New to Buddhism

Classical Theravada texts

Buddhist Text Library

Pali and Buddhist Terms


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Introduction

This site consists of two parts. The first part, this page, hosts Theravada texts taken from the ATI website which can be searched with the extra tools provided. The second part encourages you to further your knowledge of the English language by creating open cloze tests from the very same texts.

History

The original (Access to Insight) ATI site was created by John Bullitt in 1993. Firstly, as a FidoNet BBS and later as a website under the domain name accesstoinsight.org. At the end of 2013 Bullitt retired from actively managing the site and encouraged others to incorporate the material into their sites.

Mindfulness - a fundamental Buddhist teaching

Mindfulness is a fundamental part of Buddhist practice. The simplest definition of mindfulness is a non-judgemental, moment-to-monemt awareness of our thoughts, actions and experience. Not surprisingly, the techniques for improving mindfulness are now a part of medical and management science. But, why should such an innocuous concept become so important to modern day life?

The answer to this question can be found in the extensive mindfulness literature that has now accumulated and is accessible on the web. But be careful, there are lots of definitions of mindfulness out there. The definitions of mindfulness offered on this site are focussed and in-line with the original meaning of the term. So here is a good place to start. On this site, there are a number of articles that focus on mindfulness and of course, mindfulness is mentioned in many more. A good article to start with is "Mindfulness Defined" by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (view article). Here you will find a no-frills introduction to what mindfulness is all about.

A more in-depth article is "The Power of Mindfulness" by Nyanaponika Thera (view article). This article offers a more detailed analysis of mindfulness, and you will also encounter the vocabulary used by Buddhists to talk about the concept.