Search results for: "Nibbana"

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  2. Paying Off Your Debts
     … The only absolute truth is the truth of nibbāna. The truth is one, and it’s all consistent. That’s how you know that it’s Dhamma. So you try to think about the Dhamma in ways that allow it to make sense. Then you act on it. This is the part of discernment that goes from right view into right resolve, and then … 
  3. The Buddha’s Universal Solvent
     … But when you get to nibbana, there are no stories at all; no suffering at all. So the Buddha’s knowledge is a solvent for all the stories and all the suffering that we’ve been creating for ourselves and with other people. Now, other people may continue to want to create suffering, but you can’t say, “Well, I’m going to put … 
  4. Perfection in an Imperfect World
     … Those two Himalayan ranges of gold will never satisfy you, but nibbana is more than satisfying. That’s what the Buddha and all the great arahants have said. It’s up to us to decide whether we’re interested in what they say or not, whether we’re tantalized by what they say or not. But only a fool wouldn’t be interested in … 
  5. Intelligence of the Heart
     … How would the Buddha define happiness for them? Of course, that would be everybody attaining nibbana, which is not very likely. But at least people can live their lives heading in that direction, which should involve observing the precepts, training the mind. For a lot of people, that would involve a huge change in the way they live. Can you imagine a world in … 
  6. The Need for Agency
     … You delight in the unafflicted, a term for nibbana, indicating that it’s totally free from any limitation or disturbance. Before you get to the unafflicted, you delight in the idea that your actions can take you to such a place. And you delight in non-objectification: the kind of thinking that’s able to avoid conflict. You delight in the idea that you … 
  7. Mindfulness as Refuge
     … After all, his definition of true happiness—nibbana—is also a place of supreme safety: no conditions that can change, nothing that can turn on you, nothing that can disappoint you. He also calls it refuge, harbor, safety, security. It’s the only thing in life that really is secure. Everything else is precarious. So that’s where we’re headed, but we’re … 
  8. Truth Without Air Quotes
     … That’s the truth of nibbāna. It’s outside of dependent co-arising. It’s something totally unfabricated. The processes of dependent co-arising are fabricated. They’re put together. They’re put together with a purpose, often with ignorant purposes, but there’s this other possibility of something where you actually step out of the processes of your mind into something that is … 
  9. Dhamma Medicine
     … The Buddha said that nibbāna is true health. That’s something you have to take on faith because you haven’t tasted it yet. But you have to remember, anything short of that doesn’t count as true health yet. True health is a well-being that doesn’t need any more help, doesn’t need any more causes, doesn’t need any more … 
  10. Stepping Out of Yourself
     … That’s why they use the word nibbāna, or unbinding, for the goal: the fire that’s released because it lets go. In other words, it’s not the fuel that’s trapping the fire, it’s the fire’s own tendency to cling that’s trapping it. It’s a great image for the mind as it clings to certain ways of thinking … 
  11. The Power of Truth
     … Not only that, but as time went on, there came the question of what the Buddha taught that was relevant to our time, whether the path to nibbāna was still open. Pronouncements were coming out that did not jibe with what was taught from the previous generation. A lot of people simply gave in. Whatever the line was from Bangkok, that was the line … 
  12. On Deserving to Be Happy
     … As Ajaan Fuang once said, if nibbana was something you gained simply through the power of desire or effort, everybody would have gone there a long time ago. It requires that you look carefully at what you’re doing. Have a sense of just right. How much pressure should you put on the breath, so that it’s not too heavy, not too light … 
  13. Conviction in Charge
     … his birth, which was on the full moon in May; and then, thirty-five years later, his awakening, which was on the full moon in May; and forty-five years after that, his final passing away into total nibbana, which was also on the full moon in May. So we stop to take stock of what these events mean in our lives, even though … 
  14. Befriending the Breath
     … After all, the Buddha describes the steps of breath meditation that can take you all the way to nibbana. This practice can get that profound. So it’s not the case that you focus on the breath and then you forget about it. You use the breath as an anchor even when you’re focusing on the mind. The way to focus on the … 
  15. A Noble Path
     … The third truth, which is the realization of nibbana, is something you realize. But then from that point on, there’s nothing you have to do with it, or do for it. It’s there. But to get there, the path is something you’ve got to develop. It’s composed of activities. The end of the path involves the end of desire; the … 
  16. The Path to Stream Entry
     … As the Canon says in several places, you’ve actually had a direct experience, a direct knowledge of nibbāna. That’s what guarantees your conviction in the Buddha. Think of the sutta of the elephant’s footprint: The image is of the elephant hunter who sees big footprints in the forest. Does he really know that they’re the footprints of a big bull … 
  17. Effective Self-Discipline
     … On the one hand, we’re looking for big results here—the deathless, the unconditioned, nibbana. And where are we told to look?—“Look at your breath and just keep looking at your breath.” But as Ajaan Lee says in one of his Dhamma talks, great things start out from little things. Trees come from little seeds. People come from little tiny, tiny embryos … 
  18. Equanimity Isn’t Everything
     … After all, the Buddha didn’t say nibbana is the ultimate equanimity. He said it’s the ultimate happiness. The fact that awakened people have a basis for their happiness that doesn’t depend on conditions: That’s what allows them to look at conditioned reality with a lot more equanimity. They’re not trying to feed on it anymore; they don’t need … 
  19. Decisions
     … Even if you don’t get all the way to nibbana in this lifetime, at least you’ve learned to clean up your life, to be careful about your intentions. Because these are the factors that shape your life, and right here is where it’s being shaped. Past actions, past intentions: Those are already shaped. You can’t do anything about them. As … 
  20. Interdependence & Death
     … That’s where you’re going to find nibbana.” So it’s in this way that contemplation of death leads to the deathless. It’s just a question of doing it right.
  21. Putting Out the Fires
     … This is why one of the images of the goal that he teaches, nibbana, actually means is the extinguishing of fires. Back in those days, there was the belief that there was a fire element, a potential for fire, present in everything. If you provoked it—in those days they didn’t have matches, but they would use fire sticks, and would provoke the … 
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