Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. No Running Away
    One of the important things to understand as you come to practice the Dhamma is that you’re not running away from anything. If you want to run away from the human race: You come out here and what have you got? You’re sitting here under a tree, you’re sitting with a member of the human race. You want to run away … 
  3. The Mind Comes First
    One of the basic principles of the Dhamma is that the mind comes first—in two senses of the term. One is that the state of your mind is the most important thing in your life. It has to come first in all your considerations. When you think about what you’re going to accomplish in life, the greatest accomplishment is, as the Buddha … 
  4. Seeing the Stillness
     … Our problem is that we approach the Dhamma using our habitual tendency to jump. We want to jump to the ultimate right away. When you get into a Dhamma conversation, within four or five words you’re already talking about the absolute, talking about the uncompounded or whatever. People don’t like the work that goes in-between. Everyone wants to hear the easy … 
  5. All About Change
     … You think back about how many times you’ve probably been practicing the Dhamma in previous lifetimes and then you threw it away. Up and down, up and down, up and down we go. Some people find that thought depressing; others find it a challenge. What can we do to make sure we don’t go down again? That kind of change, the change … 
  6. In the Mood to Meditate
     … He went and listened to the Dhamma talk. The Buddha was talking about the good results that come from generosity. The poor man was thinking about how poor he was and how it was probably because he’d never been generous. He asked himself, “What do I have to give? All I’ve got is this cloak. But if I give this cloak away … 
  7. Get Out of Yourself
     … This is why the emphasis on what makes us different from one another is so opposed to the principles of the Dhamma. The principles of the Dhamma concern what we have in common: the fact that we’re all suffering, that suffering comes from the same sorts of things, and that the path to the end of suffering comes from the same sorts of … 
  8. Generating Energy
     … These can be the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha, your own generosity, your own virtue. Sometimes putting the breath aside for the time being and thinking about these things can be very helpful. Thinking about the Sangha for instance: Think about all the ajaans and the success they had in the practice. Remember that they were human beings, you’re a human being … 
  9. The Body Doesn’t Care
     … The Buddha talks about finding the essence in your body, meaning that you learn how to practice generosity, you use the body to learn about the Dhamma, you use it to practice virtue and meditation. This is where you can find something of essential worth inside the body. We had the question the other day at the Q&A, “What is the essence of … 
  10. The Wear & Tear of Life
     … Traditionally in Buddhism, we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. That doesn’t mean the Buddha’s going to be around to help us or the Dhamma is going to come out and pat us on the back. What it means is that they’ve provided a good example of how to depend on yourself. You want to take them … 
  11. Arising & Passing Away
     … There’s the description of the arising of the Dhamma Eye that happens at stream entry, and it’s usually translated as, “Whatever is subject to arising is also subject to passing away.” Yam kiñci samudaya-dhammam sabbam tam nirodha-dhammam ti. The word dhamma in that sentence means subject to. It’s like when we chant *Jara-dhammomhi—*I am subject to aging … 
  12. The Noble Truth of Suffering
     … As he says, the Dhamma is nourished by commitment and reflection. So you really have to give yourself to it. And then really look at it from all angles. Only then can you be a judge, a reliable judge of what the Buddha had to say. So you have to put some skin in the game. You can’t just say, “Well, I don … 
  13. The Buddha’s Protection
     … So he says you take yourself as a refuge for the sake of your mind, and you do that, he says, by taking the Dhamma as a refuge. What does it mean to take the Dhamma as a refuge? You learn how to establish mindfulness. The Buddha’s instructions on establishing mindfulness are to protect us from our thoughts that go out into the … 
  14. Hindrances
     … As for doubt—doubt about yourself, doubt about the Dhamma—the best way to deal with that is to test the teachings. The Buddha says that if you focus on the breath, you can give rise to a sense of stillness that’s really good for the mind. It’s something that is possible. So you test that. And you don’t give up … 
  15. Why It’s Good to Know Why
    I saw a title for a Dhamma talk recently—it was kind of scary. It was called, “You don’t have to know why. Just know it’s like this.” I can’t see the Buddha giving a Dhamma talk or a sutta with that title. After all, he started out his explanation of his awakening with the principle of causality explaining why things … 
  16. Educating Equanimity
     … You have to look into that, understand that, so that you can get beyond your fears and ask yourself, “What really is the best choice in this situation?” If there was somebody who was sick, the Buddha would have you teach that person the Dhamma. If the person is beyond being taught, you try to create an environment that at the very least provides … 
  17. The Noble Truths of the Breath
     … Here we are, working with comfort, but isn’t the whole point of the Dhamma to understand suffering? Well, how are you going to understand the subtle ways in which the mind makes itself suffer unless you can create a sense of ease? Then, with that sense of ease, the slightest movements of the mind that would add a little bit of extra stress … 
  18. Developing Discernment
     … Because the Dhamma is all about your actions. As the Buddha said, we suffer because of our actions, but we can also learn how to not suffer through our actions. So it’s a matter of choosing which actions we want to follow, which ones are really in our interest, and which ones we want to put aside. You have to realize that the … 
  19. Step Outside the World
     … And as people begin to practice the Dhamma here in the West, we have to learn that same principle as well. We have to learn how to stand apart. After all, there is that passage we chanted just now, the one that says, “The world is swept away.” If we let ourselves get sucked into the world, we get swept away along with it … 
  20. Your True Responsibility
     … That night Ajaan Fuang gave a Dhamma talk on how when you come into this world you don’t come alone. You have your parents, you have other people who nursed you through life, raised you up, and so you have responsibilities to them. The next day the young man went off and a few days later disrobed in Bangkok. About a week later … 
  21. Mindfulness Aims at Concentration
     … In the standard formulation for arising in the Dhamma-eye, you’ve seen that everything that is subject to origination is subject to passing away. Again, it’s not “everything that arises passes away”—it’s “things that are caused,” and we’re talking about causes coming from within the mind. You’ve learned about those causes because you’ve seen cause and effect … 
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