Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Goodwill Starts with Gratitude
     … You can think also about the Buddha and be grateful for all that time he spent establishing the Dhamma. After he gained awakening there were all kinds of things he could have done—he had no debts to anybody at that point—but he decided it would be good to spend the rest of his life setting out the religion so that it would … 
  3. One Thing Clear Through
     … But the Dhamma is one thing clear through.” He didn’t say what that one thing was. But the act of giving is a good candidate. So as you sit here with your eyes closed, remind yourself this is not just for you. Although it is for you, in a way, it’s also for others. It’s a goodness that breaks down barriers … 
  4. The Energy You Broadcast
     … But when you’re practicing the Dhamma, you don’t let yourself get pushed around. You set your mind on a goal: true happiness. You want that intention, that resolve, to stay in place. And you want it to inform the way in which you engage with the senses. Like what you’re doing right now when you’re meditating: You set up the … 
  5. A Point of Balance
     … The Buddha said that when people hear that he teaches the Dhamma for the end of becoming, they can react in one of two ways. Either they’re under the sway of the first two kinds of craving, so they don’t want to hear what he has to say because it sounds like a block to what they’re just about to get … 
  6. The Energy in the Body
     … You look at his Dhamma talks for the remainder of his life, and you can see that he was constantly experimenting with different ways of understanding the breath, of playing with the breath energy. He talked about the breath energy coming up the spine; the breath energy coming up the front of the body; the in-and-out breath; the subtle breath, which are … 
  7. Clinging
     … Are they the shoulds of the Dhamma or the shoulds of the defilements? You want to look into that. Place some question marks next to them, especially if they’re causing you to suffer. Now, there is some stress of being on the path. You’ve got to learn how to distinguish the necessary stress of the path from all the unnecessary stress that … 
  8. Be Observant
     … The Buddha’s first topic in his very first Dhamma talk was stress and suffering. And it may seem strange. Here we are, looking for happiness, and yet we start with that chant on aging, illness, and death, separation. But it’s not really strange. There are actually two ways of looking for happiness. One is to pretend that there isn’t any suffering … 
  9. Heightening the Mind
     … It’s part of the day-to-day work of practicing the Dhamma. We all come to the practice hoping that some day some really great experiences are going to hit us while we’re meditating. Well, they’re not going to hit unless you do the day-to-day practice. This is why the Buddha insisted that there are four noble truths, not … 
  10. Peace vs. Clinging
     … As the Buddha said, when we practice, we don’t reject any sukha, pleasure, ease, that’s in line with the Dhamma. In other words, any pleasure that’s conducive for the mind to settle it down, that’s conducive for the mind’s being virtuous, developing all the good qualities it needs, is perfectly harmless. It’s okay. It’s when the pleasure … 
  11. Noble Contentment, Noble Discontent
    There’s a passage where the Buddha extolls contentment as one of the basic values of the Dhamma practice. But then there’s another one where he says it was because he didn’t allow himself to stay content with his skillful qualities that he was able to attain awakening. This means we have to figure out: Where does contentment apply, and where does … 
  12. The Gift of Goodwill
     … Sometimes it’s a Dhamma book; sometimes it’s a book on something else. And they’ll usually have a little biography at the front, and the biographies always end the same way. So-and-so started out having little symptoms of an illness here and there. At first the doctors were able to take care of the illness, they did their best, but … 
  13. Easy to Instruct
     … What’s typically done in Thailand is that, under the spot where the Buddha image is going to be, they make a concrete box and put all kinds of auspicious things in there—passages of the Dhamma, little Buddha images, relics—and seal it up, kind of like a cornerstone. So that’s what they did in Wat Asokaram. But as the building progressed … 
  14. Analyzing Suffering
     … As Luang Puu Dune once said, the Dhamma is one thing clear through, unlike other things in the world that come in pairs and dualities, where this leads in one direction and that leads in another one. When you hold on to the Dhamma, it’ll take you all the way to the end. You don’t have to change planes in the meantime … 
  15. The Sport of Wise People
     … The other thing he said was when he heard me in conversation with another young monk about a point of Dhamma and I was saying “Well, I think it’s probably like this.” And he said, “If you don’t know, then why expose your ignorance? Why inflict your ignorance on other people?” He went on to say, “You should have a rule for … 
  16. No One in Charge
     … There’s a passage where the Buddha says that if you want to get the most benefit out of a Dhamma talk, 1) you don’t have contempt for the talk, 2) you don’t have contempt for the speaker, and then, what’s really interesting, 3) you don’t have contempt for yourself. In other words, you don’t belittle your potentials or … 
  17. Awaken to Your Potentials
     … One of the reasons why stream-enters have no doubts about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha is because they’ve seen that, Yes, that’s right: You follow the path taught by the Buddha and it does lead to this experience of the deathless. That’s how your conviction is verified and becomes unshakable. Not even an earthquake can shake it. The … 
  18. Ask Yourself the Buddha’s Question
     … This is why we have Dhamma instructions: to open your mind to possibilities you might not have thought of before. That’s what’s really special about the Buddha, not only that he was trying very carefully to make his actions more skillful, but that he was also very demanding in what he was going to accept as a desirable result, a result that … 
  19. For the Sake of the Deathless
     … From his point of view, what good is knowledge if it doesn’t lead to happiness? What good is action if it doesn’t lead to happiness, a happiness that you can really rely on? You have to remember that’s what the Dhamma is all about. Its purpose, its attha, is to find a happiness that you can rely on. As the Buddha … 
  20. Here Be Tigers
     … All too many people have read books on the Dhamma and say, “Well, these are the kinds of insights I’m supposed to get. I’m supposed to get insight into the three characteristics, insight into emptiness.” Or whatever. But the first thing you’ve got to get insight into is the workings of your own mind, because some thoughts will want to pull … 
  21. Victory
     … On a TV show I saw one time, a Dhamma teacher was being interviewed, saying that what the practice comes down to is learning how to accept things as they are, realizing that you can’t change anything, and being okay with that. The interviewer, who was usually very gentle with her interviewees, said, “But isn’t that defeatist? Isn’t that pessimistic?” The … 
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