my academic upbringing. Thereupon, I began to translate the practice of systematically breaking down visual criteria of inclusion and exclusion into my doctoral comparative work on early Chinese experiences of the “sacred.” In doing so, I programmatically questioned the projection onto Asian realities of systemic, identity, and exclusionary approaches to religion, which are typical of most Abrahamic traditions. In conclusion, this contribution shows how the application of mindfulness to the heuristic processes of historical inquiry can be a necessary step towards the problematization of ethnocentric biases and recovery of emic perspectives.

6. The Teaching of Awareness in Corrado Pensa’s Thought [+–] 99-123

Chiara Neri £17.50

University of Cagliari

Today the use of the term sati, ‘awareness,’ often translated as ‘mindfulness,’ has become very widespread, especially in some groups oriented to the well-being of their students from a psycho-physical point of view. This article will first briefly reconstruct the original idea of awareness (sati) as presented in the Pāli Canon and then analyse how it was interpreted by Professor Corrado Pensa, and why he thought sati was a key to understanding Buddhism itself. The image that emerges is that, although he has been a part of bringing mindfulness to the West, in contrast to some teachers who have tended to trivialize mindfulness and even divorce it from its Buddhist roots, he has very much been a vehicle for the transmission of the Burmese and Thai forest practice traditions, always embedding sati within the framework of Pāli Canonical texts.

7. A Joyful Song Celebrating Buddhist Practice [+–] 124-143

Marta Sernesi £17.50

École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris

Marta Sernesi is Professor of Tibetan Religions at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE–PSL) in Paris. Her work focuses on the cultural and religious history of Tibet and the Himalayas, on early contemplative traditions and instructional literature, and on Tibetan book culture. Her recent monograph is titled Re-enacting the Past: A Cultural History of the School of gTsang smyon Heruka (Dr. Reichert Verlag, 2021)

This contribution offers to Corrado Pensa the edition and translation of a Tibetan religious song dating from the 13th century, which celebrates the benefits and joys of Buddhist practice. This is introduced by a discussion of the literary genre of songs (mgur) — drawing from two 16th century works devoted to their composition and performance — and by an overview of the corpus from which the translated song stems. Namely, this is a collection of versified compositions attributed to the master Yang dgon pa rGyal mtshan dpal bzang po (1213–1258), compiled and printed in 1524; further manuscript copies of the master’s collected songs have also been consulted for the text edition. Yang dgon pa is known as an ascetic, eclectic in his formation and teaching, who founded hermitages and led a small community of practitioners engaging in long retreats on Tsib-ri mountain, in the region of La stod lHo in south-western Tibet. The song was intoned to encourage and motivate five disciples entering retreat on the mountain, to practice the received instructions and sustain the experience of non-attachment. Hence, the composition is joyful and draws from the beauties of the surrounding natural world to celebrate the practice and fruits of solitary contemplation.

8. Evil According to Buddhism [+–] 144-165

Francesco Sferra £17.50

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

This paper is an inquiry into the ontology of evil in early Buddhist texts. It is shown that according to ancient Buddhist texts, the sphere of action of evil is limited to the conditioned (and not the absolute or unconditioned) reality. The most relevant canonical passages dealing with Māra, the personification of evil, and with the ways of getting rid of it are examined and commented on.

II. The Dharma in Words

9. The Loveliness of the Ordinary [+–] 169-173

Christina Feldman £17.50

Meditation Teacher

Christina Feldman has studied and taught Buddhist meditation since the early 1970s. She is co-founder of Gaia House in Devon, England, and is a guiding teacher at Spirit Rock in Woodacre, California (USA) and at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts (USA) where she founded Women’s and Family retreats. She regularly leads retreats in Europe. She has written many books, such as Boundless Heart: The Buddha’s Path of Kindness; Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity; Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology (co-authored with Willem Kukyen); Quest of the Warrior Woman, Ways of Meditation; and Buddhist Path to Simplicity.

The short essay, also accompanied by a guided meditation (‘Touching the Ordinary’), offers a reflection on the importance of appreciating the ordinary life through the awakening of awareness. The renunciation of haste can become a way to appreciate life and to access a deep attention that can illuminate what is buried in the heart. Awareness is what helps us understand and appreciate the miracle of being alive.

10. Ānāpānasati: A Brief Introduction [+–] 174-176

Larry Rosenberg £17.50

MeditationTeacher

Larry Rosenberg was Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and at Harvard Medical School. He is a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and founder and resident teacher of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). He is the author of Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation (2004); Living In the Light of Death: On the Art of Being Truly Alive (2001, co-authored with D. Guy); and Three Steps to Awakening: A Practice for Bringing Mindfulness to Life (2013, co-authored with L. Zimmerman).

This paper offers some reflections about ānāpānasati, ‘mindfulness of breathing,’ and vipassanā meditation.

11. Living in Mindfulness and Wisdom [+–] 177-188

Andrea Schnöller £17.50

Meditation Teacher

Andrea Schnöller resides at the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Sasso above Locarno, Italy. He is part of the Swiss Capuchin community. He holds regular evening meditation courses in Ticino. He founded an association for meditation and spiritual growth called the ‘Ponte sul Guado’, in the Chiese Valley, Trento. He completed journalism studies at the Catholic University of Milan and psychology studies at the Center for Psychology and Transactional Analysis in Milan. For several years he followed the yoga and meditation courses, including vipassanā retreats, with Corrado Pensa and introductory courses to Christian meditation with Father Antonio Gentili, with whom he published Dio nel silenzio, Ancora 2009.

This essay illustrates the use of awareness, understood as the wisdom of life, finding images and parallels between the use made of it within the Christian and Buddhist paths. Presence and listening prove to be fundamental elements for spiritual transformation, to live in harmony with what surrounds us and to be in ‘love for reality.’ If awareness becomes a pervasive and all-encompassing attitude, it leads to peace of heart.

End Matter

Index of Names 189-193

Chiara Neri,Francesco Sferra FREE

University of Cagliari

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Index of Texts (Sanskrit, Pāli and Prakrit) 194-195

Chiara Neri,Francesco Sferra FREE

University of Cagliari

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Index of Terms 196-198

Chiara Neri,Francesco Sferra FREE

University of Cagliari

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Reviews

A welcome contribution to Buddhist Studies. The main part of this book is dedicated to the scholarly output of Professor Corrado Pensa's former students whereas the last section consists of essays from contemporary meditation teachers. A valuable aspect of this book is thus the integration of two aspects of the Buddhist tradition, i.e., theory and practice.
Dr Tamara Ditrich, University of Sydney and University of Ljubljana

Presents a highly interesting and original collection of articles on a variety of specific topics related to awareness.
Dr Cristina Pecchia, University of Vienna and Austrian Academy of Sciences

Buddhist Studies

Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Teaching Awareness in the Buddhist Tradition

Essays in Honour of Professor Corrado Pensa

Chiara Neri [+–]

University of Cagliari

Francesco Sferra [+–]

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Table of Contents

Reviews

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Subjects

Teaching Awareness in the Buddhist Tradition

Essays in Honour of Professor Corrado Pensa

Chiara Neri [+–]

University of Cagliari

Francesco Sferra [+–]

Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Table of Contents

Reviews

Related Journal

Related Interestexplore the Buddhist Studies Collection on the Equinox Religion Library site

Search Equinox

Subjects

Related Interest
explore the Buddhist Studies Collection on the Equinox Religion Library site