Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. A Good Example for the World
     … You’ve got the opportunity now to practice the Dhamma. If we don’t take this opportunity, then when we come back the next time we may forget all about this. And who knows how long it’s going to take to find a way back to the Dhamma? But when you see that there are people in the world who have been practicing … 
  3. Owners of Our Actions
     … He says that we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, but then again the Buddha says the self is its own mainstay, so how do you put those together? You do it by trying to develop the qualities of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha inside you, and then you can depend on yourself. The Buddha gives a long … 
  4. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … You don’t have to keep on reinventing the Dhamma wheel all on your own. But others can only give that: advice. The work is work we have to do ourselves. That’s the second realization in the question, “What, when I do it will be for my long-term welfare and happiness?” is that happiness has to come from your own actions. It … 
  5. Stop & Think
     … We’ve learned about the Dhamma and had other good opportunities so far. How much longer they’re going to last, we don’t know. But you have to remember: Death is not the end. You can find hope in that, but you can also find a sense of threat. If you’re not skillful, if you come back in the wrong ways, it … 
  6. Four Mountains Moving In
     … Given this horrible destruction of human life, and realizing how valuable and how rare the human state is, what would you do?” The king responds, “What else can I do but good conduct, Dhamma conduct, meritorious deeds, skillful deeds?” Then the Buddha goes on to say, “In that case, great king, I inform you: aging, illness, and death are rolling in, crushing all living … 
  7. Like an Athlete in Training
     … In this way, you protect the Dhamma inside yourself, which is where it’s best protected. You look outside, and sometimes it’s hard to see it out there, so you focus your main attention inside. Protect what Dhamma you have with restraint, with a clear sense of priorities, and with a very live awareness that we are in training. We’re training to … 
  8. A Questioning Attitude
    A person who had read a lot of Dhamma books once came to see Ajaan Fuang and told him about her practice. She kept watch on her mind, she said, and any time a defilement appeared, she would uproot it. Ajaan Fuang told her, “Watch out, sometimes while you’re uprooting it, it bears fruit and drops a seed, and grows into another defilement … 
  9. A Self Rightly Directed
     … He had to deal in an imperfect world, both prior to his awakening and afterwards; trying to set up the Dhamma and the Vinaya, dealing with all kinds of people. In Thai, they have the term khon, which means person, but khon can also mean stir. And often they joke about how wherever you have a person, things get stirred up. Well, think of … 
  10. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … Ajaan Maha Boowa made that comment in one of his Dhamma talks, saying, “Even though there may be things that the Buddha didn’t say, but if you try them out and they get good results, they’re Dhamma, just as much as anything that he did say.” This way, you get to learn how to read your desires. Because if your desires are … 
  11. The Real Thing
     … The Dhamma’s proclaiming itself day-in, day-out, and yet we’re ordinarliy turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to it. When we talk about ignorance: Ignorance is not just a passive thing. Sometimes it’s an active ignoring, focusing on the things we want to see and denying the things we don’t want to see. We’ve got to … 
  12. Stay
     … In other words, you could be listening to the crickets right now, or you could be listening to the Dhamma talk. And the Dhamma talk is pointing you where? It’s pointing you into the body. As for the verbal field, try to devote it to the body as you feel it from within. Direct your thoughts in that direction. If you’re going … 
  13. The Power of Truth
     … They stuck fast to what they knew of the Dhamma and the Vinaya, and even that they tested. This is a principle that Ajaan Mun trained in all of his students: one was the confidence that they could actually do the practice and figure out what was genuine Dhamma from what’s not, and two, that it depended on their own truthfulness, their own … 
  14. The Little Things
     … I don’t know how many Dhamma talks in Thailand where the ajaans keep saying, “Don’t underestimate yourself. Don’t underestimate your potential. We all have the potential for the practice.” Ajaan Mun used to give lots of Dhamma talks and most of his students were sons of peasants. They’d been told all their lives, “You’re at the bottom of the … 
  15. Even Common Animals Can Be Trained
     … They may have been skills useful for some purposes, but when you’re practicing the Dhamma, they get in the way. Your mind is luminous enough to realize that the Dhamma is worth it: It’s worth practicing; it’s worth the sacrifices that are needed; it’s worth the restraint that’s needed—because so much of the training is restraint: Generosity is … 
  16. The Politics of Arising & Passing Away
     … The best that you can do, if you find that you can’t finish the work in this lifetime, is to make the dedication that you want to come back to a place where you will meet with the Dhamma and be motivated to practice it. Let the other chips fall where they may. But make sure you’ve got these ones—the desire … 
  17. Distinctions That Make a Difference
     … The same principle applies in learning the Dhamma. The Buddha makes distinctions between things that we don’t ordinarily see as distinct; we tend to glom them all together. A thought, a perception, a feeling, our awareness of these things all tend to be one glob, and we hang onto all of them. But if we want to understand them—understand *why *we’re … 
  18. A Haven for Inner Wealth
    When we take refuge in the Buddha, and the Dhamma, and the Sangha, what are we trying to protect? We’re trying to protect our well-being. We take refuge in them because they give good examples of how to give rise to well-being and how to protect it. So where does that well-being come from? As the Buddha said, there are … 
  19. The Buddha’s Qualities
     … We chant about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha to remind ourselves of the values behind the practice. Some people have characterized Buddhism as a religion no need for faith. Well, there is an element of faith, an element of belief, believing that the Buddha was awakened. The implication there is that he did it through his own efforts, and he did it … 
  20. Surveying the World
     … You look at the remainder of his life and you can see that it was full of difficulties in trying to get the Dhamma and Vinaya established. Here he had been working so hard to find something of real value, and he was offering it for free, but there were a lot of people who wouldn’t take it. Not only that, they would … 
  21. A Post for the Mind
     … At what point will you decide that you’ve had enough? When you side with the Dhamma, it offers you a way out. When you see the Dhamma as your friend, and you see it as a source of genuine nourishment, that’s half the battle right there.
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