Ep. 171 – Fulfillments of Understanding

Insight Hour with Joseph Goldstein

Be Here Now Network

Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness, Vipassana, Buddhism, Insightmeditation, Meditation, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joseph Goldstein explores the five Iddhis, or fulfillments of understanding, spoken of by the Buddha, and offers four different paths which can lead one to the completion of the fulfillments.

“The Buddha spoke of five Iddhis, or five fulfillments of understanding. The first of them is the Iddhi of special knowledge, which means the knowledge or the understanding of things which go beyond the conventional realm of concepts.” – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode, Joseph examines the following:

The term Iddhi, which is best translated as fulfillment of understanding
The five Iddhis that the Buddha placed the most emphasis on: understanding all the constituent elements of what we call self; opening to the truth of suffering; abandoning the causes of suffering; realizing the end of suffering; developing a path to the end
The four different paths which can lead one to the completion of the five Iddhis

“These are the fulfillments that the Buddha talked about, the true miracle for us, the true development of understanding. In many of the texts, one of the ways in which somebody who got enlightened would celebrate the event, one of the common refrains, which has always been very inspiring to me, they would often say, ‘Done is what had to be done.’ Wouldn’t that be nice? Done is what had to be done. Finished. Come to completion. Come to fulfillment. We have actually done what needs to be done. What needs to be done is the realization or the development of these five Iddhis.” – Joseph Goldstein

This dharma talk from November 26, 1988 was originally published on Dharma Seed.

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Transcript

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0:36.1	The Buddha spoke of five ities or five
1:17.0	fulfillments of understanding. The first of them is the ity of special knowledge, which means the knowledge or the understanding of things which go beyond the conventional realm of concepts. Welcome to the Joseph Goldstein Insight Hour. This podcast is an expression of our shared interest in self-discovery.
1:23.0	Join Joseph as he shares his deep knowledge of the path of mindfulness.
1:29.0	If you are interested in supporting this podcast,
1:32.0	please go to Be here now network.com slash Joseph. Tonight I'd like to speak about something which doesn't translate very well from Polly into English.
1:57.0	It's a poly word which is idi.
2:08.4	And it means something like the potency of a thing or the completion, the fulfillment of something.
2:17.0	A few examples of the context of how this is used.
2:25.0	The ity of an artist, for example, might be the talent or the skill to actually create a work of art.
2:41.1	That's the fulfillment of the artist.
2:45.0	The idi of a bird is the ability to fly. The ere of a
3:05.0	hinter might be the skill in capturing game and the idi of the game might be the
3:10.0	skill to evade the hunter.
3:25.0	So it's that sense of each being fulfilling itself or actualizing its power, its potency. There's another class of ities which have to do with the great magical powers of mind that can be
	...

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