Some basic introduction I am Bhante Varrapanyo I’m an American Buddhist monk ordained in Thailand and in the organization of Sayadaw Ashin Ottamathara founder of Thabarwa from Myanmar.
I’ve been ordained for 5 years and I am very active in teaching online and leading the Western sangha group for Dhamma Talks, Group meditations, and answering questions concerning Buddhism.
Today I gave a talk on the Ādittapariyāya Sutta SuttaCentral and I know that there are many knowledgeable people here concerning the sutas so I was hoping that I may be able to request some feedback or some insight about my talk if I got anything wrong if I got anything right that kind of thing.
Bhikkhu. Ignoring the confusing use of “rebirth”, i attempted to listen to your sermon. I found your sermon often unrelated to the Āditta Sutta and found it to be a discursive generalization of various different teachings; including non-Buddhist teachings of chakras & non-duality. You introduce the concepts of impermanence & unsatisfactoriness being “fires”, which are not in the Āditta Sutta. You keep repeating this non-Āditta Sutta idea things are “burning” with impermanence. This is confusing. If impermanence was a “fire”, vipassana would be a fire.
My reading of the Āditta Sutta is it starts with how the eyes, ear, nose, tongue, body & mind are on fire with greed, hatred & delusion. This reads as though it points to underlying tendencies underlying the sense organs.
However, your sermon does not emphasis this. To the contrary, your sermons sounds like it takes a leap into asserting the sense objects are on fire. You keep emphasising the sense objects are burning, as though the Āditta Sutta starts its teaching with the sense objects. But the Āditta Sutta does not do this because the Buddha does not teach in the wrong order.
Your sermon is not directing the student to observe the fires at the sense organs. To the contrary, your sermon is focusing on non-attachment towards the fires and giving up identity rather than observing the primal source of the fires so to become dissillusioned with the fires; so to not have identity arise in the first place. Your sermon is not teaching an ounce of prevention but is teaching a pound of cure.
You keep emphasising the things outside of us we touch are hot & they burn us. Things are not hot. What is hot is the mind & the sense organs.
It is the sense organs on fire that cause the other fires to occur or dependently arise. The fires are within rather than without. But you keep emphasising the fires are outside of the body & mind and the mind must act to put out the fires outside of it.
Then you get into also sorts of New Age psychotherapy which is not related to the Adiitta Sutta. While this is not inherently wrong, are you going to keep repeating your same same Jack Kornfield generalisations every time you give a Sutta sermon? Possibly you should just focus on the relevant Sutta so to help listeners understand the Sutta rather than do pretend Sutta sermons that in reality are coddling students like Jack Kornfield.
My feedback is the Āditta Sutta begins with the burning sense organs and that is the right way up place to start. Cut the tree from the bottom rather than pluck the branches climbing down from the top.
