Search results for: "Dhamma"
- Page 64
- The Breath All the Way… Try thinking about the Dhamma, the Sangha. See if that gives a sense of gladness. Think about the times you’ve been virtuous or generous in the past, and see if that’s encouraging. In other words, any Dhamma topic that helps to gladden the mind: You can bring that in and use it. Then, when it’s done its work, go back to …
- Bojjhanga: Discernment Fosters Concentration… So you use what discernment you’ve learned in the past or learned from Dhamma talks and apply it to stilling the mind. Then, once the mind is still, you can start seeing things for your own. This point is made again and again in the teachings of the ajaans. Ajaan Maha Boowa devoted a whole book to the theme of discernment fostering concentration …
- Will Meditation Make You Grim & Dull?… I was listening recently to a Dhamma teacher someplace talking about how the practice has to be animated by a sense of trust. He went on to say that this doesn’t have to be trust in anything in particular, just general trust in the world, or I don’t know what, in whatever. That’s totally opposed to what the Buddha taught. He …
- When You Care… So read up on the Dhamma to learn what kind of actions lead to bad results and then you try to avoid those actions. The Buddha says that killing leads to a shortened life. Being cruel and beating up other beings, causing them pain, leads to a lot of illness. Showing disrespect for others leads to your being subject to disrespect. And not taking …
- Concentration… Even modern books on Dhamma say that you don’t want to get stuck on concentration, that you’d much rather go straight onto insight because that’s where the real action is. In fact, it’s pretty perverse. In so many books on concentration, on page one they define it, on page two they tell you that it’s dangerous, before they even …
- Recollection of the Buddha… He also gives specific guidance in how best to act, so you don’t have to reinvent the Dhamma wheel every time you start practicing. So this recollection of the Buddha is a good protection. It protects us from that attitude that says, “Well, if I don’t know something, I’m not going to believe it.” The fact is, there are a lot …
- The Quest for Inner Happiness… But before that chant, we also have the chant reflecting on the qualities of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, to remind ourselves of how the Buddha found happiness, how he taught others to find happiness, and the qualities of the people who followed his teachings so that they could find happiness, too. And particularly the qualities of the Buddha. They come down …
- Dwelling in Emptiness… We have to remember that the Buddha’s main explanation of how you get to know the Dhamma is through committing to the practice and then reflecting on it. Emptiness as a dwelling requires that you be able to reflect. And that’s the kind of concentration that all the ajaans teach: You get the mind really, really still, and then you pull out …
- Patience Is a Skill… There’s so much modern Dhamma where they say to just learn how to accept things. Be radical in your acceptance, and it’ll be okay. But the Buddha said you don’t accept the fact that you’ve created aversion and delusion in the mind and that they’re going to stay there. You accept the fact that they’re there, but you …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Go Out of Your WayTraining 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Load next page...
