Are there any particular books by Mahasi Sayadaw you would recommend?
I was considering buying Progress of Insight, a treatise on Satipatthana meditation.
Progress of Insight is not one I'd recommend.
My teacher even forbids people to read it.
Not forbids, but recommends people not to read it until you've done some intensive meditation.
So it doesn't mean
You should have actually done a foundation course like a month or something in intensive meditation under a teacher before you start to read the Progressive Insight.
It can actually hinder your progress.
It's thought to be able to hinder your progress if you read it.
So Mahasi Sayadaw, in the beginning, he thought that would probably be the case.
But when he gets to the end of it, he says something like, well, it might be useful for beginners as well.
And so I'm in agreement with that.
It could be useful.
But it's certainly not the one I would recommend.
I had that printed up, and I used to give it out.
You don't need to buy it, by the way.
You can download it from the internet.
Just Google Progressive Insight Mahasi, and you can just print it out.
I shouldn't have said that.
Copyright.
No, it is free.
It's more like we're not supposed to encourage people to read this one.
Oh, no.
So I would print it up and give it to people when they finish the advanced course with us.
I think after they finish the advanced course or when they started to do some sort of teacher training.
When they first started that, we would have them read the Progressive Insight.
It's kind of recommended or required reading at that point.
But, you know, everyone thinks they're advanced or everyone starts to feel like they're in an advanced level and goes out and reads it anyway.
What I would recommend, the ones I would... Oh, anything by Mahasi Sayadaw, really.
He's just so brilliant and clear and articulate and well-translated.
It was just so much good out there.
Every time I pick up one of his books, I can never finish it, because I just want to go and meditate.
I'm very particular in my own reading, and Mahasi Syed is one of the only things that I personally feel the need to read more and more.
I would recommend his discourse on...
Bill, can you turn off the video?
I'm getting an echo from you.
Okay, better now.
The discourse on dependent origination, the Salekha Sutta.
I have one friend who highly recommends the Salekha Sutta to everyone.
Yeah, it's very good.
And it's available free online.
I think both of those are on aimwell.org.
Have you ever gone to meet Biko Pesela, Owen, Paul?
No.
He's somewhere.
I should look him up and see if he's still alive.
He doesn't like me particularly.
No, he has problems with me.
Not doesn't like me, but he's taken issue with some of the things I've done.
That apparently is Pesala, P-E-S-A-L-A.
He's on aimwell.org is his website.
And he got kind of upset at me for this copyright issue, and he said, you know, you should take down what you said, and you should respect people's copyrights and stuff.
And I basically said no.
But we've kind of been like that.
Apparently he has that kind of relationship with people.
I shouldn't say things like that.
But yeah, go to aimwell.org, go to static.sirimongolo.org, front slash Mahasi.
I've put a bunch of stuff up there.
Or even go to the, well, that's a better place, but a lot of those were just taken from mahasi.org.mm or something like that, the Myanmar Mahasi site.
There's so many good e-books of Mahasi stuff.
You don't need to buy anything.
Just go and download it all and print it up.
Worst case, print it out.
Put it on your e-book reader.
Everyone has these.
Put it on your tablet, right?
Put it on your iPad.
I think I've got about 40 Mahasi books.
I'm trying to work my way through.
On an e-book reader or iPad or something?
Yeah.
I'm on the Brahma-Vihara discourse.
That's a big one.
Yeah, there's so much.
For sure, you can learn everything you need to know about Buddhism, I think, by reading his stuff.
Well, of course, besides reading the Tapitaka.
You have to read the Tapitaka as well.
But you don't need to go anywhere else, in my opinion, except Mahasi Sayadaw's stuff.
If you've read everything by him, you're sad.
I don't know.
Maybe that's going too far.
But certainly, indispensable.