Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Breath Energies
     … One is to practice, as when you practice the Dhamma or carry out a job. The other one is when you look after somebody. You patibat khruba ajaan, or patibat phuu yai, or patibat phaw mae—i.e., you tend to the needs of your teacher, your elders, or your parents. The ajaans will often make the comment that when we practice the Dhamma … 
  3. Respect for Concentration
     … You even get some “Dhamma” teachers who say, “Well, you know, the Buddha wasn’t all that awakened after all. He still had his shadow side. He still had his doubts and emotional issues.” What does that leave? It leaves us nothing. Everything else in the world just swirls around, but the Buddha insisted that this is something of essence. The word he used … 
  4. Gladden, Steady, Release
     … This is why it’s good to listen to the Dhamma, why it’s good to read the Dhamma. It teaches you new ways of talking to your mind, ways that are actually good for you. One of the nice things about the Buddha’s teachings is that its range of shoulds, the tasks that the Buddha sets for you, are based on giving … 
  5. Against the Grain
     … If you really want the Dhamma, you have to not only be committed to developing right concentration but you also have to be very reflective. Is this really as good as it gets? The natural response is Yes. And the fact that we’re trying to fight that natural response shows the extent to which the practice is unnatural. After all, what is the … 
  6. Skillful Judgment
     … The first two have to do with knowledge of the Dhamma: You know the Dhamma and you know its meaning. The rest have to do with being observant. To begin with, you know yourself. You know where your strong points are. You know where your weak points are. You know where you’ve acted skillfully. You know where you’ve acted unskillfully. And you … 
  7. Trustworthy Judgment
     … Formally this is called taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. This is why we have those chants about the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha every evening, to keep our refuge in mind. We think of them, we think of the Buddha’s life, the lives of the members of the noble Sangha. We think of their qualities. And it … 
  8. Positive Capability
     … There’s a Dhamma talk in which Ajaan Maha Boowa defines vipassana as exploration. You’re trying to figure out: Why is the mind suffering? What is it doing to make itself suffer? How can it stop? This takes the four noble truths as questions. The Buddha points our attention in the right direction. We’re looking for the cause of suffering. We’re … 
  9. The Primacy of the Mind (1)
    The Primacy of the Mind (1) June 21, 2021 Mano-pubbangama dhamma, the mind is the forerunner of all phenomena: the first line in the Dhammapada. It’s well known, yet all too often when we come to meditation we forget it. We think that meditation is about simply accepting what comes in through the senses and going with the flow—in other words … 
  10. How to Be Alone
     … Several years back when the book Into the Wild came out, I was struck by how much the protagonist had to reinvent the Dhamma wheel in figuring out how to live an authentic life, how to be alone facing the wilderness with just the company of his own mind. He didn’t have many good resources to draw on: a few books — a little … 
  11. Evaluation
     … That’s what he told his son, Rahula, in his first Dhamma lesson that we have recorded of his lessons to his son. Look at your intentions. Look at your actions. And look at what happens as a result. Do your actions really lead to happiness or not? Learn to see these connections for yourself. Learn to evaluate them. So it’s ironic that … 
  12. A Position of Strength
     … If the mind tells you it has other things to think about, you can tell it, “not right now.” This is one of the reasons why we have a Dhamma talk, because the mind has so many ways of getting out of the meditation, and the Dhamma talk is meant to give you ideas for how you can say No to these things. First … 
  13. The Psychology of Virtue
    Back in the early years of the last century, the monks in Bangkok came out with a series of Dhamma and Vinaya textbooks that became the standard all over Thailand, and still are today. In the Dhamma textbook for the first level of the exams that these books were designed for, they defined virtue as “restraint of body and speech.” Someone brought this to … 
  14. Ready for Death
     … If we can crave a life where we can practice the Dhamma, that’s a good craving to have. But if you allow vagrant thoughts to come wandering in and pull your cravings away, who knows where you’re going to go? It’s like a tornado coming and sucking you up and depositing you someplace else that you didn’t expect or didn … 
  15. The Language of the Breath
     … But then you read some of his later Dhamma talks and you see that he sometimes switches everything around. For example, in Method Two, he talks about spreading the breath down the back: starting with the base of the skull, down the spine, and out the legs. But in one of his later Dhamma talks, he talks about the breath energy that comes up … 
  16. There Is This
     … Raṭṭhapāla told him the four Dhamma summaries he had learned from the Buddha. The world is swept away, it does not endure: a teaching on inconstancy, aging. The world offers no shelter, there’s no one in charge: The illustration there is of an illness where even a king can’t say, “Now that I’m ill, can someone among my courtiers take some … 
  17. How to Read Yourself
     … You can also use your conviction, thinking about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. In this case, the Buddha says, there are times when you to get the mind to stay with the breath but you run into a fever in the breath or a fever in your feelings, or a fever in the mind. In other words, the mind’s not willing … 
  18. Right Here, Right Now
     … This is why, when he was teaching the basic principles of the Dhamma in the Wings to Awakening, there’s very little expressed there in terms of views. Mostly it’s qualities of mind—the assumption being that if you really do develop these qualities in your mind, you can’t help but come to the same conclusions, see the same things the Buddha … 
  19. Mindful of Death
     … There are some things that you can learn from books, some things you can learn from Dhamma talks, but there’s an awful lot that has to be learned from your own practice—from your being honest and observant. And the Buddha recommends not only that you focus on the breath, but that you also bring in other themes when necessary. If you find … 
  20. Drowsiness
     … Or you can think about the Buddha—anything that helps keep the mind focused on a Dhamma topic that energizes you. These are the things you do in preparation. There are also things you can do when you find yourself drifting off in spite of your first efforts. This is where you have to be firmly on the side of not drifting off and … 
  21. Passion, Dispassion, Compassion
     … Passion for the Dhamma is a good thing. The desire to practice, the desire to attain the results of the practice: having a passion for these things is something the Buddha actually encouraged. But otherwise, raga is something you’ve got to watch out for, because it’s a major cause of suffering. That means that an important stage of the practice, an important … 
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