Search results for: "Dhamma"
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- Sanity for the Holidays… You’re not obliged to follow what they say if it has nothing to do with the rules, nothing to do with the Dhamma. If it’s just that person’s feelings spouting off, you learn how to let it go. If you can’t let it go, there’s a lot of trouble. I was talking to someone the other day who was …
- Protection in all Directions… I know someone who built a really beautiful new Dhamma hall in Thailand. He put years and years of work into it. More recently, he’s been complaining that it requires a lot of upkeep. You’ve got the hall, but now you’ve got all the upkeep that goes along with it. Is it worth the trade? That’s something we each have …
- Uncertainty… You look at the Dhamma teachings of the ajaans and you’ll notice that a huge percentage of them are pep talks saying: “Yes, you can do this.” The Buddha taught human beings. You’re a human being. The Buddha taught people who have five aggregates. You’ve got five aggregates. The Buddha taught people who were tired of suffering. You have to ask …
- Good & Bad Meditation… I spent hours breathing in different ways to see how it affected the pain in the foot, and I learned a lot more from that pain than I did from a pile of Dhamma books. So this is the Buddha’s approach to meditation. He would make sure you have the right personal qualities, that you could be trusted to conduct experiments and be …
- Two Kinds of Defilements… And because a lot of people come to the practice with neurotic problems, that’s why so much of the emphasis in popular Dhamma is on just allowing things, admitting things, accepting things. That helps take away a lot of the sting. But if you start believing that that tactic works with everything, the second kind of defilement is going to laugh at you …
- Your Actions Are Yours… Which one of those are you still lacking? Are you lacking in conviction, lacking in a sense of shame or compunction, lacking in virtue, lacking in learning about the Dhamma, lacking in generosity and the goodwill that goes with generosity, or lacking in discernment? If you see that something is missing, work on that. Think of this as a set of skills you’re …
- Non-Verbal Discernment… There have been a lot of people who gain full awakening, like the private Buddhas, who couldn’t formulate the Dhamma. They sensed their way into awakening, recognized it when it came, but couldn’t put it into words. Or you can look at the different forest ajaans: Some of them are people of very few words who don’t explain much; others are …
- Suffering Comes from Those You Love… If you see that anything is accomplished by eulogies, Dhamma talks, and meditation, go ahead and do that—because admitting our grief, feeling our grief, is our entry into compassion, both for ourselves and for those around us. If you deny that there’s any loss, then it’s as if you deny your own suffering. If you deny your own suffering, then you …
- Focus on Your Skill… That’s how you get the best Dhamma lesson out of the knowledge that you gain while you meditate. I had a student one time who was quite psychic. She’d get visions about what the meaning of the world was, what the meaning of life was. I kept having to tell her, “Those are not the issues. The issues are: What are you …
- Loving Yourself… He said, “Bring me an observant person who tells the truth and is no deceiver, and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma.” That’s the basic requirement to practice. And being no deceiver means not only that don’t you deceive other people but also that you don’t deceive yourself. And although you may think that being honest with yourself means seeing …
- Endurance & Equanimity… That’s certainly not a Dhamma desire. So you develop restraint and then you learn how to maintain it. That’s the patience, the endurance. No matter how outrageous the other person gets, you’re not going to do or say anything unskillful. This doesn’t mean you don’t say anything at all. If you can think of something that can diffuse the …
- Two Roads to the Grand Canyon… And staying with the teacher is not just a matter of learning about the words of the Dhamma or of the Vinaya, or learning about the techniques of meditation. It’s a total training because if you’re going to be observant in your meditation, you have to learn how to be observant outside. It may seem like little things are unimportant: where things …
- Evaluating the Practice… It’s a sign that we know each other now.” The purpose of really knowing your teacher this way is that you’ve internalized the Dhamma, and that becomes your refuge. This ability to step back and evaluate is not just a factor of concentration; it’s *trained *in concentration. It gets more and more refined as we work on evaluating our thoughts so …
- Skillful Thinking… If you’re really having trouble focusing on the present, think of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. Those topics help foster conviction in the path and in your own ability to practice the path. After all, the members of the noble Sangha are human beings just like you. They started out with all the strengths and weakness you have and somehow they …
- The Gatekeeper Doesn’t Just Note… Who cares about what the Dhamma says? Who cares about the fact that we’re trying to meditate?” it’ll dangle a little something in front of you and then disguise it. The message will have been received, but large parts of the mind are ignorant of what’s going on. It’s like spies inside and outside of the fortress sending messages back …
- In the Land of Wrong View… The Dhamma is here to say, “You do have the choice of acting more skilfully.” This is why that factor for awakening called “analysis of qualities” comes down to seeing dark and bright qualities in the mind, recognizing what’s skillful and what’s not skillful—in other words, reminding you that you do have these choices. There are skillful choices always available. The …
- A Full Heart… That ended up being one of the longest Dhamma talks I ever got out of Ajaan Fuang. He talked for a long time about the different meanings of tem chai in that passage. From his point of view it had lots of different meanings. First there was the idiomatic meaning of being fully willing to do something, fully giving yourself to the practice. When …
- Riding an Elephant to Catch Grasshoppers… There’s a nice passage in one of Ajaan Maha Boowa’s Dhamma talks, where he wrote a little introduction to the talk, saying that it was delivered to one of the more important monks of our day and age. It turned out that he was referring to a monk who was not well known at all, but someone with a high attainment. That …
- Seeing Danger in Birth… In Thailand, there’s a textbook they use for the Dhamma exams for lay people. It divides ceremonies into two sorts: those that are auspicious and those that are inauspicious. The inauspicious ones all have to do with death. But the idea that anything associated with death is inauspicious is not a Buddhist idea. It’s more Brahmanical. The Buddhist attitude is that if …
- The Skills of Stillness… He says the Dhamma is nourished by commitment and reflection. You commit yourself to doing it, trying to do it as well as you can, and then you reflect on the results. If the results aren’t good, you go back and you make adjustments. Reflect again, commit again, reflect again. This way, you become your own teacher. After all, you’re not dealing …
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