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Welcome

Begin your journey of self-transformation through meditation and the cultivation of mindfulness in the Vipassana tradition

Posted By admin on January 17th, 2010

The way of the Buddha is to know yourself; To know yourself is to forget yourself; To forget yourself is to be awakened by all things. Dogen – Thirteenth Century Zen Monk

 

The Teachings

Taos Mountain Sangha Teacher Guide – 2008

Mission Statement

Taos Mountain Sangha promotes the teachings of the Buddha and the practice of insight meditation. Insight meditation is also known as vipassana and means insight or clear seeing into the nature of reality.

The Teachings

The following is intended to provide a basic guide to the Buddha’s teachings in the Theravada tradition. The core teachings of the Buddha are found in the words of the Buddha and the in the earliest texts. These teachings are centered on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. In simple terms, the Four Noble Truths that the Buddha taught are:

There is suffering,

There is an origin of suffering,

There is cessation of suffering and,

There is a path to the cessation of suffering: the Eightfold Path.

The Eightfold Path leads to the end of suffering or unsatisfactoriness and includes the practices of:

Right Action, Right Speech, Right Livelihood. These practices are known as Moral Conduct.

The second set of teachings in the Path is the Mental Disciplines and is Right Mindfulness, Right Effort, and Right Concentration.

The Wisdom Set of practices is Right Understanding and Right Thought.

Considered together, the Eightfold Path constitutes guidelines for realizing the cessation of dukkha or suffering in one’s life.

The teachings of the Buddha were passed down from generation to generation by oral tradition prior to being written down in suttas or scriptures. The teachings are embodied in many forms and in Theravada Buddhism the earliest scripts are known as the Pali Canon and topics include but are not exclusive to:

The life of the Buddha,

Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path,

The Middle Way,

The Satipatthana Sutta and other Suttas,

The Brahma Viharis,

The Three Refuges,

The Seven Factors of Enlightenment,

The Four Elements,

The Five Hindrances,

The Ten Paramis,

The Aggregates,

The Three Universal Truths – impermanence, suffering, non-self,

The Four Painful Attachments and other concepts such as;

Impermanence, kamma, emptiness/not-self, faith, renunciation, intentionality, the mind, the senses, and mindfulness.