Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Persuasion
     … You need to learn some tricks on the side of the Dhamma. So stop and think. When you’ve talked yourself into doing something bad in the past, how did the dialogue go? Sometimes it was just force of will. Your unskillful desire came bargingvin and just threatened, “I’m just going to break things until you do what I want.” Then you have … 
  3. The Easy Way Out
     … I was reading a Dhamma talk by Ajaan Maha Boowa the other day and he was talking about how the problem with the defilements is we think they’re us, and the idea of removing any of those defilements is like cutting off an arm, taking out your liver, taking out things that you think are vital to you. An important part of the … 
  4. A Sense of Humor
     … That night, after the group sit and the Dhamma talk, he sought out Ajaan Fuang and asked him, “What about the other monks here? Who are the really good meditators around here?” Ajaan Fuang cut him short with one sentence. He said, “I came here to meditate.” Again, that’s a story that doesn’t put Ajaan Maha Boowa in a good light, but … 
  5. Booster Stages
     … The Dhamma allows you to be honest and open inside about everything. So it’s a good path to follow. And this ability to have this kind of dialogue inside is what enables you to get into good states of concentration. In fact it actually forms part of the first level of jhana: directed thought and evaluation. There’s a passage where the Buddha … 
  6. The World Is Aflame
     … A person in the audience who said she’d been meditating for thirty-some years, listening to Dhamma talks for thirty-some years, commented that she had never heard the idea in those talks that the search for happiness was okay. Yet, when you think about it, that’s what the Buddha’s teachings are all about. He’s not affirming the world out … 
  7. A Room of Your Own
     … In Pali, they call it “vihara dhamma,” a home for the mind: a place where, as they keep saying in the suttas, you can enter and remain. In the beginning stages of the meditation, you generally leave it as you leave meditation. But as you get more and more skilled, you realize that you can be here all the time because the present moment … 
  8. The Beginnings of Wisdom
     … That search for a way out becomes wise when we look for someone who’s practiced—as the Buddha says, a contemplative or a brahman, by which he means a noble disciple or at the very least somebody who knows the Dhamma—and we ask that person, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” This is the … 
  9. No Happiness Other than Peace
     … If we really practice the Dhamma, we have to keep it line with the Buddha’s purpose, which is peace and happiness, wisdom, purity, compassion, all gathered up together. So learn how to stay here. Work with the breath so that there’s a sense of wanting to be here, not because you’re forced to be here but because it’s a really … 
  10. The Forerunner of All Things
     … That way, this force that’s shaping our lives—mano-pubbangama dhamma, the mind is the forerunner of all phenomena—becomes less and less of a scary thought. You’re right here at the source and you’re learning the skills to direct it in the right direction. As for whether other people are doing this, the best way to get them to do … 
  11. Faith in Awakening
     … Based on that, we learn the Dhamma. It furnishes the mind with good maxims and good principles so when questions come up, something the Buddha said will run right in and give us some guidance. So again, we’re borrowing the Buddha’s wisdom. As for discernment, that’s when we develop our own. We see into exactly how the mind creates unnecessary suffering … 
  12. Being Somebody, Going Somewhere
     … The path does have a fruit, and the Dhamma does have an attha, a goal. In fact, attha means both meaning and goal. So you have to look carefully: Where are your actions taking you? Where are your thoughts taking you? After all, your thoughts don’t just sit there. They take you in a certain direction, they “bend the mind” in a certain … 
  13. Harmony Inside & Outside
     … It’s a situation like that, a society like that, where it’s easiest to practice the Dhamma. This is why a split in the Sangha, the Buddha said, is one of the five most heinous things you can do. Once there’s a split, then it’s difficult for people to get along; it’s difficult to practice. Everyone spends his time talking … 
  14. Keep Things Simple
    When you meditate while listening to a Dhamma talk, don’t listen to the talk. Focus on the meditation as much as you can. Give it ninety-nine percent of your attention. Leave only a sliver of attention for the talk. The whole purpose of the talk here is not to distract you from the meditation but to act as a fence so that … 
  15. Karma for Freedom
     … This is why the Buddha said that the Dhamma is nourished by committing yourself to the path and then reflecting on the results. But then you don’t just stop with the reflection. You commit yourself more. You learn from your reflection, make changes in what you’re doing, and as a result, the results get better and better. This principle follows all the … 
  16. Making an Effort
    Practicing the Dhamma takes effort. There’s a phrase in the Pali, viriyena dukkhamacceti, which means suffering and stress are overcome through effort, through persistence. Sometimes the idea scares us off, but you have to remember that life itself requires effort. Think of the effort involved in simply keeping the body going, making a living, scrounging around trying to find some happiness. It all … 
  17. Discernment Is in the Details
     … In one of his Dhamma talks, he says that some people have to start out with just one little corner—like being a person with a huge piece of land where you want to start an orchard. You can’t plant all the trees throughout the whole orchard all at once. You take one little corner where you plant your trees, and you look … 
  18. Develop Your Inner Observer
     … As the Buddha said, the Dhamma is nourished by commitment and reflection. You do what’s required by the path and then you reflect on how well it’s going. And a large part of what you’re doing is learning how to train that ability to reflect well. That’s where the luminosity comes in. The Buddha started with his instructions to Rahula … 
  19. Suffering is an Addiction
     … The Dhamma gives you all kinds of alternative ways of acting, alternative ways of thinking, and the Buddha’s not talking in a sort of nice fairyland way about “Wouldn’t it be nice if someday the human race could be like this or like that?” He’s saying that these are things individual human beings can do, and when they do them, they … 
  20. The Noble Search Makes Us Human
     … Just this evening, I was reading an article by a psychologist who was talking about her Dhamma teacher who’d had some training in a monastery, and yet he didn’t have any training in being a human being – or so she said. In the monastery they taught detachment, whereas being human, of course, is all about being attached, entangled. Now that view places … 
  21. Crossing the River
     … We’ve got the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha as our refuge in the sense that we have their example that it is possible to get across the river safely and to find true safety on the other side. And following their example, you put this raft together. Sometimes it’s discouraging, though. You put it together little bit, but it’s not … 
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