Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Chanting Before Meditation
     … You take the Dhamma as your refuge. If you wanted to order the three refuges—or the three topics to keep in mind—you could start with the Dhamma, because the Buddha said he himself would honor the Dhamma, and, of course, the Sangha honors the Buddha. So, you take the Dhamma as your refuge basically by doing what you’re doing right now … 
  3. Nothing Wrong with Right & Wrong
     … As the Buddha said, one of the factors that would enable someone to gain awakening while listening to a Dhamma talk is that they found joy in the Dhamma. Now, sometimes the Dhamma is very demanding. It teaches that you have to be responsible for your actions. You have to exercise your agency and you have to be responsible for the results of your … 
  4. The Treasure Hunt
     … So the important thing about listening to the Dhamma is that the Dhamma points you. In fact the word, desana — the word they use for a Dhamma explanation — literally means “pointing to.” It points you to the places where you should look, gives you instructions on how to look, and then it’s up to you to see. When the Buddha would give instructions … 
  5. In the Elephant’s Footprint
     … Sāriputta later said, it’s the four noble truths that form the framework for all skillful dhammas. In the same way that the footprint of an elephant can contain the footprints of all the other animals that walk on earth, the four noble truths contain all skillful dhammas. So if you want to understand skillful dhammas and their role in the path, always refer … 
  6. Freedom Through Painful Practice
     … Sometimes you’re holding on to a Dhamma teaching you think is absolutely good Dhamma, but it’s not the right teaching for that particular time, that particular place. You end up using even the Dhamma to create suffering. One of Ajaan Lee’s recommendations is to turn things inside out. If you’re holding on to something, ask yourself: “What if the opposite … 
  7. A Wealthy Memory
     … The curriculum was based essentially on the Majjhima Nikaya, one of the big Nikayas, and was sprinkled here and there with some readings from the Dhammapada and other verses, not so much for real Dhamma it seems, but simply as inspiration, nice ideas to carry around. Well, those good ideas are where the real Dhamma is, in the values they convey. That’s the … 
  8. The Best of a Bad Situation
     … You’ve got the right attitude.” Punna leaves and goes there, and he ends up converting a lot of people to the Dhamma—because he didn’t let the difficulties of the place get him down. There are many, many stories in the Buddhist tradition and other stories around the world of people who’ve found themselves in really bad situations but didn’t … 
  9. The Not-Self Discourse
     … In fact, this theme of dispassion is so important that when the Buddha’s stepmother asked him for some basic principles of the Dhamma to take and put into practice, he started out by saying, “You know something is genuine Dhamma if it leads to dispassion.” So, trust the Buddha on that point. Learn to see the limitations of the five aggregates. They’re … 
  10. A Slave to Craving
    Those four Dhamma summaries that we chanted just now: The first three are pretty general observations. Aging, illness, and death are basically what they come down to. These are things that everybody notices. The world is swept away: Things you did when you were younger, you can’t do anymore as you get older. It offers no shelter: When you experience pain, you have … 
  11. Values of the Noble Ones
     … In government bureaucracies, anyone who says, “We’ve got to make sure that we’re not corrupt,” is told, “Go live in a monastery.” In other words, “Don’t bother us,” as people go their way, and people who want to practice the Dhamma get pushed out. Even in some monasteries the attitude toward the Dhamma is pretty cynical. So it’s not the … 
  12. Conspiracies in the Mind
     … Maybe the Dhamma’s a conspiracy. That’s what they think. There’s a big irony here: The Buddha’s teachings are the most straightforward, compassionate teachings in the world, and yet people still try to get around them. The problem is, of course, that there is a conspiracy going on—in their own minds. They don’t want to practice. If greed, aversion … 
  13. Fire Escapes
     … As for all the Dhamma teachings that have nothing to do with the fire escape, you can just let them go. I was given a lecture a while back by someone who was quoting an academic, saying that to teach that there’s a right Dhamma and a wrong Dhamma is a very dangerous thing. The analogy the person gave was that the Dhamma … 
  14. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … It’s called Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion. Did you see the wheel in discourse? It turns out that the term “wheel” in this context is a technical term. Back in the Buddha’s time, in philosophical texts or in legal texts, when they were going over various permutations, say, when they put two variables against each other and listed all the … 
  15. Samvega vs. Dispassion
     … In getting to the ultimate dhamma of dispassion, we see the clear line between what’s fabricated and what’s unfabricated, and then the mind goes beyond everything fabricated and unfabricated into total freedom. That moment is the highest possible dhamma. The people who have reached that point would never ever want to go back to their old attachments. There’s no nostalgia at … 
  16. The Armored Car
     … But you’ve got to remember that what’s really important in life is the fact that we have this opportunity to practice, that we remember the Dhamma: What does the Dhamma have to say about what’s skillful, what’s not skillful? Those teachings are never out of date. After all, the Buddha said they’re *akāliko, *timeless. Then you remember the Sangha … 
  17. Adult Dhamma
    Adult Dhamma March 5, 2015 I was reading a review of a short-story collection recently, in which the reviewer was noting that although the author wasn’t experimental in the way she structured her stories, she was revolutionary or radical in that she treated her characters like adults, and her readers like adults. Unfortunately, that’s pretty rare. The same observation applies to … 
  18. In the Mood to Meditate
    Ajaan Suwat would often begin his Dhamma talks by saying to put yourself in the right mood to practice. In other words, don’t anticipate whether it’s going to go well or not going to go well. Think in ways that will help it go well. Remind yourself that you’re doing something really worthwhile here. You’re straightening out the mind. That … 
  19. For a Routine That Isn’t Routine
     … We think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. You can sit here and just parrot the words and get that glazed look in your eyes as you stare off into the distance. But it’s better to stop and think, “Who was the Buddha? What was his Dhamma like? Who is the noble Sangha?”—what kind of example they set for us … 
  20. Murderers, Vipers, & Floods, Oh My!
     … He immediately adds, take the Dhamma as a refuge, and he equates the two. That means turning yourself into Dhamma—taking the Dhamma as your pattern for who you want to be. That, of course, connects with the third flood, which is becoming: the sort of person you want to be, the sort of world you want to inhabit. Do you want to inhabit … 
  21. Twigs & Branches
     … The whole question of self and not-self doesn’t apply, but you use the Dhamma—as they say in some passages in the Canon, you use the Dhamma to get beyond dhammas of all kinds. So, whatever is useful, realize that it’s makeshift. You hold onto it to the extent that it’s helpful, but you also learn when to let go … 
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