Search results for: "Impermanence"
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- A Sucker for Random Memories… seeing the steps by which a state of becoming occurs in the mind, where the mind falls for the allure of a particular step in the process, and how you counteract that allure with knowledge of the drawbacks of falling for something so impermanent, so ephemeral, so unreliable and inconstant. When the drawbacks hit home to the point of engendering dispassion, that’s when …
- The Breath All the Way… Sometimes this word, anicca, is translated as impermanence, but the issue is not so much that things are impermanent, it’s just that they keep changing unreliably. If you think about that mountain over there, the mountain is impermanent, but you can tell yourself, “At least it’s solid enough for me. I could build a house on it and not worry about the …
- A Special Time… Of course, you realize deep down inside that this thing or that person, that relationship, is impermanent, it’s going to change. So immediately there’s a sense of worry, a sense of possessiveness, the desire to fix the situation in such a way that your happiness won’t be undercut. But as we’ve seen over and over both in our own lives …
- Worlds… Ratthapala says he considered that “All worlds are swept away; they don’t endure.” That’s his way of expressing the principle of inconstancy and impermanence. “They offer no shelter; there’s no one in charge.” No one can protect you from the suffering of those worlds. That’s the principle of stress and pain. “The world has nothing of its own; one has …
- The Dhamma Points Inside… A leaf falls—it’s a lesson in impermanence. An animal cries—you reflect on suffering. So there are Dhamma lessons all around.” The monk from Bangkok, chastened, said, “Well, obviously you know how to listen.” So as a meditator, you want to learn how to listen to the Dhamma, too. You can ask yourself, “What in this Dhamma talk that I’m listening …
- Endurance Through Discernment… Just the other day, the question came up, “How does his teachings fit with those that say ‘simply to sit with pain until it finally goes away on its own, and you learn the lesson of the impermanence of pain?’” We can’t “just sit” with pain. The mind is always doing something actively, one way or another, with the pain. Even when we …
- Victory in Battle… They’re inconstant, impermanent. There’s nothing out there that’s really worth getting anyhow”— which is very defeatist. The Buddha definitely said there are things that are worth getting. It’s simply a matter of directing our minds in the right direction and understanding what real victory is. There’s a Pali term, attha, which means “goal,” “purpose,” and “benefit.” It also means …
- Producing Experience… You begin to think, “If everything’s impermanent, why spend all this time trying to develop concentration? It’s all going to end someday anyhow. Why try to develop good qualities in the mind? They’ll all come to nothing eventually. Why don’t we just accept what we’ve got and learn to enjoy that?” But that’s taking the teachings out of …
- The Need for Stillness… This is impermanent, stressful, not-self. Ajaan Fuang’s advice to him was to turn around and see who was doing the commenting, because, he said, the problem lies there. It’s not in the inconstancy of TV shows or the stress of your work, it’s the inconstancy of this commentator. Once the commentator passes judgment on something, then some intentions arise, and …
- Pleasure on the Middle Way… You can view these impermanent relations of the world with a lot more equanimity. And a lot more discernment. And a lot less desperation. So the pleasure of concentration is an important part of the path. You can’t do without it. Sometimes you hear that right concentration is an optional part of the path, that you can just go straight for insight. But …
- Selecting from the Teachings… You may be told, “Okay, you have to see things as impermanent, inconstant, not-self,” but if you don’t have this inner sensitivity, you’ll just apply those labels in terms of your preconceived notions, but not in the way they would be most effective. But once the inner sensitivity develops, then you begin to see, “Oh, this is what they meant. This …
- Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation… I’ve told you before about the young man from Singapore, who wrote a letter to Ajaan Fuang one time, asking for advice in his practice, saying that he was labeling things as everything he saw and did as impermanent, suffering, and not-self, and he wanted to know if that was the right path. Ajaan Fuang told me to write back and say …
- What Are You Doing?Ajaan Fuang once received a letter from a Dhamma practitioner in Singapore who talked about his practice of Dhamma in daily life, how whatever he was doing at work, at home, even watching TV, he just tried to notice how everything was impermanent, suffering, not-self. And Ajaan Fuang told me to write back to him and say that the problem is not with …
- The Perception of Inconstancy… He went back home to his family, and his brother asked him, “Well, what did you learn, being a monk over there? What’s this teaching of the Buddha?” And the monk said, “Well, everything is impermanent.” And the brother said, “Duh. Everybody knows that.” The important thing is, when you encounter something inconstant, what do you do with it? The doing is the …
- The Buddha’s Letter… And whether we think “who we are” is a permanent self or an impermanent self, a separate self or an interconnected self, it’s all a kind of activity, and the act of identification is going to make you suffer, regardless. So you try to comprehend that. And as you see the suffering, you begin to realize where it comes from. It comes from …
- Straightening the Arrow… Even when you’re not in concentration, you often find that thinking about the impermanence or inconstancy of things helps get you through some difficult situations. Suppose you’re sitting here and something comes into the mind. You can remind yourself, “Okay, that’s inconstant, and if you’re going to fool around with inconstant things, there’s going to be stress. Is it …
- Questioning Your Conviction… Take, for instance, the teaching that everything is impermanent or inconstant. The ajaans like to point out that there are certain things that are constant. Ajaan Chah talks about how things change, but the way they change is constant. There are constant rules to the way things change. Things may be “not for sure”—as he likes to say, “**mai nae”—but they do …
- Teaching Old Dogs New Selves… Self has to be permanent, but the things that we identify as self are impermanent. Therefore, if we notice that—and it’s not hard to notice—we should come to the conclusion that they are not-self. We should let them go. The problem with that approach is that you didn’t arrive at your idea of self as a logical conclusion. It …
- The Rewards of Right View… On the one hand, you see that they’re very impermanent, and on the other you see that there are so many unskillful ways in which people go after these things, harming one another. Think of the Buddha’s vision after he gained awakening: He looked at the world and saw everyone on fire: on fire with greed, aversion, and delusion; on fire with …
- The Train Trestle… There is some impermanence here, some inconstancy, but relative to a lot of other things in life, this state of concentration is pretty constant. It allows you to put down your guard a bit. As the Buddha said, settle in here. Indulge in the pleasure of the concentration, because the mind needs that sense of pleasure. Otherwise, it’s going to go out looking …
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