Traditions

Miles is a Buddhist Psychotherapist and author.

Kiki is an Ashtanga teacher based in NYC.

The most well-known definition of “metta” is “loving kindness.” Another meaning, as Bhikkhu Bodhi translated, is “kind friendliness,” as “metta” derives from the Pali word for “friend.” “Bhavana” is usually translated as “meditation,” but it more literally means “cultivation” or “development.” During this process, loving kindness is meant to remove anger, hatred and delusion, and transform things which would normally trigger these emotions into opportunity for creative problem solving.

Buddhism is a vast, sprawling heterogeneous and internally inconsistent tradition dying and flowering over and over in various times and places over around 2500 years. Anyone who tells you its “core” teachings or practices is ignorant or lying. This is okay; as long as you know it is so.

The teachings on emptiness (Sanskrit sunyata or shunyata) find their most articulate development in the Kadampa branch of Mahayana Buddhism (Madhyamika Prasangika philosophy). To the Kadampas, nothing exists ‘inherently’ or ‘from its own side’.

According to Buddhism, the basis of reality consists of ever-changing processes rather than static ‘things’. If any ‘thing’ is analysed in enough depth, and observed over a long enough timescale, it can be seen to be a stage of a dynamic process, rather than a static, stable thing-in-itself.

Hareesh is a Non-Dual Tantrik teacher and scholar.

When the great universal teacher Shakyamuni Buddha first spoke about the Dharma in the noble land of India, he taught the four noble truths: the truths of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the path to the cessation of suffering.