Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Stand Your Ground
    Every day we chant in which we take the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha as our refuge. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean that we’re hoping for the Buddha to come and help us. The Buddha entered nibbana a long time ago. As for the Sangha, they may not be around when we need them. What we need is a … 
  3. Admitting Mistakes
     … The Dhamma and the Vinaya are all of a piece, simply that they approach the question of training the mind from different sides. The Dhamma focuses primarily on principles; the Vinaya, primarily on rules. The general principles can’t cover the whole territory nor can rules with their specifics. The combination of the two puts the question of how to train the mind into … 
  4. King Asoka’s Vow
     … But on the other hand, all the forest ajaans really had to depend on themselves, even to the extent of depending on themselves to recognize the true Dhamma when it came. It’s not the case that everybody who listened to Ajaan Mun was immediately taken by his teachings. I once read a Dhamma talk by Ajahn Chah where he was pointing out how … 
  5. Contentment vs. Initiative
     … Finally, you have good friends, people whose values are in line with the Dhamma, so that you can pick up good habits from them. Avoid people who would lead you astray. You don’t want to associate with the type of people who say, “Let’s go and have a little bit of fun,” and not really care about the consequences. You want people … 
  6. A Greater Happiness
     … Part of the exam was to write a little Dhamma talk, and you were supposed to quote a few Buddhist sayings in the course of the Dhamma talk. They gave you a whole book of sayings that you could memorize if you wanted to, and you’d see little novices out memorizing the whole book. But instead of memorizing the whole book, I decided … 
  7. The Most Important Thing to Be Doing
     … There’s a pun they have in Thai where they talk about how practicing the Dhamma is basically practicing yourself. The word “practice” there in Thai can also mean looking after something or looking after another person. So when you’re practicing the Dhamma you’re looking after yourself. You’re taking care of this big issue inside you. And notice, the Buddha never … 
  8. Skills to Make a Difference
     … The world without the Dhamma and the world with the Dhamma are two very different worlds**. We’re lucky we have the Dhamma available, so that we can make a good difference, too.**
  9. Shame Yes, Guilt No
     … So as you keep listening to that voice of remorse, and it sounds like the voice of the Dhamma, remind yourself there are things that sound like the Dhamma but are not Dhamma at all. This is one of them. When you make a mistake, the Buddha said to recognize it as a mistake and to make up your mind that you’re not … 
  10. Persistence
     … He’ll talk to you about benefits in terms of the Dhamma.” So they went. Sona listened to the Dhamma and was inspired. So he asked permission of his parents to ordain. They gave it. One night, he was doing walking meditation, but because his feet were so tender, they started to bleed, yet he wasn’t getting his mind into concentration. So he … 
  11. Noble & True
     … It was at a Sunday evening with a Dhamma group up in Irvine. In the course of the Dhamma discussion, I mentioned the word dignity. She came up afterwards and said that all these years she’d been in America… She had learned the word “dignity” in her English classes in Russia, but she never heard an American person use it. That’s a … 
  12. To Keep You Going
     … learning how to adapt your ways of thinking and acting and speaking so that they fit in with the standards of the Buddha, instead of insisting that you want to change the Dhamma to suit your own ways. Now, there are ways that the Dhamma can be expanded. The great ajaans, for instance, don’t just quote texts at you. They have their own … 
  13. Lessons for New Monks
     … that if you really want to know the Dhamma, you have to be a virtuous person. I mean, there are people who can know about the Dhamma without being virtuous—we see this all around us—but to really gain the concentration and discernment that allow you to see how the Dhamma applies in your life, in your mind, in your behavior requires that … 
  14. An Auspicious Birth
     … We talk of the first kind of birth being auspicious when you’re born into a family that’s got material comforts and you have an opportunity to meet with the Dhamma. But it’s really made auspicious by this other kind of birth, the momentary attachment, because not all attachment is bad. There are good attachments to the aggregates, as when you latch … 
  15. The Seven Treasures
     … listening, reading, learning what you can from the wisdom of the past, so that you don’t have to keep reinventing the Dhamma wheel all the time. As the Buddha once said, listening to the Dhamma gives all kinds of benefits. Things you didn’t understand before, you begin to understand. Things you never heard of before, you hear. Things you may have heard … 
  16. Look after Your Mind with Ease
     … First there’s the Dhamma as a governing principle. You reflect on what a good Dhamma this is, how it’s hard to find an honest Dhamma like this, and why it’d be a shame to wander away from it. In this case, you use a sense of inspiration to keep you going. This governing principle is based on a sense of appreciation … 
  17. A Sense of Yourself
     … So learn the Dhamma. Try to remember it. And if you find yourself weak in this area, it’s an area where you’ve got plenty to explore. The fourth quality is generosity. How hard do you find it to part with your things? How hard do you find it to give of your time or your energy to other people when they ask … 
  18. A Flammable Mind
     … A traditional simile for the Dhamma is that it’s water to put out fires of the mind. And what are the fires of the mind? Passion, aversion, delusion. They’re like the fire element in dry grass just ready to light up as soon as there’s the slightest bit of spark to get it going. This is what we have to watch … 
  19. A Good Purpose in Life
     … Even when we come to the Dhamma, we think of it as something to consume. We want certain experiences. But the consumer life is a pretty meaningless one. As Ajaan Suwat often liked to point out, those pleasures you consumed last week: Where are they now? They’re gone. You keep looking for new ones and new ones and new ones. There’s never … 
  20. The Hedgefox
     … When we first study the Dhamma, it’s like learning to be a fox: There are four noble truths, five aggregates, five hindrances, five strengths, seven factors for awakening, eight factors in the noble path, fifteen defilements, a hundred and eight different kinds of craving. Seems like an awful lot to know. If you just stay with the words and the concepts, it’s … 
  21. Faith as a Virtue
     … At the moment, it’s not yet knowledge, because to have real knowledge about the Buddha and the Dhamma, as he said, requires that you gain full awakening. But in the meantime, we can decide that this is a good path to follow and that he’s a good person to trust. Having faith in the path requires that we take on some pre … 
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