Acknowledgements
Many people have read earlier versions of these essays and have kindly offered suggestions for improvements. In particular, I would like to thank the monks here at the monastery, as well as Andrea Kessler, Virginia Lawrence, Addie Onsanit, Balaji Ramasubramanian, Dale Schultz, and Barbara Wright. Any mistakes that remain, of course, are my own responsibility.
One of these essays, in an earlier incarnation, appeared in Tricycle, and another in Buddhadharma. I would like to thank the editors of these journals for their help in making the writing clearer and more coherent. The fact that the essays were originally written on different occasions for different audiences explains the difference in style among them, the occasional overlap in content, as well as the inconsistent use of Sanskrit and Pāli terms, such as karma and kamma. I hope that this is not a problem.
These and other essays on Buddhist practice are available on the Internet at www.dhammatalks.org.
Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
(Geoffrey DeGraff)
Metta Forest Monastery
Valley Center, CA 92082-1409
March, 2024
