In this episode, Bhante Sanāthāvihārī (creator of this podcast) speaks with Bhante Dr. Saranapala, the "Kindful Canada Monk," about his journey, his teachings, and his mission to spread mindfulness and kindness worldwide. You'll hear about:

• Bhante Saranapala’s path from ordaining in Bangladesh at age 10 to bringing the Dhamma to Canada and beyond
• How he employs kindfulness, a concept that blends mindfulness with kindness as a tool for emotional and psychological healing
• His global initiative, A Mindful and Kind Nation, and how he shares Dhamma with police officers, banks, and legal professionals
• Insights into the teachings of Bhante Punnaji, including fresh interpretations of Buddhist terms like dukkha ("difficult to handle") and satipaṭṭhāna ("placing attention within")
• The connection between Dhamma and modern psychology, and how Bhante Puññaji bridged Buddhist philosophy with Western therapeutic concepts
• Why personal transformation is the key to societal change, and how small daily acts of kindness can create a more harmonious world
• The power of humor and joy in spiritual practice, and how teachers like the Dalai Lama and Ajahn Brahm use laughter to uplift and inspire

Join us for a thoughtful and engaging conversation on the transformative power of Dhamma in everyday life!

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll hear Bjante Puññaji answer a number of audience questions, covering a wide range of topics, including:

• How meditation leads to a virtuous circle, that eventually leads to liberation
• How to apply appropriate attention
• The currents of Western philosophy in contrast with Buddhism
• How experience arises
• What the problem of existence is
• How conditionality works
• The interactions between emotions and thoughts in the mind

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll learn:

• How emotions can derail us
• How meditation helps us solve our thinking problem
• How calming emotions helps us act more skillfully
• How to calm these emotions by calming the body and calming the mind
• What is samādhi
• The transition from satipaṭṭhāna to samādhi through the seven factors of awakening
• How deeper levels of concentration help us understand the process of experience
• How understanding the process of experience with wisdom and knowledge helps put an end to suffering and attain liberation

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll learn:

• The importance of taking care of your mind
• Why relaxation is important
• How the breath and relaxation are connected
• How relaxation is letting go
• What materialism is
• How the scientific perspective of the body, brain and mind relates to Buddhism
• How Western psychology developed an understanding of the phenomena of the brain and mind
• How Western psychology explains and deals with the problems of the mind
• The four Upādānas (normally translated as "clinging") and the process of personalizing
• How personalizing is suffering
• How the process of personalizing is stopped by giving up the idea of self
• The process of cognition in Buddhist psychology

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll learn:

• How to take stock of the mind
• How to become conscious and stopping unwholesome thoughts and reactions
• How to explore the breath through the sensations of the body
• How to calm the mind and relax the body
• The conditions necessary to enter Jhāna

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this second part covering Satipaṭṭhāna Meditation, you'll learn:

• How to bring the attention inward
• Why mediation is beneficial
• What calming the mind means
• How meditation helps us to let go
• How to deal with certain hindrances to our meditation
• What existence is and how it relates to feeling
• The problems with pleasure and pain
• How to comfort someone going through pain

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll learn:

• what meditation means in the words of the Buddha

• how to draw your attention inward
• how to relax the body such that we can deal with emotional problems
• how to create a life that supports our practice of meditation
• how meditation extends beyond what we normally think

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll learn:

• What the divine abodes, or brahmavihārā, are
• How each of the four abodes—goodwill (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), empathetic joy (muditā) and equanimity (upekkhā)—work
• Why it's hard to follow the precepts when we do not develop these four qualities
• How the brahmavihārā, through an interest in others, leads to relief of suffering
• Why the brahmavihārā are not emotional excitement
• How the divine abodes lead into one another successively
• How the abodes eventually lead us into seeing things clearly
• The relationship between the brahmavihārā and our behavior

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll hear about:

• how Buddhism isn't at odds with the scientific conception of the world
• how the line between the material and the spiritual is blurred when considered from the buddhist point of view
• what psychic powers are and how they arise
• what the Jhānas are and how one gets into them
• how the mind works
• Buddhist psychology

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll learn about:

• Determinism and how it differs from dogmatic views of divine intervention
• The cognitive process by which experience is constructed
• How emotions are born out of ignorance and why they're the source of our problems
• How to liberate ourselves from our emotions by understanding how the different factors of experience come into play
• What role jhāna plays in liberation
• The process of jhāna and how it differs from a state of hypnosis
• Dependent Origination, the principle that explains how the world of experience arises, and which constitutes the teaching of the Middle Way

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll learn:

• what a Buddha is, in human evolution terms
• how Gautama Buddha became awakened
• how a human being can become perfect
• what the human weaknesses are
• was the Buddha a god?
• the buddhist view on the creation of the universe
• the buddhist view on objectivity and subjectivity
• some details on desire

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode you'll learn about:

• why happiness is not stimulation of the senses
• how we sometimes confuse concentration with a hypnotic state
• the two aspects of what we call "mind"
• why emotions can be problematic
• how we can manage emotional problems by using selective thinking and relaxing the body

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this episode, among other things, you'll learn about:

• the structure of the universe according to Buddhism
• the different spheres of existence
• supernormal powers of the Buddha
• the relationship of Buddhism to a creator god

Dhamma talk by Ven Puññaji Maha Thera delivered at Washington D.C. Buddhist Vihara, 5017 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20011 202-723-0773 First published in Audio / Visual Library of Sobhana.net

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

In this talk given by Ven. Dr. M. Puññaji you'll learn:

• How we tend to focus on karma and re-birth for the wrong reasons
• A brief history of karma and re-birth in the historical context of the Buddha
• What the proper focus for a peaceful life should be
• A detailed description of the process of experience, going through the senses and how that translates into craving and suffering
• Why karma and re-birth should not be seen as motivators for going to heaven or avoiding hell

Ven. Dr. M. Puññaji

Seremban Sudhamma Buddhist Society

Seremban, Negri Sembilan, Malaysia

26th April 2014

Original recording and editing by Bro. Billy Tan. For inquiry please email billy.tan@hotmail.com.

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji

Q&A Forum with Ven. Dr. M. Punnaji Maha Thera at the Buddhist Maha Vihara, Brickfields, on Wednesday 11th May 2016 on "Paṭicca-Samuppāda". Please refer to attached notes for reference. Download reference notes: http://tiny.cc/paticcasamuppada Download sutta AN10.6: http://tiny.cc/AN10-6

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo/about

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com/

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji/

Q&A Forum with Ven. Dr. M. Puññaji Maha Thera at the Buddhist Maha Vihara on Saturday 30th April 2016 on the topic "Samādhi Bhāvanā – Beyond The 4 Jhānas" with reference to Anguttara Nikāya Book for Fours, Sutta 41 - Samādhibhāvanāsutta.

Download AN 4:41 - Samādhibhāvanā Sutta (Pali & Bhikkhu Bodhi Translation): http://tiny.cc/AN4-41

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo/about

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com/

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji/

Q&A Forum (New Series) on Satipaṭṭhāna at the Buddhist Maha Vihara (BMV) with Ven. Dr. M. Puññaji Mahathera and Bro. Billy Tan on 30th December 2015. This is the first in a new series of Q&A Forum with Ven. Dr. M. Puññaji Maha Thera. Traditionally, Western scholars have translated the Pali word "Satipatthana" as "mindfulness" which carries a diverse range of meanings and interpretations, amongst which is "pay attention to the present moment". Unfortunately, these translations and interpretations fail to properly convey the true teachings of the Buddha. This forum aims to clarify the true essence of the original teachings of the Buddha on Satipatthana.

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo/about

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com/

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji/

Q&A Forum (Session 6) on Sammā Sati (Harmonious Attention) & Sammā Samādhi (Harmonious Mental Equilibrium) at the Buddhist Maha Vihara (BMV) with Ven. Dr. M. Puññaji Mahathera and Ven. Dr. Dhammadinna Thero on the Sublime Eightfold Way on 1st September 2015.

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo/about

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com/

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji/

Q&A Forum (Session 5) on Sammā Vāyāma (Harmonious Exercise) at the Buddhist Maha Vihara (BMV) with Ven. Dr. M. Puññaji Mahathera and Ven. Dr. Dhammadinna Thero on the Sublime Eightfold Way on 26th August 2015.

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo/about

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com/

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji/

Q&A Forum (Session 4) at the Buddhist Maha Vihara (BMV) with Ven. Dr. M. Puññaji Mahathera and Ven. Dr. Dhammadinna Thero on the Sublime Eightfold Way. This session recorded on 25th August 2015 covers an elaboration of Sammā Vācā (Harmonious Speech), Sammā Kammanta (Harmonious Action), and Sammā Ājīva (Harmonious Lifestyle), collectively refered to as the Cultivation of Sīla.

Bhante's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bhantepunnajivideo/about

Bhante's Website: http://protobuddhism.com/

Bhante's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhantepunnaji/