Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. Modest, Unentangled, Unburdensome
    In the principles that the Buddha taught to his stepmother, Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī on how to distinguish what is Dhamma and Vinaya and what is not, there are three that have to do with how your practice affects other people. The first is that genuine Dhamma leads to modesty. In other words, you don’t go bragging about your attainments or about how much you … 
  14. Give It Your All
     … And you can think about the gift of the Buddha gave, all those lifetimes devoted to discovering the Dhamma so that he could teach it to other people, all the hardships he went through, both in trying to find the Dhamma and then in those 45 years of teaching it: That’s a gift that keeps giving results up to now. So on the … 
  15. The Rewards of Stream Entry
     … The texts say that they’re confirmed in their conviction in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. And they have precepts that are pleasing to the noble ones: untorn, conducive to concentration. We look at ourselves and say, “Well, we have conviction in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, too. And we observe the five precepts. What’s the difference?” The difference … 
  16. Think
     … See that it fits in with the rest of the Dhamma you’ve learned, how it fits in with the rest of the Dhamma—because it is supposed to fit in. As the Buddha said, that’s one of the tests for the Dhamma: that it’s consistent. It leads consistently to its attha, its purpose or goal. It all has to work together … 
  17. Humility
    Humility December 16, 2003 Ajaan Suwat often mentioned that one of Ajaan Mun’s two favorite Dhamma talk topics was the “customs of the noble ones”: the ariyavamsa in Pali. One of his reasons for focusing on this teaching was something that we tend to miss when we look at the forest tradition from an American perspective. From our perspective it’s a very … 
  18. Preparing for Death
     … This ability to separate these things out is the skill that’s going to enable you to see the true Dhamma, because you end up with no doubts about what happens at death. It’s in seeing the true Dhamma that you actually do step out of space and time. And in stepping out, you begin to realize that the amount of time you … 
  19. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … You start by finding a teacher who’s reliable, and you listen to the Dhamma; you pay careful attention; you try to remember the Dhamma. All of that comes under discernment that comes from listening. The next steps are the discernment that comes from thinking. You take the Dhamma you’ve heard and you compare it with other lessons you’ve learned, and you … 
  20. Approaching the four noble truths
     … So, as you listen to the Dhamma, take the Dhamma in. The Thai ajaans talk about this again and again, *“Opanayiko. *Open your heart. Bring it in.” After all, that’s where the Dhamma came from to begin with. The Buddha didn’t have a lot of texts to study. Everything he taught came from within his heart and mind, came from his ability … 
  21. The View from the Mountaintop
     … For people who live alone, it gives you a chance to live with people who are practicing the Dhamma, getting some perspective simply by being around them and from hearing the Dhamma as well. That chant we had just now about the four mountains comes from a passage in the Canon where King Pasenadi, one of the major kings of that time, came to … 
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