Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Remembering Ajaan Suwat
     … You practice in line with the way the noble ones practiced the Dhamma. You look at what the Dhamma teaches, what it asks of you, and if there’s any conflict between what you like and what the Dhamma teaches, well, you put your likes aside for the time being and give the Dhamma a fair try. For example, the Dhamma says to develop … 
  3. The Center of Your Life
    The last year when I was still in Thailand at the Ajaan Lee commemoration, they had invited a monk from a monastery in Bangkok to give a Dhamma talk. He got stuck in traffic and sent word ahead that he wouldn’t be able to get there in time. So they had another monk from the forest tradition get up and give a Dhamma … 
  4. Refuge in the Dhamma
     … But what about the Dhamma? The Dhamma’s not a person whom you can emulate. But it is something you remember. In fact, that’s one of the meanings of the word Dhamma: something to be remembered. When the Buddha talks about taking the Dhamma as a refuge, he specifically talks about developing the four establishings of mindfulness. In other words, developing your powers … 
  5. Reading & Meditating
     … They didn’t have much knowledge of the Dhamma, and yet they were able to attain the Dhamma. Whereas we’re highly educated in the Dhamma and it’s getting in the way. So should we stop reading the texts? Actually, that question is misinformed. Both Ajaan Lee and Ajaan Chah read a lot. Ajaan Chah spent years studying the Dhamma. Ajaan Lee, when … 
  6. Factors for Stream Entry
     … You listen to the true Dhamma. The Buddha gives you various tests for what counts as true Dhamma. When you put it into action, what does it lead to? That’s the big test. Then there are the details: There are the tests that the Buddha taught to the Kalamas. There are the tests that he taught to Gotami—in other words, looking at … 
  7. An Apprenticeship in Integrity
     … The two qualities you can learn from books or from listening are knowledge of the Dhamma and knowledge of the meaning of the Dhamma. You can learn the Dhamma by listening and by reading, and a good part of the meaning you can pick up by trying to figure things out: reading one sutta and then reading another one, comparing what they have to … 
  8. How to Read the Dhamma
     … So go on the assumption that the Dhamma makes sense. If it doesn’t seem to make sense, ask yourself how you could look at it in other ways so that it would. This exercises your own intelligence. Instead of having to ask questions all the time and demand that things be explained, you take some responsibility for your understanding of the Dhamma. A … 
  9. Of Past & Future
    Of Past & Future September 18, 2003 I don’t know how many times I’ve started a Dhamma talk by saying, “Don’t listen to the Dhamma talk. Focus your attention on the breath. The talk is here to be a fence to direct you back to the present moment, direct you back to the breath in case you wander off.” The reason I … 
  10. Making a Refuge
    Back when I was taking my exams—the Nak Thamm exams, they call them, the Dhamma expert exams—one of the sections of the exams would be a little Dhamma talk. They’d give you a quote from the Canon, and you were supposed to have memorized other quotes from the Canon. You’d write a little talk on the topic that they had … 
  11. In Line with the Dhamma
    When he was passing away, the Buddha said that if you wanted to show true homage to him, you would practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. Elsewhere he defined that as practicing for the sake of dispassion and disenchantment. Those qualities sound negative, but really they’re not. As the Buddha said, he taught dispassion for the aggregates because having dispassion for … 
  12. Delight in the Dhamma
     … So we can delight in the fact that we’ve found this Dhamma. Think of all the people who, on listening to a Dhamma talk from the Buddha, would say that he had turned right-side up the things that were upside down or that he had brought a lamp into the darkness so that people could see. A world without Dhamma is a … 
  13. Facing Danger & Hardship
     … This, Sariputta says, is what it means to recollect the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. It’s interesting in the course of that, he does mention the fact that the Buddha taught the simile of the saw. But he doesn’t mention the word Dhamma or Sangha at all, yet both of them are implicit. One in the fact that what the Buddha … 
  14. Knowing the Body from Within
    Knowing the Body from Within December 23, 2008 As you’re meditating and listening to the Dhamma talk, give most of your attention to the breath, to your actual meditation object. The talk is here in the background, pointing things out that may or may not be appearing right now in your breath, in your mind. The actual Dhamma is right there in the … 
  15. Admirable Friendship
     … And then, when we comprehend, the next step is practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. That was Ajaan Mun’s motto, that whatever the Dhamma is, you try to fit yourself into the Dhamma. This is very much like admirable friendship. You fit yourself into the mold supplied by the admirable friend. Here you fit yourself into the mold of the Dhamma … 
  16. A Refuge from Karma
     … The Dhamma’s in books. As for the Sangha, you look around and you see that there are all kinds. What you’ve got to do is to take what’s good in the external level and bring it inside. The external level is there to remind us not to listen to anything that goes against what the Dhamma has to say, because there … 
  17. Simplify
    Simplify July 5, 2003 The Dhamma strips things down to their essentials, with the realization that if you try to take on too many things all at once, you end up not doing anything very well. This is what the principle of renunciation is all about: realizing that some problems are more important than others, and some solutions more important than others as well … 
  18. Alighting on the Dhamma
    We read stories of people gaining awakening while listening to the Dhamma, especially while listening to the Dhamma from the Buddha, and we wonder if it had everything to do with the fact that the Buddha was the one giving the talk. But as he said, it also had to do with the person listening. And this could be with any talk: If you … 
  19. Who’s in Charge Here?
    Ajaan Suwat often talked about Ajaan Mun’s favorite themes for a Dhamma talk. One was the customs of the noble ones and the other was practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. The customs of the noble ones are customs that go against the customs of practically every nation on earth, because they put the training of the mind first. They put … 
  20. Truth
     … But the words are not the Dhamma; the words point to the Dhamma. The genuine Dhamma is something we have to do. One of the old meanings of the word Dhamma is “action.” To see Dhamma in this sense, we have to look at our actions very directly, very carefully, to see where they’re skillful and where they’re not. This is why … 
  21. In Context
    One of the principles in practicing and learning the Dhamma is that we have to think it through. We don’t just accept things. We don’t leave paradoxes or inconsistencies unexplored. I was reading about a Buddhist teacher recently who was responding to a student who had complained that the teacher’s teachings didn’t fit together, that they were inconsistent. The teacher … 
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