MSI Press Blog

  Just the basics — because it really is a vast tradition Buddhism is one of the world’s oldest living spiritual traditions. It began in India more than 2,500 years ago and has since taken root across Asia and, more recently, the West. It is not a religion of a single book or a single authority. Instead, it is a path — a way of seeing, understanding, and living. Here are the essentials. 1. The Story at the Beginning Buddhism begins with a human being, not a god. Siddhartha Gautama, later called the Buddha (“the awakened one”), was a prince who left a life of comfort after encountering the realities of aging, illness, and death. He wanted to understand why human beings suffer — and whether there is a way out of that suffering. After years of searching, he experienced a profound awakening under the Bodhi tree. What he discovered became the foundation of Buddhism. 2. The Buddha’s Insight: Why We Suffer At the heart of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths , which are not dogmas but obse...

How We Meditate Right Concentration furnishes the eighth step on Buddha’s Eightfold Path. Technically, Right Concentration signifies passing through four stages in meditation called jhanas , and arriving at mindfulness. While the steps on the path are not consecutive and are practiced together, Buddha said that by following the previous steps, that is, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Understanding, Right Effort, Right Intention, Right Livelihood, and Right Mindfulness, we arrive at Right Concentration. When we concentrate, we focus our attention on something. Concentration, here called samadhi ,  means that we focus our mind on an object that helps us to become more wholesome and pure in our awareness. As we know, a distracted mind races between ideas, thoughts, and concepts, filled with anxiety, worry, concern, and delusion (thinking that things differ from the way they actually are). This mind has been compared to the antics of a drunken monkey. A drunken monkey...