Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Evaluating Your Practice
     … You not only listen to Dhamma talks, you also live with someone who’s been practicing the Dhamma so that you can pick up that person’s example. When you internalize the lessons, there comes a point where you’re independent. But until then, remember: You still have things to learn. There’s always that question of how to bring things into balance: What … 
  3. A Sense of Yourself
     … Learning here doesn’t apply to your learning in school, it applies to your learning in the Dhamma. The Buddha didn’t say that he had sole rights on what counts and doesn’t count as Dhamma. There are things we’ve learned from our parents, things we’ve learned from people around us that really are useful in training the mind. But it … 
  4. The Garden of Enlightenment
     … But the need for a civilized country points to the fact that the practice of the Dhamma depends on very special conditions that don’t happen all the time. They’re natural conditions but they have to be nurtured, like the orchard here. The trees are natural, the soil is natural, the water is natural, but the way they’ve been put together is … 
  5. Attention to Your Potentials
    Just now we chanted the sutta of Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion. Sometimes people ask, “Where’s the wheel?” It’s in the part where the Buddha goes through the four noble truths and points out the three levels of knowledge for each. The first level is knowing the truth. The second is knowing the duty with regard to the truth. And … 
  6. The Buddha’s Medicine
    The Dhamma is medicine—medicine for the ailments of the mind. And just as with medicine for the body, some Dhamma medicines are meant to be preventive and others are meant to treat illnesses you’ve already got. And although we have the Buddha as the primary doctor, and other people are more experienced on the path as doctors who can give us advice … 
  7. The Open Committee
     … That way, you can show the mind that practicing the Dhamma is not all hardship. In fact, there’s a sense of ease that goes really deep down inside. If you allow it to seep through the body, let the breath work through the body, around all the knots of tension, it feels really good to be right here. At the same time, you … 
  8. Safety in an Uncertain World
     … You may forget everything about the Dhamma. There may be an inclination in the mind if you develop in that direction. But sometimes the shock of death and rebirth can be so great that there’s a huge blank. It’s going to take a long while to get back to the Dhamma. This is why we have to be protective against our own … 
  9. Fear & Conviction
     … Even though he couldn’t give long Dhamma talks after his accident, he would always talk about this sense of refuge. The teachings really do provide refuge. There are lots of dangers out there that we need refuge from and dangers in here that we need refuge from. And the refuge offered by the Dhamma is genuine. We need to have a sense of … 
  10. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … He said that during that time there were two Dhamma themes that Ajaan Mun liked to teach more than anything else. One was practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma, and the other was the customs of the noble ones. We tend to think of the forest tradition as being very Thai or very Lao. But Ajaan Mun was accused of not following … 
  11. Good Fundamentals
     … The Buddha himself said that he didn’t approve of any changes in his Dhamma. He had learned a skill, he wanted to pass that skill on, and he did everything he could to make sure that it was passed on intact. This is why he left not only a body of teachings but also an order of monastics trained to question one another … 
  12. Choosing Sides
     … Just today, I was reading an old translation of an Ajaan Chah Dhamma talk, trying to decide whether it deserved to be translated anew. Things were going along well for a couple of pages. Then all of a sudden, there was a passage where, in the original, Ajaan Chah talks about how important it is to understand the truth about dukkha, stress or suffering … 
  13. Heedfulness All the Way Through
    All dhammas, the Buddha said, come from desire. All skillful dhammas come from heedfulness. Heedfulness is the desire to be safe, not to fall into danger. It’s based on a realization that your actions will make the difference. So there’s a bit of discernment in there, together with some goodwill for yourself. Then, based on heedfulness, the whole rest of the path … 
  14. Days Fly Past
     … Ajaan Phut, in one of his Dhamma talks, described his time studying with Ajaan Sao. When people came to study meditation with Ajaan Sao, he’d teach them buddho as the object of meditation. If they wanted to know what it meant, he would say, “Don’t ask. Just go ahead and do it.” If they wanted to know what was going to happen … 
  15. Get Real
     … You don’t have to listen to the Dhamma talk. As I’ve said many times before, the Dhamma talk is here as a fence. If you leave the breath, you run into the fence. Go back to the breath. Don’t let the talk interfere with your breathing. Allow the body to relax. Ajaan Suwat once noted that there’s a paradox in … 
  16. The Stairway Up
     … It was originally supposed to be a short Dhamma talk, but it went on and on and on until midnight. The king was in the audience, lots of people were in the audience, and they were wondering why the Dhamma talk was going on for so long. Finally around midnight the man stood up shouting, “Victory! Victory!” He had overcome his stinginess. He was … 
  17. Keeping Your Values Alive
     … Whereas the message of the Dhamma is that what you’re doing right here, right now: That’s what’s important. So you’ve got to learn how to filter out any influences that would pull you away from this point. Try strengthening your appropriate attention. Try to be very articulate in the questions you bring to your practice, to your daily life. What … 
  18. The Truth of Perceptions
     … Another strange comment I read one time was that there’s no one true version of the Dhamma because everything you describe is like a map, and all maps distort. So how can any version of the Dhamma be the true Dhamma? Well, the answer is, look more carefully at maps. There are accurate maps and there are inaccurate maps. And there are different … 
  19. Borrowed Goods
     … His friends were making fun of him—they found out that he was practicing the Dhamma, and they weren’t. They had said to him, “So, the Dhamma says that your body’s not-self. Why won’t you let us hit it?”—and he didn’t know how to respond. And Ajaan Lee said to tell them, “Look, it’s borrowed goods. I … 
  20. Food Insecurity
     … Given that human life is so hard to come by, what would you do?” And Pasenadi had the good sense to say, “What else could I do but Dhamma practice, skillful practice?” That’s where your true security lies. Even though you’re still feeding as you’re on the path, you’re feeding on something that’s a lot more secure, so even … 
  21. Against Your Type
     … He treats them because they were in the standard Dhamma textbooks that had been disseminated all over Thailand by that time, and which in turn were based on the commentaries. In fact, one of his reasons for writing The Craft of the Heart was to take a lot of the teachings from the Dhamma textbooks and treat them from the point of view of … 
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