Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Experimental Intelligence
     … That’s how you know what’s Dhamma and what’s not. You take all the Dhamma you hear and you test it in terms of cause and effect. You don’t take anything for granted just because you’ve heard that it’s so. Sometimes we hear that the basic Buddhist insight is into the three characteristics — inconstancy, stress, not-self — which doesn … 
  3. Your Main Foundation
     … So you’ve got dhammas, or mental qualities, there too. It’s hard to meditate without getting everything engaged like this. But when the breath is really still—this is one of the reasons we work with it so assiduously—when the breath is very still, then we can see things very clearly, what exactly is going on in the mind, and we can … 
  4. Expert’s Mind
     … This is why we depend on our tradition, so that we don’t have to reinvent the Dhamma wheel every time we sit down. Left to our own devices, we might not be able to live to the point where we’d figured out what really is skillful and what’s not. So we look at the skills that people of the past have … 
  5. Settling In
     … The Pali term for this is vihara dhamma, a quality of the present moment that can be a home for the mind. So as you settle down to meditate, think of it as moving into a house that you want to make into a home. What are the steps? The first thing is that you’ve got to start cleaning things out. This is … 
  6. At Home with the Breath
    One of the Buddha’s terms for concentration is vihāra-dhamma, a home for the mind. It’s like that definition of home in the Robert Frost poem: “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” The breath is the object; it’s the primary vihāra-dhamma. When the mind settles there, the breath has to take … 
  7. Single-minded Determination
     … Ajaan Mun in his last Dhamma talk referred to single-mindedness as being the essential element in the practice: the single-minded determination not to come back and let the defilements step all over you as before — the determination not to come back to suffering. But that determination is something that we have to develop over time. We don’t come into the practice … 
  8. Path & Raft
     … I found that if I wanted to get a really rip-snorting Dhamma talk out of Ajaan Suwat, I would mention some of the things that are being taught in American Buddhism. He’d give a little sigh, and then that night, we’d get a really great Dhamma talk. He explained himself one day. He said that as you’re walking on the … 
  9. When You’re Discouraged
     … You can read the texts about people easily getting into jhāna, or listening to one Dhamma talk and gaining awakening. And here you are, you’ve listened to many Dhamma talks, you’ve meditated many hours, but you don’t seem any nearer now than you were at the beginning. That’s partly a false perception, but also it’s a perception driven by … 
  10. From Heedfulness to Purity
    If someone were to ask you, “Do you sincerely want to be happy?” You’d probably say, “Of course.” But if someone were to look at your life, is that the conclusion they would draw? That you do want to be happy sincerely? We all come to the Dhamma because we’re suffering in one way or another. We want to find a way … 
  11. The Wisdom of Restraint
     … The world says that you’re clever when you have lots of ideas and can say them on the spur of the moment, but the Dhamma says that you’re more clever when you learn to have some restraint over your ideas. If you have a good idea, have some restraint over when and where you say it. Ajaan Suwat made a comment one … 
  12. The Path is Fabricated
     … The Buddha once made a distinction, saying that the highest Dhamma in terms of fabricated or unfabricated, taking both sides into consideration, is dispassion. The mind finally has a sense of disenchantment. It’s had enough of a particular type of activity; enough of fabrication - so it lets it go, in whatever form. And that includes even the highest form of fabricated Dhamma, which … 
  13. Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters
    Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters December 1, 2020 Ajaan Lee often makes the point that people who’ve studied a lot of Dhamma, when they come to the practice, want to let go of things too quickly—things they actually need to hold on to. They know that at some point on the path they’re going to have to let them go … 
  14. Cultivate a Limitless Heart
     … Ajaan Lee makes this point in one of his Dhamma talks. He commented that the Buddha was an enormous person. In his words, he said, “His eyes were enormous: They could see the entire world. His mouth was enormous: He could give a Dhamma talk that people continue to repeat thousands of years later.” Then he asked, “How did the Buddha get large like … 
  15. Tuning Your Lute
     … One of the Buddha’s recommendations is, “If you’re sleepy, try to repeat the Dhamma you’ve memorized.” You can repeat it in your head. Or if you’re sitting alone, you can repeat it out loud. In other words, in this case, even though you don’t have much energy, you try to use what energy you do have to wake yourself … 
  16. Realizing Cessation
     … After all, desire is the root of all dhammas. Even the path is based on desire. And, of course, all the things we do that lead to suffering are based on desire, too. The only thing that’s not based on desire is nibbana itself. But to get there, we have to desire to put the path together. This is in line with the … 
  17. Delight in Conviction
     … This is called delighting in the Dhamma. We look at the world outside, and if we’re looking for happiness out there, we will find some. The Buddha doesn’t deny that. But it’s not reliable. It comes and it goes. People give us happiness and then they decide to take it away. Sometimes they take it away in situations where there’s … 
  18. The Brightness of Life
     … At the very least, you don’t have to keep re-inventing the Dhamma wheel, because all too often, the re-invented Dhamma wheels aren’t even round. They’re all crooked and distorted. They don’t go anywhere, or if they do go anywhere, they fall down. So remember, the Buddha was a really good doctor. And we have this illness. But we … 
  19. Shelter Through Restraint
     … When it comes to the Dhamma, we can design the Dhamma anyway we want, nobody can say anything against it—as if our actions have no consequences. But the basic principle of the Buddha’s teachings is that our actions do have consequences, and there’s no one else there to protect us from our actions. There’s no one to save us, no … 
  20. Finding Balance
     … Or you can recollect the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha—anything that you find to be a congenial topic for right now. And again, you want a topic that’s a good antidote for whatever imbalance there may be in the mind. When you feel lazy, it’s good to reflect on death. Death can come at any time, zapping you right in the … 
  21. Cutting Through the Hype
     … You don’t have to listen to the Dhamma talk. Let that be in the background. It’s like a wall. If you leave the breath, you’ll run into the Dhamma wall. The purpose of the talk is to point you back to the breath. Otherwise, don’t let it distract you. After all, where are you going to see what’s happening … 
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