Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. The Courage to Set Yourself Free
     … One of the forest ajaans was asked one time what special quality he had that enabled him to find the Dhamma. And he said, with all due humility, that he didn’t have any special qualities, except for one, which was that he dared to do the practice. Another famous ajaan, when he was young, was studying in Bangkok and going back and forth … 
  3. Don’t Believe Everything You Feel
     … This is what he calls “the miracle of the practice.” Someone once suggested to him that he would attract more students and get the Dhamma out there more effectively if he displayed a few more miracles. But he pointed out, “There’s the miracle of mind reading and there’s the miracle of making things appear.” And he added that when people see those … 
  4. Virtue, Concentration, Discernment
     … This falls in line with that passage where the Buddha says that the two ways you learn the Dhamma are through *commitment *and through reflection. You commit yourself to the triple training, and then you reflect on how well you’re doing it. Then you reflect on the commentator to see how skillful it is. You make sure that it’s not discouraging, that … 
  5. In Your Power
     … That’s what it means to engage in analysis of dhammas. Notice what you’re doing that’s giving good results. Knowing what you’re doing that’s getting bad results. When you develop the qualities giving good results and abandon the ones giving bad results, that’s right effort. As you apply that, it gives sense to a rapture, sense of fullness, which … 
  6. Go Out of Your Way
    Training in the Dhamma is not just a matter of sitting with your eyes closed. You’re trying to develop all kinds of good qualities in the mind. They start from the outside and go in. One of Ajaan Fuang’s students told me once that he had told her that when I first showed up on his doorstep, he had some misgivings about … 
  7. Goodwill & Gratitude
     … If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t know anything of the Dhamma. As the Buddha said, without him as an admirable friend we’d have no idea that there would be a way out of suffering. Sometimes when you think about it, it seems that the Buddha was more concerned about us than we’re concerned about ourselves. He was concerned about … 
  8. Recovery Skills
     … And the Dhamma throws in a few other extra skills as well. The first is having the right attitude toward mistakes. When the Buddha was teaching his son, the very first principles were: One, be truthful; and two, if you make a mistake, this is what you do. He told him to try to avoid mistakes, but we’re born into a world where … 
  9. Life’s First Question
     … That’s why we have the Dhamma. That’s why we practice. The whole issue of what our basic nature is, is a question the Buddha left totally unanswered. He answered questions about action and result, and changes in action and changes in results. So do your best to focus your attention on that issue, learn how to translate everything else into those terms … 
  10. Centered on Concentration
     … It gives the mind nourishment, it gives it solidity, it gives it support; it’s a shelter for the mind; they call it vihāra-dhamma, a home for the mind; it’s medicine for the mind—all these good things. So you have to learn how to respect it. In the beginning, it seems rather unimportant. There are so many other things that are … 
  11. Noble Wealth
     … the treasures of conviction, a healthy sense of shame, compunction, virtue, knowledge of the Dhamma, generosity, and discernment. He talked about them as a wise investment. This is very much unlike what we’ve heard in modern days about how bad it is to have an attitude of spiritual materialism, the idea that you’re going to get something out of the practice or … 
  12. Social Anxiety
    Social Anxiety September 10, 2005 In one of Ajaan Lee’s last Dhamma talks he compared life to taking a boat across an ocean. The problem out on the ocean is that there’s no fresh water. For most of us meditation is like stopping in a port, picking up some fresh water, and putting it in the boat. Then we go out to … 
  13. Worlds Inside & Out
     … It’s another world, it’s another dwelling, which they actually call vihara-dhamma, a dwelling for the mind. It’s the trailer you take along the noble eightfold path, so that you always have a home while you’re on the path. Eventually, of course, you’ll have to let go of this home, but in the meantime it’s a good home … 
  14. Always Observe Your Mind
     … That’s how you grow in the Dhamma.
  15. A Trustworthy Mind
     … You take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha by bringing their qualities into your mind. As you do that, you eventually become part of the Sangha that other people can take refuge in, too: the noble Sangha. This is how goodness gets spread around. But it’s up to you to exercise your freedom to choose that goodness to begin with … 
  16. The Power of the Mind
    Mano-pubbangama dhamma, mano-settha, mano-maya: Phenomena are preceded by the mind, ruled by the mind, made of the mind. This is the Buddha’s assertion of the power of the mind. We’re not simply on the receiving end of things. The mind is what shapes our experience. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations do come in through the senses, but … 
  17. A Good-Natured Attitude
     … There’s even the story about Ajaan Maha Boowa giving a Dhamma talk one time about how Thai people are obsessed with lottery numbers. There was an elderly monk who was listening in, and by the end, the elderly monk was in tears from laughing so hard. The type of humor that the ajaans had and that I appreciated was good-natured humor. They … 
  18. One Person
    I learned the other day of a Dhamma teacher claiming that nobody’s going to get awakened until everybody gets awakened. Of course, that immediately calls into question: What about the Buddha? Was he not awakened? The fact that he was awakened and couldn’t take anybody else with him into awakening—he could teach other people the way, but they had to do … 
  19. The Wrong Uses of Right
     … Ajaan Lee has a nice Dhamma talk on this one. Nibbana doesn’t have right views or wrong views; it doesn’t have views at all. But you can’t get there without views – correct views – right views and using them rightly. The fact that you can let go of views ultimately: If you couldn’t let go of your views, then you’d … 
  20. The Problem of Suffering
     … All the teachings in the Canon, all 84,000 sections of the Dhamma, focus on this one problem and its solution. You don’t have to do the problem. The problem is already there, already happening. The solution, though is something you have to do. As the phrase in the chant just now said, antakiriya, to make an end: It’s to make an … 
  21. In Touch with Your Fabrications
     … The Dhamma tells us that we’re suffering because we’re not in touch with how we create feelings. “Feelings,” here, of course, are emotions. They’re a kind of saṅkhāra, or fabrication, and there are basically three: bodily, verbal, and mental. Bodily is how you breathe—this is the part that gets the feeling into your system, into the body. Verbal is how … 
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