Search results for: "The Sangha"
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- Delighting the Mind… And there’s the Sangha—the people who’ve kept that tradition alive through all these many, many centuries. Many of them had lots of problems. The monks and the nuns in the Theragāthā and the Therīgāthā talk of the obstacles they had in their path, the problems they had in their minds. Some of them were getting suicidal but they were able to …
- Good Fundamentals… This is one of the reasons why the Buddha set up the Sangha. This is one of the reasons why friendship with noble people is an important part of the practice: so that we don’t have to keep reinventing the Dhamma wheel for ourselves, so that we can get good advice on how to stop causing harm. Now, if you don’t see …
- The Wear & Tear of Life… Traditionally in Buddhism, we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. That doesn’t mean the Buddha’s going to be around to help us or the Dhamma is going to come out and pat us on the back. What it means is that they’ve provided a good example of how to depend on yourself. You want to take them …
- Hindrances… One with respect for the Buddha, respect for the Dhamma and the Sangha, respect for the training, i.e., the triple training, respect for concentration. It’s interesting: The verse talks about the triple training, which includes concentration, and then emphasizes concentration again. That’s because it’s so easy to overlook or to discount concentration. You hear a lot of people saying, “I …
- Free from Animosity… They were ready to split the Sangha. The Buddha’s pointing out that in the case of the prince, he’s able to forgive even someone who’s killed his parents, because he realizes that, one, his father had asked him to forgive the king before he passed away; and, two, that he would just weigh himself down with bad kamma, and who knows …
- How to Listen… After he became a stream-enterer, the first thing he said to the Buddha was, “From now on, the Sangha should receive gifts from me and nobody else.” So obviously there’s more work to be done. There’s the case of Upali, the householder. Originally he’d been a follower of the Jains, and he went one day to try to disprove the …
- Observing the Mind at the Breath… If something is disturbing the mind, what can you do to undercut it? Sometimes working with the breath directly will help with that; sometimes you have to bring in other topics, like contemplation of the body, goodwill, any of the recollections—the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha; recollections of your own virtue, your own generosity, to give yourself a sense of self-worth; recollection …
- Sensitive to the Mind… This is where you think about the qualities of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, about how fortunate we are that this tradition has been maintained through all these years: the tradition of someone who really put his life on the line to find something that was more than the ordinary. Stop and think about how audacious the Buddha was: He aimed at nothing …
- Ānāpānasati Day… But the Buddha has an allowance that if things are going well in the Saṅgha—the practice is going well, people are making good progress—they can delay the Pavāraṇā, the night of invitation, either two more weeks or another month, to allow their good community to continue practicing and making more progress. That’s what happened that year. At the end of the …
- Success on the Path… And the practices he recommends that are inspiring are recollection of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha; recollection of your own generosity, virtue; recollection of the qualities of the devas, thinking about the fact that you’ve been developing those qualities as well. And you think about those themes as much as you need to get rid of that fever in the body …
- Thinking Your Way to Stillness… The same with the Sangha. There are lots of possibilities there. This is one way in which reading the Dhamma is useful. There’s a tendency among some meditators to believe that reading gets in the way of your meditation. But reading about good examples reminds you that human beings can do this. There are human beings who’ve succeeded in the practice. There …
- The Riddle Tree… like recollecting the Buddha, recollecting the Dhamma, the Sangha, contemplating of the body, developing thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, or equanimity. It’s really a personal matter which of these is going to work for you. There’s no one-size-fits-all kind of meditation. Breath meditation comes the closest to a universal object because, after all, we all have a breath …
- Culture Shock… Once you reach that state, your conviction in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha is unshakeable. Your standards for what counts as true happiness get ratcheted up immeasurably. But in the meantime, until you reach that state, you’re going to have shakable conviction. It’s part of the game. It’s only to be expected because you haven’t seen the results …
- A Good-natured Attitude… It might be the Buddha, it might be the Dhamma, the Sangha, the good that you’ve done either in terms of your generosity, in terms of your virtue. Then when the dryness goes away or the antsiness in the mind goes away, you can bring it back to the breath. Remember that you’ve got to have a number of tools at hand …
- Return of Wisdom for Dummies… Often he would give that talk after they had given a gift of the meal to the Sangha or given a gift of some other kind. He’d have them reflect on the act of generosity—what it meant. To begin with, the action did make a difference in their lives, and it was an act where they had some freedom of choice. They …
- No One Size Fits All… The Buddha came out from his retreat and noticed that the Sangha was a lot smaller. He learned from one of the monks what had happened, so he called the monks together and told them that when something unskillful comes up in the mind from your meditation, go back to the breath. The breath, he said, is like a big rain cloud that comes …
- Beneficial Thinking… So she arranges to give some meals to the Sangha, and she gets the boy to come in and bow down to the Buddha, bow down to the monks. Ven. Sariputta asks the child, “Are you well?” And the child says, “How could I be well? Seven years in that cauldron of blood.” The mother’s filled with rapture that her son is talking …
- The Not-Self Discourse… As a result, one of his listeners in the five brethren, Kondañña, gained the Dhamma eye, becoming the first noble disciple in the Buddha’s teachings, and also the first member of the Sangha—the conventional Sangha—when he received ordination after the end of the sermon. The story doesn’t end there. It goes on to say that over the next few days …
- A Slave to Craving… This was one of the reasons why he instituted the Sangha—so that we could have an institution where the Dhamma continued to be taught as a gift, not as an imposition, but as an act of compassion. Think about what that implies about where you are. You’re in a position where you need somebody else’s compassion. You need the Buddha’s …
- Monotasking… How do you gladden the mind? Well, you can think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. What aspects of the Dhamma do you find inspiring? Or the Buddha’s example—how you find him inspiring. Or the example of any of the members of the Noble Sangha: men, women, children, old people, young people—people with problems a lot worse than yours …
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