A Bit About us
The Athens Theravada Centre in Greece was created through the collaboration of Elder Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka, the Cultural Union of Sri Lanka in Greece and the “Four Noble Truths”, a Non-Profit Organisation. Its goal is to provide meditation and Buddhist philosophy courses, translate Pali Canon texts in Greek, teach the Pali language (the ancient written language of the Buddha’s teachings) and publish books on these subjects.
The vision of our centre is to help anyone who is interested in knowing the authentic Teachings of the Historical Buddha and practise their ethics and meditation.
Theravada, the “School of Elders”, represents the orthodox and most ancient school of Buddhism and is completely based on the Pali Canon (Pāli), which is recognised among scholars from around the world to contain the most ancient scriptures of the Buddha’s teachings. Pāli is the authentic written language of the Buddha’s teachings, which, according to the scientific research of Oxford Professor, Richard Gombrich, was very close to the spoken language that the Historical Buddha used in his teachings.
According to Theravada Buddhism, based on the Canon, one can be freed from constant misery only by using their own powers. This is possible through the direct observation and analysis of the material and mental phenomena of the self and the others, through insight meditation.
Other kinds of teachings that reference the supernatural, the eternal primitive Buddha, the belief in “gurus”, joining the “individual conscience” to a “universal conscience”, mystical “higher powers” or Tantric rituals have been rejected by the Buddha himself and are nothing more than fiction and fantasy for the practitioners of Theravada.
The Buddha taught that what a person needs in order to be spiritually free is adopting in principle an ethical way of life, as a basis for practising insight meditation. The ethical way of life is important in order to be able to remove internal negative thoughts and feelings and be calm while meditating.
The insight meditation (vipassanā) taught in Theravada is the tool through which a person can observe and analyse the physical and mental phenomena both within them and in their surrounding environment. It works like a microscope, through which one can observe the microcosm of an organism, or like a telescope, through which one can observe the macrocosm in the universe. Observation and analysis leads to knowledge, knowledge leads to wisdom and wisdom leads to the final spiritual liberation.