Buddhist Geeks

Author Biography:

Kenneth Folk: I’ve been thinking about picking up on the theme of the rainbow of the mind, which was in one of our recent interviews that went up on Buddhist Geeks. In order for enlightenment to have any meaning, it has to work just as well in hell as it does in heaven. And this is covered in the Buddhist teaching of rebirth. So karma ties in with this, too, because according to this teaching, if you generate enough good karma through your good actions you can be reborn in a more fortunate circumstance, or I should say a more [...]

“The men of old knew that life comes without warning, and as suddenly goes. They denied none of their natural inclinations, and repressed none of their bodily desires. They never felt the spur of fame. They sauntered through life gathering its pleasures as the impulse moved them.” – Yang Chu (4th century BCE)
Every morning, Raymond Barnett puts a teapot on low and steps out of his house at Valley Oaks Village, a collaborative housing community in northern California, for a 40-minute walk. By the time he gets back, the water is just at a boil, and Barnett—a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran, [...]

JG: You know, there’s a fair amount of controversy now as people try to sort out the difference between teachings based on reality and those that are the product of the religious imagination from earlier eras. I guess Ken Wilber might say we have moved from a magic/mythic level of development to the modernist, rational level of development, to the post-modern and integral levels. And so there’s this admixture of stuff—unrealistic stories that are the result of the magic/mythic orientation of the time periods in which they were created, as well as plenty of material that is based on actual [...]

“Enlightenment is the ego’s ultimate disappointment.” -Trungpa Rinpoche
Joel Groover: You had been discussing what enlightenment is and isn’t, from your perspective.
Kenneth Folk: We need to get away from the idea that enlightenment is a cosmic bliss out. I find that to be a pernicious and highly prevalent misconception. Everybody wants to think, “Okay, I’m going to get enlightened and then my life will be pleasant all the time. I’ll have a beatific smile on my face. I will wear flowing white robes. Everybody will love me and bow down and kiss my feet. I will never say anything rude or [...]

“Buddha-nature, the essence of awakened enlightenment itself, is present in everyone. Its essence is forever pure, unalloyed, and flawless. It is beyond increase or decrease. It is neither improved by remaining in nirvana nor degenerated by straying into samsara. Its fundamental essence is forever perfect, unobscured, quiescent, and unchanging. Its expressions are myriad.” – Nyoshul Khenpo
Joel Groover: So one question I had about your Three Speed Transmission had to do with when to try to incorporate what you call 3rd Gear practice. How do you know when to do it? I see 1st Gear as just infinitely vast territory. So [...]

“At every level the flavor of the Teaching is of a single nature, the flavor of freedom. It is only the degree to which this flavor is enjoyed that differs, and the difference in degree is precisely proportional to the extent of one’s practice.” – Bhikkhu Bodhi
Kenneth Folk: You asked about the Four Paths and the Progress of Insight, so let’s talk about them.
Joel Groover: OK. So for me it has been kind of a revelation and… you know, it is funny to me. I’ve done a lot of reading of the magazines and dharma books and it was still [...]

Known to him they arose, known to him they remained, known to him they subsided. – The Buddha
Joel Groover: You were talking about your experience in meditation interviews with Sayadaw U Pandita at his monastery in Rangoon. Isn’t that what the traditional interview is all about, that feedback loop to help the student?
Kenneth Folk: Actually, no. The traditional interview is not a real-time feedback loop. In fact, on the very rare occasions when a teacher will ask for real-time reporting during the interviews, the teacher is hailed as a genius. “Oh, look. The teacher actually got this person to understand [...]

“I sell round trip tickets to Heaven and Hell. And nobody is buying.” – Joshu Sasaki Roshi
Joel Groover: Could we talk a bit about what you have called dynamic jhana vs. static jhana?
Kenneth Folk: Yes. There is a Flash animation on my website that shows a mountain and two yogis. The one on the left is the dynamic yogi, and the one on the right is the static yogi. The idea is that you want to get up and down through all the strata of mind and objectify them all. So a dynamic yogi will go up and down through [...]

“Even reading and studying only Chapter 5 will enable you to practice insight meditation in a straightforward way, and you will be able to realize (enlightenment of) path knowledge, fruition knowledge, and nibbāna.” – Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw, from Manual of Insight
The first English translation available to Westerners of the Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw’s two-volume Manual of Insight might sound at first like something of interest mostly to scholars—or to Buddhist Geeks. Originally completed in seven months by the vipassana master in 1945 even as Japanese bombers dropped their fiery payloads on the nearby Burmese city of Shwebo, the approximately 700-page tome [...]

“How do I know if I’m meditating right?” –Every Yogi
Kenneth Folk: Something I think a lot about is the pedagogy of enlightenment, because I am trained as a teacher and I am a teacher by nature, and I have always been a teacher—teaching one thing or another. And so when I look at how awakening is taught, I think there is a lot of room for improvement. We are basically doing it the same way it has been done for thousands of years.
Joel Groover: Yes. I could not help but notice parallels between the traditional “32 parts of the body” [...]