Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. The Middle Way
     … Before, there was the Dhamma, but there was no religion. But when the Buddha opened his mouth and started teaching the Dhamma, that was the beginning of the Dhamma as a religion. As we practice, we keep that religion alive. The Dhamma will always be here in the world, but it takes people to practice in order to keep the teaching alive so that … 
  3. A Tradition of Ingenuity
    A Tradition of Ingenuity December 28, 2023 When I was in Thailand recently, I gave a Dhamma talk on some of Ajaan Fuang’s teachings and the two words that he stressed the most, which were “be observant” as you meditate and as you go through the day, and “use your ingenuity.” The Thai word for ingenuity is patiphaan. It’s from the Pali … 
  4. Comfortable as an Outsider
     … One of the things that’s radical about the Dhamma is that a large part of it is not domesticated. It’s a wilderness Dhamma. The Buddha was able to straddle wilderness and civilization, but his time in the wilderness was what enabled him to get away from the questions of his civilization and see that they were the wrong questions. The hot topics … 
  5. Breath Meditation, Step by Step
     … Then, the Buddha said, I’ll teach that person the Dhamma. It’s not just that the Buddha is the surgeon—you have to develop your own talents at surgery as well. The Buddha can’t come down and give you awakening. You have to take his Dhamma and apply it to your own mind. You have to develop your skills. And alertness is … 
  6. Conviction in Charge
     … The proper way was to practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma: in other words, to practice the Dhamma the way that he did. After all, as he said, he found true happiness by developing qualities in the mind that everybody has a potential for: resolution, heedfulness, and ardency. Resolution is the determination to stick with this question of how to find true … 
  7. A Refuge in Quiescence
     … Traditionally, we talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. In the Buddha’s time, it seems to have been a common pattern: People who knew nothing about the Buddha’s teachings would come and listen to him once, and their first reaction was to want to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. This may be … 
  8. Delight
     … The first is the Dhamma itself: the fact that we have this Dhamma that points to the power of the mind. It says that our minds are capable of developing qualities within them that can lead to total freedom from suffering—something totally deathless. And the Dhamma lays out the path. If you don’t delight in this, what are you going to delight … 
  9. What Are You Doing?
    Ajaan Fuang once received a letter from a Dhamma practitioner in Singapore who talked about his practice of Dhamma in daily life, how whatever he was doing at work, at home, even watching TV, he just tried to notice how everything was impermanent, suffering, not-self. And Ajaan Fuang told me to write back to him and say that the problem is not with … 
  10. Your Ancestral Territory
    We begin each meditation session with chants about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, developing thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, partly so that you can develop the right environment, the right mental environment, for the practice as you’re sitting here right now, but also so that you can associate these ideas with your breath. That way—when, in the course … 
  11. The Missing Truth
     … We’ve listened to a lot of Dhamma, we’ve thought a lot about the Dhamma. What remains is the third level, the discernment that comes from developing. We may have started developing already. I don’t think there’s anybody sitting here who’s brand new to meditation. It’s simply a question of how much energy you put into it, and how … 
  12. Open Are the Doors to the Deathless
     … He thought of the difficulty of setting up the Dhamma, setting up the Vinaya, setting up the Sangha. He thought of how subtle the Dhamma was that he’d discovered, and how it would be very difficult for people to understand. The commentaries get tied up in knots about this. Here he was: He works all that hard to become a teaching Buddha, and … 
  13. The Dhamma Wheel in the Heart
    We just chanted the Buddha’s first sermon, Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion. And the question sometimes comes up, “Where’s the wheel?” It’s in that passage where we repeat each of the noble truths, the duty appropriate to it, and the Buddha’s declaration that he’d completed the duty. Back in ancient India, in legal texts and philosophical texts … 
  14. A Mind Without Inertia
     … By keeping yourself motivated in this way, you use the passion for the Dhamma to replace your other passions, to keep yourself on the path. As you become more and more passionately engaged in the Dhamma, you can see more and more clearly exactly where you’ve been weighing yourself down. You can drop all the weight. It’s like those old balloons that … 
  15. Freedom from Beliefs
     … It’s not Dhamma, because for the Dhamma to be Dhamma it has to be not only true, but also beneficial and timely. Our problem is that we have the Dhamma in books and it’s there all the time. You can look up the five hindrances, you can look up the seven factors for awakening, you can look up any topic at any … 
  16. Self-reliance
     … You listen to the Dhamma, you try to remember it, think about it so that it makes sense, and then measure your own actions against the Dhamma. And you’re not simply involved in listening, you’re really actively trying to search it out. As the Buddha says, you try to be easy to teach. Now, this doesn’t mean simply doing everything unquestioningly … 
  17. Opting Out
     … In that last year, as the Buddha taught, going from place to place, one of the recurring themes was the four noble dhammas: virtue, concentration, discernment, release. It’s the release that makes these dhammas noble. But they’re also noble in the sense that you’re not harming anyone. You’re not harming yourself, you’re not harming the people around you in … 
  18. Concentration & Renunciation
     … And you become a better and better judge of which kinds of pleasures really are in accordance with the Dhamma and which ones are not. Which kinds of pains are in accordance with the Dhamma and which ones are not: That, too, is something you learn. Because ultimately, you have to learn how to be not afraid either of pleasure or pain, to be … 
  19. The Economy of Goodness
     … practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma—in other words, not trying to change the truth to fit to your likes and dislikes, but changing your likes and dislikes to fit in with the Dhamma. Then you act on what the Dhamma requires. But even with the wealth of discernment, there comes a point where the Buddha says you have to let that … 
  20. Respect Opens Possibilities
    The Buddha sets out five conditions for getting the most out of listening to the Dhamma. The first three have to do with respect. One, you don’t despise the speaker. You tell yourself, “Maybe this person knows something I don’t know.” Be open to that possibility. That’s a lot of what respect is: being open, not closing off your mind. The … 
  21. Anapanasati Day
     … This is what it means to see things as dhammas. This is why the first three tetrads lead inevitably to the fourth. The texts say that you can take any one of the tetrads and take it all the way to awakening. But you can’t help but spend some time in the fourth, which means looking at things as dhammas and then noticing … 
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