Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. In Memory of King Rama IX
     … Once you find someone who passes the test, then you lend ear, listen carefully, try to remember the Dhamma, weigh your own actions against the Dhamma, and give rise to a desire to practice until you finally reach the goal of that Dhamma. That’s when you’re really true. That’s the highest level of truth. But even in day-to-day life … 
  3. Making Yourself Worthy of Trust
    When we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, there’s both the external refuge and the internal refuge. The internal refuge, of course, is the more important. The external refuge in the case of the Buddha would be the Prince Siddhartha, who gained awakening 2,600 years ago. The Dhamma would be the Dhamma in the books and Dhamma talks … 
  4. To Sustain Your Practice
     … The first three of those Dhamma summaries relate to the teachings on inconstancy, stress, and not-self, or aging, illness, and death. You see this clearly in the examples the young monk gives to explain the Dhamma summaries to the king. First, in terms of inconstancy or aging: He asks the king, “When you were young, were you strong?” The king says, “Yes, I … 
  5. Look Around as You Follow the Trail
     … practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. Even though the breath may seem very far away from what we’d like to attain in the meditation, it’s actually the way to get there. When the goal is realized, it’s going to be realized right here, or right next to right here. So you don’t have to go thinking far away … 
  6. Questioning Your Way to Certainty
     … We know this from reading it in the texts, from hearing it in Dhamma talks, and also from our own experience. You find yourself wondering, is this really the right meditation for me? Is the Dhamma really right? Did the Buddha know what he was talking about? Those thoughts can really get in the way of the mind settling down. But it’s interesting … 
  7. Willing to Learn
     … When you listen to Dhamma talks while you meditate, there are a lot of things in a particular Dhamma talk that won’t be relevant to your meditation right now, but it’s good to have them someplace in the back of your mind, in case they’ll be relevant later on. So when something seems important, memorize it. That’s how you listen … 
  8. First Principles
     … But the whole point of the Dhamma and the books is what the Buddha calls attha, which is the benefit that you get from that Dhamma. Think of that time when the Buddha was in a simsapa forest. He picked up a handful of simsapa leaves and asked the monks, “Which is greater, the number of leaves in the forest, or the leaves in … 
  9. Timeless
     … What are you going to do?” And the king had to say, “What else should I do but practice the Dhamma?” This is a good conversation to reflect on. It points to the fact that the Dhamma is timeless. We live in a time of turmoil, a time of disease, yet the Dhamma stays the same. It’s not that we have one Dhamma … 
  10. A Refuge from Aging, Illness, & Death
     … Ratthapala answers that he was inspired by four Dhamma summaries: The world is swept away; it does not endure. That’s the teaching on inconstancy, and he illustrates it with aging. He asks the king, “When you were young, were you strong?” The king said, “Yes, I thought I had the strength of two people.” “How about now?” “Oh, no, now I’m 80 … 
  11. Guardian Meditations
     … You can imagine, being someone who was a hired killer, listening to this Dhamma, being the focus of that teaching. I’ve always thought it was a shame that we didn’t have the text of what the Buddha taught him. All we have is the general outline. At any rate, the archer was able to gain the Dhamma Eye and became a noble … 
  12. Potentials
     … After all, they don’t even have the concept of identity, so how could they have an identity view? They don’t have the concept of Dhamma, so how could they have uncertainty about the Dhamma? They don’t even have a concept of habit, so how can they grasp at habits and practices? But, the Buddha said, they do have the potential in … 
  13. Self-Doubt
     … He started studying the Vinaya and the Dhamma, and realized that the Vinaya as it was practiced in his monastery was pretty sloppy. As for the practice of the Dhamma, nobody spoke anything about meditation. He felt that something was really lacking. Finally, in his second year as a monk, he met Ajaan Lee, who happened to wander into Chanthaburi. He went to listen … 
  14. Dhamma Medicine
    The Dhamma is medicine for diseases of the mind. These diseases are not the ones that would send you to an insane asylum necessarily. They’re the basic everyday diseases: greed, anger, and delusion. These are big troublemakers in the mind because they cause you to see things wrongly. We think something may be in our best interest, but it’s not. Greed may … 
  15. The Four Frames of Reference
     … You take the Dhamma as your refuge. “Dhamma” here can mean not only the Buddha’s teachings, but also dhammas in the sense of mental qualities. Learn how to look at the events in the mind simply as that, simply as mental events in and of themselves. They come and they go. You watch the coming and you watch the going from this anchored … 
  16. Timeless Dhamma
    When we’re practicing the Dhamma, observing the precepts, developing concentration and discernment, we’re following a path that was set out more the 2,500 years ago. The reason we’re still following it is because it addresses a problem that hasn’t changed. It’s not as if what was designed to deal with a particular problem that came up in one … 
  17. Get Attached to Jhana
     … When the Buddha talks about the highest dhammas, he says there’s the highest unfabricated dhamma and the highest fabricated dhamma. The highest of the fabricated dhammas is the path; the unfabricated dhamma, which is the highest of all dhammas, is dispassion. But the path is the best thing you can put together. So even though it’s put together, don’t look down … 
  18. From Dependence to Independence
     … The fact that we take refuge in the Buddha and the Dhamma is directly related to that, because the Dhamma points out the pattern. If we trust that the Buddha knew what he was talking about, we can trust that we can focus all our attention on the simple elements in the pattern that he pointed out: that is, if you do skillful things … 
  19. Varieties of Mindfulness
     … This is called dhammanussati, keeping the Dhamma in mind. This is why the Buddha has us listen to the Dhamma, read the Dhamma, because the Dhamma contains all sorts of useful and encouraging ideas. For instance, there’s the passage where the Buddha is talking to his son and says that when you make a mistake, resolve not to make it again. If you … 
  20. A Boxing Lesson
     … He even trained himself to undergo austerities, trained himself to find the right path, and then spent 45 years after finding true happiness to put up with all the difficulties of trying to establish the Dhamma and Vinaya in a world that was very much opposed to the Dhamma and Vinaya in many ways. It’s because of him that we have this Dhamma … 
  21. Judging Just Right
     … Having a sense of the Dhamma is the part that can be taught in words. What is the Dhamma? What did the Buddha teach? That’s something you can learning by reading. All the other aspects are a matter of using your own powers of observation and discernment to figure out what’s just right. For instance, having a sense of the meaning of … 
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