Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
     … The same with the Dhamma. The same with the Sangha. There are lots of possibilities there. This is one way in which reading the Dhamma is useful. There’s a tendency among some meditators to believe that reading gets in the way of your meditation. But reading about good examples reminds you that human beings can do this. There are human beings who’ve … 
  3. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … You have a sense not only of the Dhamma but also what the Dhamma aims at—what its goal is, its attha, what it’s all about. And you realize how compassionate the Buddha was to focus on *these *issues. After he’d gained his awakening, he could have talked about anything he wanted to, but he saw that teaching people to be reflective … 
  4. Figuring Out Concentration
     … So there are many ways of gladdening the mind, either with the breath itself or with topics related to the Dhamma: your own virtue, your own generosity. Or you talk to yourself about how you’re inspired by the example of the Buddha, who put everything on the line to find if it’d be possible to find a happiness that didn’t die … 
  5. The Psychology of Self
     … Years back when I was taking the Dhamma exams in Thailand, one of the exams involves writing a little Dhamma talk. They’d give you a quote from the Canon and they wanted you to write about that topic and then, in the first year, bring in one quote from the Canon, the second year two quotes, the third year three quotes, Pali and … 
  6. A Good-natured Attitude
    Ajaan Suwat would often start his meditation instructions by saying, “Put yourself in a good mood.” Think of anything related to the Dhamma that puts you in a good mood. You have to approach the meditation with a good-natured attitude because it’s going to involve work and require persistence. You could look at it as a long chore, but it’s wiser … 
  7. A Sense of Duty
     … As we practice the Dhamma, we should have the same attitude, that our strong sense of duty will see us through. Now, in terms of the goodness we want to leave behind in the world, we do our best. It’s part of our generosity. It’s part of developing our perfections. But what other people will do with the goodness we’ve left … 
  8. A Victory that Matters
     … Think of the four Dhamma summaries: the world is insufficient; there’s no one in charge; it has nothing of its own; it’s a slave to craving. Even though it’s filled with things that are inconstant, stressful, and not-self—aging, illness, and death—craving keeps us coming back for all that unsatisfactory stuff. If you can’t win out over that … 
  9. Samvega & Pasada
     … In one of Ajaan Mun’s final Dhamma talks, reported by Ajaan Maha Boowa, Ajaan Mun is quoted as saying that this is one thing you never let go of: your determination to get past suffering. There’ll be all kinds of other difficulties, other things you’ve got to let go of, but hold on to this until it’s taken you there … 
  10. The Burning House
     … In terms of the past, he wants you to be mindful, to remember the good Dhamma lessons you’ve learned from the past. That includes not only what you’ve heard or read in terms of the Dhamma, but also what you’ve learned from your own actions. What kinds of actions lead to harm? What kinds of actions don’t lead to harm … 
  11. Reading Your Meditation
    Each evening when the Dhamma talk starts, remind yourself that you’re not here to listen to the talk. You’re here to meditate. Give 99% of your attention to the topic of your meditation, and think of the talk as a fence. When your mind wanders off, it runs into the fence. The purpose of the fence is to remind you to go … 
  12. Mindfulness: The Whole Formula
     … Think about what it was like to give a Dhamma talk back in those days: There were no recordings. You couldn’t go back and listen to them a second time, a third time. For some people, this was their one chance to hear the Dhamma. So the Buddha would give them only what they could digest. So that night, all that the people … 
  13. Rooted in Desire
    When you listen to a Dhamma talk, give only one percent of your attention to the talk, ninety-nine percent to the mind with the breath, right here, right now. Think about the time of the Buddha: People were listening to the talks he gave and they gained awakening. Not simply by listening to the talk—they were looking at their minds. When the … 
  14. Your World to Practice In
     … So you have to look around for Dhamma talks that address issues like this, to make sure your values are right. **And be very careful about your words. This is part of the precepts already. But there are a lot of things that would be true, that wouldn’t break the precepts, but still not be all that beneficial. Think about the Buddha’s … 
  15. Practicing Your Scales
     … This is why there are times when it’s useful to reflect on the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. What kind of person was the Buddha who found this path of practice? Everything indicates that he was an extremely truthful person, very realistic, always willing to learn. And he taught purely out of compassion. After his awakening, he didn’t need anything from … 
  16. Faith in Karma
     … As he said, the Dhamma was well taught. His disciples had practiced well, in line with the Dhamma. And so the message they’ve transmitted to us is a good message. We want to keep that message alive in our hearts. Because, as with people practicing the Dharma anywhere in the world, it’s counter-cultural. Even in societies that are nominally Buddhist, the … 
  17. Monotasking
     … How do you gladden the mind? Well, you can think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. What aspects of the Dhamma do you find inspiring? Or the Buddha’s example—how you find him inspiring. Or the example of any of the members of the Noble Sangha: men, women, children, old people, young people—people with problems a lot worse than yours … 
  18. The Boundaries of Mindfulness
    When there’s a Dhamma talk while you’re meditating, leave the talk in the background. Make the breath your primary focus. Use the talk as a fence around your meditation so that when you wander away from the breath, you run into the fence, which reminds you to go back. Otherwise, while you’re with the breath, you don’t have to give … 
  19. Perplexity
     … You can listen to a Dhamma talk, and some issues may get cleared up. You can begin to see, okay, this is how this makes sense, or how that makes sense, or how this connects with that, or how you might be able to get around this particular problem. But you still don’t know for sure until you actually do it. The Buddha … 
  20. Dhamma Medicine
    The practice of meditation is medicine for the mind. It cures our diseases of greed, aversion, and delusion. In fact, the practice as a whole is medicine. The Buddha often compared himself to a doctor, and to get the full implications of that image, you have to think about what old-fashioned medicine was like. To begin with, the doctor didn’t give you … 
  21. Training Your Inner Critic
     … I mentioned that a couple years back in a Dhamma talk. The talk got transcribed, and someone wrote in and said, “This must be a typo. The Buddha would never say to be discontent.” Well, the Buddha did say to be discontent with skillful qualities. If they’re the things that really do make a difference in your life, making you less harmful to … 
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