Foundations of the Buddha's Path

By Eric Van Horn

Foundations of the Buddha’s Path is the first in a three-volume series about the teachings of the Buddha. It is based on his original teachings as found in the Pāli Canon. It covers three important topics: establishing a daily meditation practice, the practice of Buddhist ethics, virtue, and morality, and Buddhism in daily living.
The section on meditation presents a meditation system that creates a sense of well-being. It is your safe harbor, a place of healing. This creates a ground from which the rest of your practice can grow and mature.

The presentation of Buddhist ethics focuses on not just a set of rules, but the feelings of joy and happiness that come from leading a virtuous existence. This is the way that the Buddha taught morality. There is no sense of guilt in the Buddha’s teachings. It is about living in a way that is wholesome and rewarding.

Finally, there is a discussion of Buddhism in everyday life. This includes applying the Buddha’s teachings to our relationships, our jobs, and even politics. Many people find that bringing the Buddha’s teaching into their daily lives is a challenge. This discussion is meant to address that concern and to make the Dharma a daily reality.
Foundations of the Buddha’s Path will help you to establish a healthy, happy, useful way of living, one that is rooted in the Buddha’s original teachings. Because despite the amount of time that has passed since the Buddha lived, what we find is that the human mind and the human condition have not changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Van Horn
• Release date: Apr 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005290269

Eric Van Horn

Eric Van Horn was born and raised in Lower Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania. He graduated Pottsgrove High School in 1970 and went to college at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. He graduated from Goddard in 1973 with a B.A. in Liberal Arts. His senior thesis was about his experience as a community organizer for a drug abuse prevention program in Pottstown, PA.After graduation he worked in a number of social service jobs, but eventually discovered a love of computer programming. He spent the next 33 years working as a software engineer. In his last job he spent 18 years working in the field of medical informatics at the PKC Corporation in Burlington, Vermont. He retired from PKC in 2011 to devote his life to his Buddhist practice.His interest in Buddhism began in 1991 when he attended a "spiritual support group" at the Burlington Unitarian Church. Over the next 20+ years he attended many retreats at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, MA, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Barre, MA, the Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Temper, NY, the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, the Bhavana Society and Monastery in High View, WV, the Embracing Simplicity Hermitage in Asheville, NC, Kharme Choling in Barnet, VT, and Maple Forest Monastery in Woodstock, VT. He went to India on Buddhist Pilgrimage in 2004.Eric has written several papers on Buddhism, including "Jhāna in the Majjhima Nikaya" and "Reverse Engineering the Buddha's Enlightenment." These can be found at http://nobleeightfoldblog.com/resources/. In 2015 he published the "Travel Guide to the Buddha's Path," a practice guide that provides an outline of the whole of the Buddha's path as described in the Pāli canon. This volume has since been replaced by a greatly expanded three-volume set "The Buddha's Path Series," which includes (1) "Foundations of the Buddha's Path," (2) "The Heart of the Buddha's Path," and (3) "Awakening on the Buddha's Path." He has also written a biography of the Buddha called "The Life of the Buddha" and is currently editing and illustrating the Buddhist Jātaka Tales literature.He moved from Vermont to New Mexico in 2014 because it was "sunnier, warmer, and cheaper." He also found a living situation that is quieter and more conducive to meditation. He has an ongoing love of the Land of Enchantment, its rich cultural heritages, breathtaking landscapes, and ancient history. He has two adult children, Seth and Rebecca, a daughter-in-law Britomarte, a grandchild Jay, and a virtual son-in-law Toby.

Book preview

Foundations

of the

Buddha's Path

Meditation, Virtue, and Daily Living

buddha under tree

by Eric K. Van Horn

Copyright

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Smashwords Publishing

eBook ISBN: 9781005290269

First Edition 2021

Dedicated to my parents

who taught me that

you don't have to be rich

to have a rich life

Also by this author:

The Life of the Buddha

The Buddha's Path series:

Foundations of the Buddha's Path: Meditation, Virtue, and Daily Living

The Heart of the Buddha's Path: Wisdom, Mindfulness, and Concentration

Awakening on the Buddha's Path: Rebirth, Release, and Enlightenment

Table of Contents

Copyright

Introduction

Terminology and Conventions

Internet Conventions

Pāli Text References

Abbreviations Used for Pāli Text References

I. Meditation

Establishing a Physical Posture

Establishing a Mental Posture

Sweeping

Breath Meditation

Problems While Meditating

More Meditation Techniques

Mettā and the Brahma Vihāras

Walking Meditation

Chanting

Parting Thoughts on Meditation

II. Virtue

How to Explain Virtue to a 7-Year-Old

Generosity

The Five Lay Precepts

The Seven-factored virtue

Virtue as a Gift

Virtue in the Four Noble Truths

The Wholesome and the Unwholesome

The Ten Perfections

Parting Thoughts on Virtue

III. Daily Living

Money

Work

Caring for Our Homes

Caring for Our Bodies

Caring for Our Minds

Eating

What We Eat

How We Eat

How Much We Eat

Fasting

Consumption

Sex

The Buddha’s Advice to Laypeople

Speech

Community

Politics

Sickness, Aging and Death

Parting Thoughts on Daily Living

What Comes Next?

Appendices

Appendix A - Glossary of Terms

Appendix B - Bibliography

Introduction

Just as from a heap of flowers

Many garlands can be made,

So, you, with your mortal life,

Should do many skillful things.

— Dhammapada, The Path of Dhamma, 53

I remember the first time that I meditated. I went to a spiritual support group at the Unitarian Church in Burlington, Vermont. At the start of the session we were asked to sit in silence for five minutes. I don’t think that I had been asked to do that since I was in kindergarten. It was an odd experience. On one hand I felt mildly uncomfortable. On the other hand it felt strangely comforting and peaceful. There is something here, I thought.

That innocent moment started a process that soon took on a life of its own. I started to read books on meditation. I took courses. I attended some retreats. I listened to Dharma talks. I think this is a very common story. People are introduced to meditation and they have a sense that there is something powerful there. But you read a lot of conflicting information, and it can be quite confusing.

A seminal moment occurred for me in 1995. That was the year that Bhikkhu Bodhi published the Majjhima Nikāya: The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (coauthored with the deceased Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli).

I started my Buddhist practice in a Zen group, and I was actively discouraged from reading the Buddha’s original discourses. I was told that they were boring and repetitive and that I should only read the newer material. (Newer in Buddhist terms means somewhere between 500 and 1,000 years after the Buddha’s death.)

But hearing the Buddha said this and the Buddha said that frustrated me. I wanted to read it for myself. So I bought a copy of the Majjhima Nikāya and I spent a year working my way through it.

It was, admittedly, tough going. I didn’t know much about Buddhism, and I knew even less about ancient India. And to understand what I was reading, I had to read the extensive endnotes in the back of the book. I always had two bookmarks, one for the discourses and one for the endnotes.

Little by little the Buddha’s teachings opened themselves up to me, and they didn’t sound like anything I was being taught. By then I had experience in a number of traditions. This included two lineages of Zen, one Tibetan, and insight meditation. But no one was teaching in a way that was consistent with what I was reading.

And as difficult as it was for me to understand, what I was reading was simply beautiful. It was cogent and coherent, and it all fit together like an elegant piece of engineering. There was breadth and depth, and while it was complicated, there was also a framework of simplicity and elegance that bound it all together.

I spent many years trying to find teachers who teach in a way that is consistent with the Majjhima Nikāya. In the meantime, I read the Digha Nikāya (The Long Discourses of the Buddha), the Saṃyutta Nikāya (The Connected Discourses of the Buddha), and the Aṇguttara Nikāya (The Numeric Discourses of the Buddha). After a while, I got a sense of the language. I got a better feel for how the poetic beauty of the Pāli language translates into English (not very well). But understanding more about Pāli let me see the rhythmic, musical nature of the discourses. The repetition is because of how they were composed, learned, and recited. It is like the refrain in a song. When I started seeing the discourses in terms of music, they took on a whole new type of beauty. They were easier to read and easier to understand.

However, I was still having trouble finding teachers who could help me put into practice what I was reading. To be sure, some of my teachers were wonderful people. I did learn some important lessons about the Dharma. But I had three basic complaints about what I was being taught.

The first was that many things I was being taught were not true. They were simply incorrect. No one was teaching about jhāna, which is central to the Buddha’s teachings. (Jhāna is a deep state of meditative absorption.) In fact, the mere mention of jhāna was likely to expose you to a verbal assault. Some years ago one of the Buddhist magazines did an issue on jhāna, and the subsequent letters to the editor were positively vitriolic. There is a deep-seated antagonism to jhāna in much of the Buddhist community despite its obvious importance in the canonical literature.

And hardly anyone was talking about rebirth, which is also central to the Buddha’s teachings. There is even a term for this selective type of Dharma teaching. It is called cherry picking. This means that some people accept, a.k.a. cherry-pick, only the teachings that they can accept. This is based largely on their cultural conditioning.

Second, the Dharma was being oversimplified. I am not the only one who feels this way. In a letter to Bhikkhu Bodhi, the Tibetan Buddhist practitioner B. Alan Wallace said this:

Apart from the issue of definitions alone, I am concerned that Buddhist vipassana practice is not only being radically simplified for the general lay public (some would say dumbed down), but that it is being misrepresented in such a way that the rich teachings (in theory & practice) of the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta are being overlooked or marginalized.

— [A Correspondence between B. Alan Wallace and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi Winter, 2006, "The Nature of Mindfulness and Its Role in Buddhist Meditation"]

I was mainly being taught to simply be with the breath and to be with whatever arises. There is certainly that aspect to practice, but it represents perhaps 2 percent of it. It would be like learning about the law of gravity and thinking that represents the whole of physics.

Finally, I could not find anyone who could connect the dots for me. How do you go from your first sitting all the way to awakening? How do you awaken? How do you get at least to the first stage of awakening, or stream-entry? Meditation retreats and books tend to focus on one topic. You get everything piecemeal. It’s like going to automotive school and taking a course in brakes, another one in transmissions, and another one on engines, but you have never seen a car. How does it all fit together?

So I set out on a journey to answer that question for myself. The result of that effort is this series of volumes, The Buddha’s Path.

The type of practice that I describe is rooted in the Pāli Canon. This is the most extensive Buddhist literature that has been—thus far—translated into English. Some people object to this method of practice. People like me are somewhat derisively referred to as Pāli Buddhists. To me that is like calling a Christian a New Testament Christian, a Jew a Torah Jew, or a Muslim a Koran Muslim. The Pāli Canon is the teachings of the Buddha.

I have practiced in all the major schools of Buddhism, and I kept finding myself going back to the original teachings. That is where I kept finding clarity. And eventually, I came to have three understandings about Buddhism:

That the Pāli Canon gives a good representation of what the Buddha taught. This is not to say that every word has been transmitted perfectly over 2600 years, but that if you read the Pāli Canon, it is clear what the Buddha taught.

That when the Buddha awakened, he saw into the ultimate, transcendent nature of reality. This is important because some people somewhat trivialize his awakening. Seeing into the ultimate, transcendent nature of reality is seeing truth that is the same no matter what the cultural context. It even transcends the planet. If it is ultimately true, it has to be true on Alpha Centauri.

That a Buddha or an arahant always speaks the truth. This is important because some people claim that the Buddha’s teachings, such as those on rebirth, are skillful means. The argument is that because people at the Buddha’s time believed in things like rebirth, he was speaking to their cultural understanding.

So that is how this series came to be. It is my attempt to present the Buddha’s path from beginning to end, or at least as close to the end as you need someone like me to get you. This is not a complete guide. It is intended to be a framework, an outline that you can use as a map for your own journey.

I do not consider myself any kind of authority. I am just a fellow traveler who has been down some blind alleys and wants to save you the trouble. Some years ago I was at a retreat with Larry Rosenberg at which he said, I am just a beginner. At the time, I thought that was false modesty. But now I know what he meant. When confronted with the breadth and depth of what the Buddha discovered, what he did, then his relentlessly selfless life of teaching, you can only ever feel like a beginner.

I have two great hopes for this text. The first is that it will help you be a happier, more useful person. The second is that I have accurately represented what the Buddha taught. His message is timeless. It does not need to be modernized, merged with the field of psychology, or Westernized. One of the great lessons of the Buddha’s discourses is that in 2,600 years, the human mind has not changed. And the cure for our problems of living has not changed either.

Eric Van Horn

Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Terminology and Conventions

Because the Buddhist Canon that I use is in the Pāli language, I usually use Pāli terms. However, some Sanskrit Buddhist terms have become common in the English language, and it seems rather affected not to use them. The two most obvious examples are the words nirvāṇa, which is nibbāna in Pāli, and dharma, which is dhamma in Pāli. For the most part, I use the commonly known terms. But if it seems awkward to have the Pāli terms when they occur in quotes or in certain words (like Dhammacakkappavattana) and then use the Sanskrit terms in the main text, I use the Pāli words.

I try to avoid technical terms in the beginning until you get used to them. However, if there are terms with which you are unfamiliar, they should be in the glossary in Appendix A.

Let me make a special comment about the words dharma/dhamma and saṇgha. The word dharma/dhamma has many uses in Pāli, and it means something different depending on the context. It can mean truth. It can mean phenomena. It can refer to any teacher’s teaching. Technically, the Buddha teaches the Buddhadharma—that is, his Dharma.

I have adopted a convention that is not original, and that is this: when I am referring to the Buddha’s Dharma, I capitalize it. When I am using the word dharma in any other context, then I do not capitalize it.

Likewise, the word saṇgha in its generic form simply means community. In the Buddhist tradition, however, the word Saṇgha refers either to the monastic Saṇgha, which is the community of monks and nuns, or the noble Saṇgha, which is the community of enlightened beings. The noble Saṇgha includes laypeople, so it is not a subset of the monastic community.

But because the word saṇgha is often used these days to mean anyone in the Buddhist community, I have adopted the convention of capitalizing it when I am referring to the monastic community or the noble Saṇgha. I do not capitalize it in any other context. So when I am referring to any member of the Buddhist community, you will see the word saṇgha. Buddhism has several canonical literatures. One is in Chinese; another is in Tibetan. The one that I use is the Pāli Canon, and I have adopted the convention of capitalizing the word Canon when I refer specifically to it.

Per standard APA style guidelines, book names are italicized (i.e., Foundations of Buddhism) and magazine articles and internet resources are capitalized and quoted (i.e., The Benefits of Walking Meditation). Having said that, I am not enamored of formal citation systems. So I use my format, which I think is more descriptive and more useful. Part of the narrative is getting used to the names of people in the Buddhist community and their works.

Internet Conventions

There are many references to resources that are on the internet. This is always a problem because hyperlinks are notoriously unreliable. Therefore, I have adopted a convention of putting internet search keywords in the text as well as a hyperlink to the resource. For example, a reference to Thích Nhất Hạnh’s gāthās (poems) is "thich nhat hanh gathas here and now." If links are supported and the link is not broken, clicking on the search keywords will open that resource. If you are reading this in a context where internet links are not supported or the link is broken, you can still find the resource by doing a search using the keywords. If you use the search keywords, the resource should be the first one in the search result list.

The other special case is an article citation. It will look like this:

— [Sayadaw U Silananda, "The Benefits of Walking Meditation"]

Again, if your reader does not support hyperlinks or the link is broken, searching on the author’s name and the article name should get you to the article. Some names and words use diacritical marks. Remove them to find the correct resource. For example, for the name Ṭhānissaro use the nondiacritical form Thanissaro.

Pāli Text References

The Pāli Canon has been analyzed, searched, and researched for centuries. More recently some conventions have come into common use that help you to find a specific quote. These are the conventions that I use.

The Pāli Canon is described in volume two of this series, The Heart of the Buddha’s Path. But here I will give a brief description of how these references work.

The Pāli Canon contains either 15 or 18 volumes depending on the source. The Burmese edition has 18 volumes and the rest of southeast Asia uses the 15-volume collection. These are organized as five nikāyas, or collections. The first four nikāyas are the Digha Nikāya (The Long Discourses), the Majjima Nikāya (The Middle Length Discourses), the Saṃyutta Nikāya (The Connected Discourses), and the Aṇguttara Nikāya (The Numerical Discourses). The other volumes are all grouped under the fifth collection, the Khuddaka Nikāya (The Minor Collection).

Each volume has an abbreviation which you will see on the following page. Any canonical reference will include the abbreviation followed by one or more numbers. The numbers are context dependent.

For the Digha Nikāya and Majjhima Nikāya the abbreviation will be followed by two numbers. These will be (a) the discourse number and (b) the paragraph within the discourse. So a reference that says — [MN 8.7] means that the quote is from discourse number 8 (Madhupindika Sutta: The Ball of Honey), paragraph 7.

In the Saṃyutta Nikāya there will be three numbers. The first number is the saṃyutta (collection) number, of which there are 32. The second number will be the discourse number, and if there is a third number that will be the paragraph number.

For the Aṇguttara Nikāya, there are 12 books. They are numbered 1–12. The first number will be the book number, the second number will be the discourse number, and the third number will be the paragraph number.

There is one outlier and that is the Dhammapada. The Dhammapada is a book of verses. There will only be one number, and that will be the verse number.

I believe that references to the other texts will be self-explanatory.

Abbreviations Used for Pāli Text References

---

AN: Aṇguttara Nikāya, The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha

Bv: Buddhavaṃsa, Chronicle of Buddhas

BvA: Buddhavaṃsatthakathā, commentary to the Buddhavaṃsa

Cv: Cullavagga, the smaller book, the second volume in the Khandhaka, which is the second book of the monastic code (the Vinaya)

Dhp: Dhammapada, The Path of Dhamma, a collection of 423 verses

DhpA: Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā, commentary to the Dhammapada

DN: Digha Nikāya, The Long Discourses of the Buddha

Iti: Itivuttaka, This Was Said (by the Buddha), a.k.a., Sayings of the Buddha

Ja: Jātaka Tales, previous life stories of the Buddha

JaA: Jātaka-aṭṭhakathā, commentary on the Jātaka Tales

Khp: Khuddakapāṭha, Short Passages

MA: Majjhima Nikāya Aṭṭhakathā, commentary on the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (by Buddhaghosa)

MN: Majjhima Nikāya, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha

Mv: Mahāvagga, the first volume in the Khandhaka, which is the second book of the monastic code (the Vinaya)

Pm: Pātimokkha, The Code of Monastic Discipline, the first book of the monastic code (the Vinaya)

SN: Saṃyutta Nikāya, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha

Sn: Sutta Nipāta, The Sutta Collection, literally, suttas falling down, a sutta collection in the Khuddaka Nikāya consisting mostly of verse

Sv: Sutta-vibhaṇga: Classification of the Suttas, the origin stories for the Pātimokkha rules

Thag: Theragāthā: Verses of the Elder Monks

ThagA: Theragāthā-aṭṭhakathā, Commentary to the Theragāthā

Thig: Therīgāthā: Verses of the Elder Nuns

ThigA: Therīgāthā-aṭṭhakathā, Commentary to the Therīgāthā

Ud: Udana, Exclamations, the third book of the Khuddaka Nikāya

Vin: Vinaya Pitaka, Basket of Discipline, the monastic rules for monks and nuns.

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I. Meditation

Establishing a Daily Meditation Practice

And what is the noble search? Here someone being himself subject to birth, having understood the danger in what is subject to birth, seeks the unborn supreme security from bondage, Nibbāna; being himself subject to aging, having understood the danger in what is subject to aging, he seeks the unaging supreme security from bondage, Nibbāna; being himself subject to sickness, having understood the danger in what is subject to sickness, he seeks the unailing supreme security from bondage, Nibbāna; being himself subject to death, having understood the danger in what is subject to death, he seeks the deathless supreme security from bondage, Nibbāna; being himself subject to sorrow, having understood the danger in what is subject to sorrow, he seeks the sorrowless supreme security from bondage, Nibbāna; being himself subject to defilement, having understood the danger in what is subject to defilement, he seeks the undefiled supreme security from bondage, Nibbāna. This is the noble search.

— [MN 26.12]

This is the first in a series of lessons that will teach you how to meditate. This type of meditation is based on the Buddha’s original teachings. The Buddha himself either gave these instructions, or they are in the spirit of what he taught. I will try and point out which ones are which as we proceed. The source for what the Buddha taught is the Pāli Canon. Pāli is a language of ancient India. The Pāli Canon is at present the best and most complete source we have for the Buddha’s original teachings.

You do not have to be a Buddhist to benefit from the Buddha’s teachings. Many of his teachings are nonsectarian and can benefit anyone. So if you find some aspect of the Buddha’s teaching to be a problem, put it aside for now. The best thing that you can do with a teaching that you find difficult to accept or do not understand is to file it away for future reference.

The Buddha taught a path that is called sīla-samādhi-pañña. Sīla is the Pāli word for ethics, morality, virtue, or right conduct. Samādhi is the Pāli word for concentration, serenity, or mental absorption. And pañña is the Pāli word for