Ajahn Sujato - Buddhist Mythology: The Sacred and the Profane

Will the copies still come?

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To anyone who enjoyed this class, I recommend this interview with Katherine Bowie on the politics of the Jataka in Thailand (courtesy of the New Books in Buddhist Studies podcast)

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Just want to mention that this is such a good series… I watched it earlier this summer, over the course of a weekend. Probably the single most fascinating and informative video lecture series on Buddhism that I’ve ever seen. Now I’m stuck seeing connections to myth everywhere.

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Wow, high praise indeed llt! That is exactly my hope, to get under the skin and prompt new ways of seeing. It’s one of those things, when you immerse yourself in the world and the way of seeing opened up by mythology, you do see it everywhere; specifically in ancient narrative, which is soaked in mythic archetypes and which is slowly emerging from them.

If anyone doesn’t know what I mean by that, try the following exercise. Read these accounts of the early Buddhist period.

  1. MN 123: The Buddha’s birth
  2. Kd 1: The period following the Buddha’s enlightenment.
  3. DN 16: The Mahaparinibbana
  4. Kd 22: The Second Council

Step by step, little by little, the accounts become rather less like mythology and rather more like journalism.

If we are insensitive to mythology then we miss out on a vast dimension of meaning.

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