Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. The Regularity of the Dhamma
    The Regularity of the Dhamma May 22, 2006 There’s a school of thought that says each present moment is so new and so unpredictable that you shouldn’t bring any preconceived notions from the past to apply to it. Any conditions you pick up from the past obscure the freshness of the present moment, so your duty as a meditator is to be … 
  3. Truthful & Observant
     … A year or so later, we were visiting a lay Dhamma teacher someplace else, and the Dhamma teacher started going off on a riff. My student noticed that because he’d been doing this training, the riff—which was a lot of exaggeration, fooling around—really seemed jarring. The more precise you are in your behavior, the more you see, especially when you meditate … 
  4. The Light of the World
    I had a conversation one time with a friend who considered himself basically Christian but dabbled in Zen, and he asked me: “What is it that Buddhists believe?” “And,” he added, “don’t say something vague like ‘Dhamma.’” He wanted something specific, so I told him something specific: We believe that the Buddha was awakened. That’s an event that has implication for our … 
  5. Delight in the Path
     … People in Sri Lanka who were reputed by their friends to be really into the Dhamma were given psychological tests, and the conclusion was that they were all suffering from a mild form of depression. They had resigned themselves to the impermanence of things, didn’t have any large scale hopes or expectations—life was gray. That’s what happens when you put the … 
  6. Delighting the Mind
     … The first is delight in the Dhamma. It’s similar to recollection of the Dhamma. You think about what a great Dhamma this is; how it’s admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the end. In other words, it starts with good actions, leads to more good actions, and ends up with something that’s totally beyond actions and the … 
  7. Meaning & Importance
     … From the point of the view of the practice, we have to learn how to see them in light of the Dhamma as to whether they’re going to be meaningful for us or not. We have to learn how to put aside the question of what’s meaningful for us personally in terms of our sense of self and our role in the … 
  8. The Whole Elephant
     … They don’t know the Dhamma and so they fight over the Dhamma because they don’t really know it. In the Chinese version, though, the blind people stand for all people, Buddhist or not, basically saying that even Buddhists are blind. There’s nobody who can really know the Dhamma. All we know is winnowing baskets, brooms, granaries, and posts. We don’t … 
  9. Four Determinations
     … This is in line with one of the meanings of the principle of practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. We’re not here to change the Dhamma or to update it. The Dhamma is timeless, as we chant almost every day: It’s akāliko. There’s nothing in the Dhamma that needs to be changed. What needs to be changed is in … 
  10. Shame & Compunction
     … So how can you live safely in a place like that? There’s one thing you can depend on, and that’s the Dhamma. The Buddha teaches us how to find refuge, how to find safety through developing good qualities in the mind. That’s another meaning of the word dhamma. There’s the Dhamma of the teachings, but also the dhamma of the … 
  11. Cook Your Mind
    The passage we chanted just now, Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion, often leads to the question, “Where’s the wheel?” It’s in the part where the Buddha talks about how he came to a realization of each of the four noble truths that had never occurred to him before, and not just noting what the truth was in each case, but … 
  12. Dreams & Voices
     … What matters is, what are they telling you to do? Is it in line with the Dhamma? This is one of the reasons why it’s good to study the Dhamma, so that you can get a sense of what’s really in line with the Dhamma and what’s not. The dreams you might have about past lifetimes or different facts about nature … 
  13. Universal Truths
     … Ajaan Lee makes the comment many times that people tend to take high Dhamma and think that it’s low, and low Dhamma and think it’s high. The Dhamma of trying to pin down a self identity is very low. High Dhamma is the Dhamma that the Buddha started off with and ended up with: the noble eightfold path, starting with right view … 
  14. Limitless Compassion, Limited Resources
     … Practice the Dhamma.” So no matter how bad things get in the world, that’s got to be your first priority: practicing the Dhamma. Now, of course, generosity is part of the practice. But this is where the limitless nature of the brahmaviharas meets up with the limitations of being a human being. You have only so much time, so much energy, so much … 
  15. Directly & Indirectly to the Breath
     … So instead of working directly with the breath, you work with it indirectly, by choosing what the Buddha calls “an inspiring theme”—something you like to think about that’s related to the Dhamma, related to your practice of the Dhamma. As you think about it and the mind gets calmed down, gets put in a better mood, the breath will change. So you … 
  16. To Depend on Yourself
     … It shows how totally selfless his intention was in teaching the Dhamma. So here’s a good Dhamma, and it keeps focusing you on what you can do. It’s putting the power in your hands. A lot of us, when we find we have that kind of power in our hands, realizing that it really will make a difference what we do and … 
  17. The Mind’s Ostinato
     … Like even the word *dhamma *can also mean act. As the Buddha said, the way you learn the Dhamma is to commit yourself to a course of action, and then you reflect on it. Which is why he doesn’t put so much emphasis on defining things: What is your consciousness? What is your mind? Who are you? Those are questions the Buddha leaves … 
  18. Large-hearted Equanimity
     … The Buddha himself found that the reasons why some people would find awakening listening to his Dhamma talks, and a lot of people would not, had to do with factors that were beyond his control. So even the Buddha couldn’t reach everybody. He found the best policy was, in Ajaan Suwat’s words, “to get himself”—in other words, to straighten himself out … 
  19. Noble Priorities
     … They were adopted because there were some things in Thai culture that were in line with the Dhamma. But the Dhamma came first. And the issue of why you’re suffering and how you’re suffering and what you could do to put an end to it—that had to have top priority. Which meant that he had to step out of the society … 
  20. Wisdom as a Tool
     … Is the lesson they’re teaching a good Dhamma lesson? That’s always what you should be looking for: What kind of Dhamma lesson could you gain from this? It doesn’t matter who you see in the vision. What matters is the quality of what they tell you. And this applies to books as well. A particular Dhamma lesson may be good for … 
  21. Technique & Attitude
     … You wade through a lot of Dhamma that’s on the marketplace today and you wonder exactly how much of this is just advertising copy and how much of it really is Dhamma. But when you look at the Buddha himself: He wasn’t that kind of person. Everything he said was Dhamma. Everything he said was a pure gift. He didn’t need … 
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