Search results for: "The Sangha"

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2. Play AudioEncouraging Perceptions
    … For example, reflection on your own generosity, reflection on your own virtue, recollection of the Sangha, remembering all those monks and nuns who went through a lot of difficulties. Some of them were on the verge of suicide and yet they were able to pull themselves together and ultimately gain awakening. That’s encouraging. They could do it, why can’t you? Any of … 
3. Play AudioIn the Eyes of the Wise
    … Yet once he had found the true way and he established the Sangha of noble disciples who’d also found the true way, he realized that he had established a society of people whose eyes you really should want to look good in. And in a society like that, a sense of honor can be a useful thing. You see this in many of … 
4. Play AudioPart I : Basic Instructions
    … What thoughts will help? This is one of the reasons that we chant the recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha every evening before we meditate. We bow down to the Buddha because the Buddha represents the things that we want to value within ourselves. We think of his qualities, his compassion, his purity, his discernment: These are good things to have … 
5. Play AudioHarmless & Clearheaded
    … You can think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha—anything you find inspiring. Once the mind has a sense of well-being, then notice how you’re breathing in the midst of that well-being and then try to maintain that kind of breath, that kind of well-being as a means of tuning into what kind of breathing really feels good. Then … 
6. Play AudioThoughts, Wanted and Unwanted
    … For instance, think about the Buddha and the Sangha, people who found true happiness in life. What kind of people were they? They came with problems when they came to the meditation, but they were able to grow up and abandon their childish ways of thinking. They became people who were noble in their behavior, circumspect in their behavior. They changed themselves because they … 
7. Play AudioThe Five Hindrances
    … recollecting the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, the times you’ve been generous in the past or the times you’ve been virtuous in the past. Those last two are to give you a sense of confidence. Or you can contemplate death. Ask yourself, when a particularly gross hindrance is going through the mind, would you be happy to die right now with this … 
8. Play AudioGuardian Meditations
    … One of the stories I find inspiring was when Devadatta, his cousin, was trying to take over the Sangha. He tried various methods. Nothing worked. So he finally decided to arrange to have the Buddha killed. He had the king hire some archers. The first archer was told to go in, shoot the Buddha with a bow and arrow, and then go by a … 
9. Play AudioA Refuge Inside
    … We take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, but that doesn’t mean we’re finding our ultimate refuge in Prince Siddhartha of 2600 years ago, or in the words of the Dhamma, or in the monks who form the monastic Sangha, or even in the noble ones who form the noble Sangha. Those are external refuges, and they play a … 
10. Play AudioIngenuity
     … That’s how they gained a greater and greater sense of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha as their refuge. The sense of refuge is made really palpable when you’re meditating in a dangerous forest. What have you got? The forest monks have no weapons, and the forests are full of dangers. In Thailand, they don’t have that romantic sense of … 
11. Play AudioDharma Medicine
     … If the Buddha said Yes, then the prince could respond, “Well, how are you any different from anyone else? What’s so awakened about you?” And if the Buddha said No, they could catch him in a lie because he had said some displeasing things to his cousin who had tried to take over the Sangha—called him a lickspittle, one of those great … 
12. Play AudioSmoothing It
     … This is why the Buddha recommends not only recollection of the Dhamma, but also recollection of the Buddha and the Sangha as ways of giving delight to the mind, to lift your spirits, to urge, rouse, and encourage you. The second topic of delight is to delight in abandoning, and the third is to delight in developing: basically, to delight in the fact that … 
13. Play AudioAsalha Puja
     … The Dhamma, of course, was always already there, the Buddha had become a refuge on the night of his awakening, and now we had the Sangha. So tonight we’re celebrating many things—the fact that the Buddha’s Dhamma was effective, and that there have been people who have carried it on from that time to the present moment, both by memorizing the … 
14. Play AudioGuardian Meditations
     … In that case, you can think about the Sangha instead, the noble Sangha. You read about them in the Therigatha and Theragatha, various monks and nuns and the problems that they encountered as they went along in their practice and how they overcame them. Some of them were even suicidal. They had problems with lust, problems with disease, problems with discouragement, and yet they … 
15. Play AudioThe Buddha’s Shoulds
     … You have to give to someone whose mind is pure or to an institution where the people are being trained to make their minds pure — i.e., the Sangha — if you want your gift to bear great fruit. So there are shoulds in the Buddha’s teachings, but they’re based on the principle of what actually works for the purpose of true happiness … 
16. Play AudioAlone with Your Mind
     … One of the reasons we have those chants on the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha every night is because those are good things to reflect on: how fortunate it is that we’ve found a teaching that was discovered by someone who in the course of finding the truth was able to find true happiness—who needed nothing from anybody else and so … 
17. Play AudioPurifying Gold
     … As you try to get the mind to settle down, you can engage in recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, recollection of your virtue—in other words, ways of thinking that will induce you to want to settle the mind down. Or thoughts that give rise to a sense of samvega, thinking about how if you don’t find your happiness inside … 
18. Play AudioWisdom Through Training
     … We talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, but what that means is taking them as examples so that we can develop their qualities in the mind, and those qualities that we develop in the mind are our real refuge. There’s another statement in the Canon: The self is its own mainstay. But you can be your mainstay … 
19. Play AudioThe Dhamma Wheel Shakes Up the World
     … Or if there’s any controversy among members of the sangha of monks as to what’s the right way to interpret a certain passage or what exactly the passage was, or what the Buddha taught on a particular topic, he said you get everybody to vote. But if they voted to change things, it still wouldn’t be right. It would be invalidated … 
20. Play AudioViews & Vision
     … You can recollect the Sangha. If comparing yourself to the Buddha seems like a far stretch, you can think, “Well, there were people who studied with the Buddha who were really like us. Some cases a lot worse off than we are right now. And yet they were able to pull themselves together, gain awakening.” So these are recollections to overcome fear and lack … 
21. Play AudioRespect for the Path
     … This is why we have so much respect for the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. They set an example that this is a possible way of happiness, and it’s the best possible way of finding happiness. And they’re telling us to respect that within ourselves. When you look inside your mind, what is most worthy of respect? If you can’t … 
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