Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. Observant & Ingenious
     … The Buddha said, “The Dhamma is visible here and now, so awakening must be visible here and now.” Well, the Dhamma is not just awakening—the Dhamma is the principle of cause and effect. You can see that operating right now. But as for when you’re going to get the causes right so that you can go beyond causality, that can take time … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Practicing in Solitude
     … In other words, use the Dhamma to reframe the issues you’ve been carrying around. That’s what reading the Dhamma helps with. Other ways you get help from reading the Dhamma include the fact that it gives you ideas for meditation you may not have thought of, like ways of dealing with the breath in the different parts of the body so that … 
  15. Mindfulness of Death
    When I was a young monk, there was one time when Ajaan Fuang was invited to give some Dhamma talks in Wat Asokaram during the rains retreat. It turned out he was able to give only one talk. After that, he got sick. At the end of the rains, I went to Wat Asokaram for the Dhamma exams. It turned out that a monk … 
  16. The Teacher Inside
     … Even when you get advice from outside, with Dhamma talks every night, as the expression has it in Thai, “until your ears are all wet with all the Dhamma talks,” still you filter the Dhamma talks while you’re sitting. Then, as you go out and sit under the trees on your own, you’ve got to keep tabs on how things are doing … 
  17. The Dhamma Bucket List
     … If you’re going to come and stay here, you’re going to need to bring a doctor.” So she had an old doctor friend, a retired doctor, a woman in her eighties, who went along and sat and meditated with her, listened to the Dhamma talks together with her. Ajaan Maha Boowa gave then about eighty Dhamma talks during the three months they … 
  18. Analysis of Dhammas
     … In the factors for awakening, the discernment faculty, called analysis of dhammas—which can mean either analysis of qualities or analysis of actions—is fostered by paying careful attention to what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. Which thoughts side with the dark side of the mind? Which ones side with the bright side of the mind? Here again, there’s an assumption … 
  19. In Training
     … When we talk about practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma, it doesn’t mean just following the rules and the precepts. When you get into the meditation and you look at the Buddha’s instructions on how you train yourself, it gets more and more into the issue of: How do you use your ingenuity to get the Dhamma to work for … 
  20. No-Tech Meditation
     … As the Buddha said, you find the Dhamma by committing yourself to the practice of the Dhamma and then reflecting on it: watching what you’re doing and perfecting it from there. That’s the real work of the meditation, and it’s a large source of the insight. It’s not something you simply get out of the way before you get to … 
  21. Comfort Dhamma
     … So just like comfort food, this kind of comfort Dhamma is not necessarily good for you. Now, the Buddha does offer comfort in his genuine teachings. There’s the ultimate happiness of nibbana, and along the way in the practice there’s the well-being of concentration. This is what we’re working on right now so that you have a sense of being … 
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