Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Basic Wisdom
    The word “Dhamma” that we use for the Buddha’s teachings has other meanings as well. And one of the most important ones, one that’s often overlooked, is action. Dhamma means action. And that’s what the Buddha’s teachings are all about: your actions in terms of what you do with your body, what you do with your speech, what you do … 
  3. The Radiant Mind
     … It’s through this radiance that we can nourish the Dhamma inside. Remember the Buddha’s statement that there are two things that nourish the Dhamma. One is commitment, and the other is reflection. This ability to step back and reflect: That’s how we learn. It’s in the Buddha’s instructions to Rahula, at the very beginning of the practice. Be conscious … 
  4. The Need for a Purpose
     … As he says, you learn how to delight in the fact that there is the true Dhamma, something that points out the way and affirms that you do have the power to make a difference. You learn how to delight in abandoning unskillful qualities and in developing skillful ones. The word delight, here, is good to understand. It means the way you talk to … 
  5. A Friend to the World, A Friend to Yourself
     … One of the best ways of giving back is to practice the Dhamma. You’re setting a good example and you try to encourage others as well. In some cases, you can actually talk to them about practicing the Dhamma, and in others it doesn’t seem quite appropriate, but you can still be a good example. The Buddha talks about observing the five … 
  6. Refuge
     … It’s expressed in terms of taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, but basically it means taking refuge in their qualities and developing those qualities inside yourself. And they’re all qualities that are developed through the wise pursuit of happiness. The Buddha has three main qualities that the tradition talks about: wisdom, purity, and compassion. Wisdom, as the Buddha … 
  7. Bewildered
     … The proper way is to practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma.” That’s how you show respect. That’s what the Buddha wanted out of us. He became Buddha not so that people would give him flowers and incense, but so that people would actually benefit from his teachings. So he doesn’t want anything out of you, aside from your actually … 
  8. Discernment & Determination
     … We have that phrase in the chant, “May all beings look after themselves with ease.” I’ve noticed a lot of people whose Dhamma practice falls off to the wayside because they don’t know how to look after themselves in the sense of maintaining their motivation, their fighting spirit, their sense of what needs to be done—and also, how to look after … 
  9. How to Change
     … You get the Buddha discussing the Dhamma with people, and often you see them display their defilements. The Buddha argues with them, cajoles them, brings them to their senses. He’s showing you: This is how you can use your verbal fabrication, how to talk to yourself to get past your defilements. He doesn’t give in easily to the defilements of his listeners … 
  10. On Denying Defilement
    When you listen to Dhamma talks in Thailand, it’s rare to hear one in which there’s no mention of defilements. The fact that greed, aversion, delusion defile the mind is a constant theme, as is the fact that the practice is all about cleansing the mind of those defilements, doing battle with the defilements, finding ways to not fall for their tricks … 
  11. Chronic Pain
     … There were times when some monks would be sick, and he’d go and give them a Dhamma talk, saying, “What do you want medicine for? Here’s your chance to learn the Dhamma from the pain.” There were other cases, though, when there was medicine and the monks would refuse to take it, and Ajaan Mun would scold them for being difficult to … 
  12. Action & the End of Action
     … These are people who had gained awakening after hearing one Dhamma talk, and he was going to send them out to teach. Before he sent them to teach, though, he gave them a wider background in the teaching: everything from the most common details up to the more advanced. It’s worth noting that all of the instructions he gave were about actions. There … 
  13. What It All Comes From
     … So why did he ordain? The monk gave a series of Dhamma summaries he said he learned from the Buddha. They start with: The world is swept away. All those things you aim at just keep going, going, going away. It does not endure. It offers no shelter. There’s no one in charge. You have nothing of your own. When you die, you … 
  14. Separate
     … We take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, in the sense that we see what good qualities they have and we try to develop those good qualities within us. That would come down to wisdom, compassion, and purity—and these are all strengths. The wisdom, there, is to see not that things are so much interconnected—although you can see how … 
  15. A Basis in Well-being
     … It could be thoughts of goodwill, thoughts about the Dhamma, thoughts about the good things you’ve done in the past in terms of being generous, in terms of holding to your principles when it would have been easy and convenient or profitable to sacrifice your principles but you didn’t, you held to the principles. The Buddha says to think about those things … 
  16. Different Paths Go Different Places
     … all the treasures of conviction, virtue, a sense of shame and compunction, your knowledge of the Dhamma, generosity, discernment, and the food of good concentration. Nobody else can take these things away from you. These are treasures that are safe. The treasures out there in the world, as the Ajaan Lee likes to say, are like the gold chains that people wear around their … 
  17. Determined on Goodwill
     … Try to make the underlying arrow one that points to the Dhamma all the time. And remember what the Buddha had to say about determination: There are four aspects to a wise determination. The first one is wisdom or discernment, paññā. As he said, don’t neglect discernment. How do you neglect discernment? By neglecting the long term. Discernment begins by thinking in the … 
  18. Well-armed Efforts
     … This is why we listen to the Dhamma and read the Dhamma. And one of the things we learn from listening and reading is how this process of fabrication happens in the present moment. The Buddha says there are three kinds: There’s bodily fabrication, which is the breath; verbal fabrication, which is directed thought and evaluation, in other words, the way you talk … 
  19. Own Your Actions
     … The word dhamma can also mean action. It’s not a common usage of the word, but it’s there in the language. And for the Buddha, it’s always in the back of the mind. When he gave his list of important teachings, the Wings to Awakening, almost all of them are actions of one kind or another. Attitudes. It wasn’t a … 
  20. Truths of the Will
     … And then second, there’s the system—the belief system or the values of the Dhamma—that if you develop skillful qualities in your mind, it really does make a difference not only for yourself, but for all the people around you. There is a value to learning how to will, or to intend things in a skillful way. It really does make a … 
  21. Knowledge over Fear
     … You learn the Dhamma, you practice the Dhamma, and it’s possible—as long as you haven’t tasted the first taste of awakening—that your mind could suddenly turn around and throw it all away. That’s something to be afraid of. Now, that kind of fear comes under what the Buddha calls heedfulness, realizing that there are dangers in the mind. But … 
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