Search results for: "Nibbana"

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  2. Hitting a Wall
     … As the Buddha said, for those who have seen the truth—and here he’s talking about the truth of nibbāna—there’s no difference in their opinions. There’s no difference in the experience at all. And they recognize that fact. This is where the subjective and the objective side of the problem and the solution to the problem all come together. And … 
  3. Think Like a Thief
     … The basic image the Buddha uses here, as you know, is in the word nibbāna. It refers to a fire going out. When it goes out, it’s freed because it lets go, stops doing the activity of clinging to its fuel. It’s an end of a process that causes suffering. So if you want to see that freedom, you have to look … 
  4. The Gift of Goodwill
     … As the Buddha said, nobody gets into nibbana if they’re stingy. So we’re working on happiness that goes together with goodness. And a happiness that doesn’t conflict with anyone else’s true happiness. When you can think that thought, it’s a happy thought. But you don’t stop with the happy thought, you act on it. That way the goodness … 
  5. Normalcy
     … As Ajaan Fuang once said, if we could get our way into nibbana by pushing, everybody would have pushed their way in there by now. The mind likes to push and pull. It’s much harder to settle into a state of normalcy where there’s no pushing or pulling, but if you want to get solid results, that’s where you have to … 
  6. Goodwill for the Breath
     … You’re not struggling with the breath, you’re not trying to push it or squeeze it into some sort of shape so that you can step on it and climb up to nibbana right away. It doesn’t work that way. You have to go there together. So you treat the breath with respect. You treat it with goodwill. You listen carefully; you … 
  7. A Good Purpose in Life
    As the Buddha pointed out, everything we experience is based on desire. Nibbana is the only thing that’s not based on desire, but to get there you have to develop the path, which is based on desire. And even if we’re not on the path, the fact that we have all these desires and that they underlie everything we experience means that … 
  8. Relating to Kamma
     … You may not be able to get all the way to nibbana in this lifetime, but your efforts are not wasted. You can pick up in the practice again; you can create the conditions for being able to pick it up again after you die. So there are lots of ways you can learn how to get a better emotional relationship to the teaching … 
  9. A Mind Like Earth
     … Ask yourself, “Did I maintain the causes properly?” Because this is a fabricated path, the state of ease you get here is not nibbāna. It’s a step on the path, but it’s something you have to keep looking after. So make sure you focus your desires on doing the causes, and your patience on the results that you get. As long as … 
  10. Victory
     … Ajaan Lee has an interesting passage where he says that one of the good things about nibbana is that no one else needs to know about it. With other things, where people know what you’ve got, they try to take it away from you, but nobody can take this away from you. They don’t even know you’ve found it. This is … 
  11. Visakha Puja – True Homage
     … If you have respect for the training, that puts you right in the presence of nibbāna.
  12. Four Noble Truths to One
     … Buddhism has four noble truths? Wouldn’t it be better if it had one really noble truth?” Now, there is a sense in which we do have one really noble truth: nibbana. But we can’t get there without the four noble truths first, because we have a problem—the problem of suffering—along with the bewilderment that goes along with suffering together with … 
  13. To Be Worthy of the Dhamma
     … The highest expression of all four of these determinations is nibbana, but the practice of meditation using these determinations is what gets you there. There’s a parallel here with the way the Buddha teaches breath meditation. It comes in sixteen steps—four tetrads, four steps per tetrad. In each tetrad, the pattern is this: You get sensitive to how you’re fabricating that … 
  14. Focus on Your Skill
     … As Ajaan Fuang once said, if we could get into nibbana simply through the force of desire, we all would have gotten there a long time ago. The path requires refinement: that you’re very careful about how you look at things, very careful about how you listen to things. Try to notice the little things going on in your mind right now because … 
  15. Truth Is Where You’re True
     … When the Buddha says, “Nibbana is the greatest happiness,” we have some doubts about that. But the only way we’re going to find out for sure whether it truly is the greatest happiness is to learn how to be true to ourselves. This is one of the really fine things about the Dhamma: People who aren’t true to themselves will never know … 
  16. Dispassion Is Freedom
     … As the Buddha said, if you think that nibbana is something dull, or that it would have any bad qualities at all, then you’ve got wrong view and it’s going to hamper your practice. So learn to look on dispassion favorably—as freedom, as being unfettered—and that’ll give your practice a real boost.
  17. Faith as a Virtue
     … That’s nibbana. What it means is that the mind doesn’t incline in any direction because it has arrived. But up until that point, you want to incline your mind in the direction of that state. You want to make yourself worthy of the Dhamma, because it is something you can do. You can make yourself someone fit to be tamed.
  18. True, Beneficial, Timely
     … You have to make a raft to get across, because there’s no nibbāna yacht to come and pick you up. So where are you going to get the raw materials for the raft? You can’t go over to the other side to get the raw materials. You have to get the raw materials on this side of the river: twigs and branches … 
  19. In the Land of Wrong View
     … The option for something totally desirable is there, a path to what is totally desirable, because that’s what nibbana is: It’s totally desirable. The path is there, and within each moment there are options. We have choices. Don’t believe the voices in the mind that say that you have no choice. The choices are there, the choices are open. Keep that … 
  20. Feeding on the Breath
     … The only thing that’s not fabricated is nibbana. Until you reach that point in your practice, you’re going to be fabricating, so learn how to be conscious of the process and learn how to do it well. And remember that this process of fabrication is very closely related to the process of feeding on all the aggregates from which we make our … 
  21. Enjoying the Path
     … It’s one of the factors that brings you into the presence of nibbana. What it means is that you see the value of what you’re doing in the path, not only in terms of the goal that it takes you to, but also the fact that it’s a good path to be on. In another passage, we chant every day, ādi … 
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