Search results for: "Dhamma"

  1. Page 72
  2. Meditation as a Skill
     … Make sure your attitude is right as you’re beginning to sit down to meditate.” Here’s where it’s good to think about the bases of success, that list of dhammas that the Buddha said was among his most important teachings. It’s given short shrift here in the West because there is that attitude: “There’s no such thing as a good … 
  3. The Heart to Keep Going
     … Ajaan Mun, toward the end of his life, gave a Dhamma talk about going into battle with the defilements. Your determination not to come back and be the laughingstock of the defilements ever again: That’s the soldier in his analogy. The soldier has the weapon of discernment, and is fed by concentration. But what keeps the soldier going is that firm determination—a … 
  4. Refuge
     … One of chants we had just now was about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. You take refuge in them in the sense that you take them as examples. See how the Buddha found happiness. He challenges you and says that true happiness is possible, and that you can attain it through your own efforts. So you take up that … 
  5. Hold on to Right View
     … If you had bad actions but you embrace right view and go to a good place, maybe in that good place you start practicing the Dhamma. That would open an opportunity to get out, as in the case of Aṅgulimāla. So, the present moment has a lot of power, and you want to make sure you maintain right view all the way to make … 
  6. Putting out the Flame
     … This may be what Luang Pu Dune meant when he said that the things of the world come in pairs, but Dhamma practice is one thing clear through: giving back, all the way.
  7. The Basic Pattern
     … The Buddha doesn’t recommend that you reinvent the Dhamma wheel every time you act. If, however, you notice that there was no harm from your actions, the Buddha says, “Take joy in your practice and continue with the training.” There are a lot of important principles here: the principle of truthfulness and integrity, the principle of compassion. These things are essential to the … 
  8. Step by Step
    We’re sitting here meditating, we’re practicing the Dhamma, partly because of the example of those who’ve gone before us, or as the Buddha would say, entirely because of the example of those who’ve gone before us. There’s a famous exchange where Ven. Ananda comes and says, “This is half of the holy life: having admirable friends.” And the Buddha … 
  9. Renunciation
     … And particularly if you’ve really seen the true Dhamma, as the Buddha said, that totally ends your fear of death. You know that there’s something there that can be touched inside, that’s not subject to time or space. Because death happens in time and space, this thing is not touched by the death, or aging, or the illness, or the birth … 
  10. Single-minded
     … We take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, but on the outside level, they’re just examples. They’re not the actual refuge. The true refuge comes from the qualities you build into the mind, that you develop in the mind. Those qualities require focus, they require your attention, they have to have top priority. In other words, you have to … 
  11. The Desire for Freedom
     … The Dhamma we have now comes from that kind of person. The Buddha didn’t teach simply the way to manage suffering. The third noble truth is the cessation of suffering—total. That’s what he was able to find, and he found it because he didn’t let himself rest content with anything less. His samvega was coupled with pasada—confidence that there … 
  12. Don’t Just Fatten Your Mind
     … As the Buddha said, he doesn’t deny that some sensual pleasures can be in accord with the Dhamma. But it’s an issue for each one of us to figure out which are okay for us and which are not. There are some general principles. The pleasures that come from going out into nature are relatively harmless, as are the pleasures of solitude … 
  13. Analysis of Qualities
     … Ajaan Fuang had a nice passage in one of his Dhamma talks where he said that if you have doubts about things, just ask yourself, “Is the breath coming in, is the breath going out, or is it still?”—something that’s right there. And if you can doubt this, he said, you’re going to doubt everything in life. So at least you … 
  14. What Makes Concentration Right
     … As he said, “Bring me someone who’s honest and observant, and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma.” To learn the path, you can hear what the Buddha has to say, you can read what the ajaans have to say, but to follow the path you have to learn how to observe your own mind, watch your own body in and of itself … 
  15. Rehab Work
     … The Buddha often compares his Dhamma to medicine. He’s a doctor. The medicine is not a chemical compound. It’s more like a rehab process. You’re rehabilitating your body. You’re rehabilitating your mind—because the mind has its diseases, too, you know: the diseases of greed, aversion, and delusion. We wound ourselves with things we do under the influence of these … 
  16. Representing the World to Itself
     … Here again, the Dhamma gives you some ideas of where you can look or how you can question your current perceptions. But it’s that willingness to try out something else: That’s how you grow. We start with something simple like this, like the breath. There are lots of different ways you can represent the breath to yourself, lots of different ways you … 
  17. A Clean Break at Death
     … What’s going to happen to you after death? The only way to really overcome that uncertainty is to gain the Dhamma eye, to practice to the point where you really see there is a deathless, that the Buddha was right. He wasn’t just talking about abstract ideas. There is a direct experience of the deathless, and you can experience it, too. Once … 
  18. Study & Practice
     … One is through listening to the voice of another person teaching the Dhamma. The other is through your own appropriate attention, i.e., looking at your actions and figuring out what’s working, what’s not. But even if the inspiration comes from the voice of another, the voice of another can’t do the work for you. You take what you learn and … 
  19. Mindful of Karma
    As you’re meditating here, don’t listen to the Dhamma talk. Let it be in the background. Your main duty is to focus on the breath, to stay with the breath. Drop all your other preoccupations, all your other worries and concerns. You’re taking advantage of the fact that you have choice in the present moment. You can choose to focus on … 
  20. Worldly Effort
     … Everybody comes to the Dhamma looking for a compromise, hoping that they can find the compromise. This idea wasn’t invented by Americans. It’s the way everybody comes. We all come with our attachments, we all come with our preconceived notions, hoping that we can hold on to this, hold on to that, so that we can have our cake and eat it … 
  21. Happy to Be Here
     … So be patient as you put the mind in a calm mood, with whatever Dhamma theme helps calm you down, and then bring that calm mind to the concentration. In doing this, you’re employing all the different kinds of fabrication the Buddha talked about. There’s the breath itself, with is bodily fabrication, and then there’s the way you talk to yourself … 
  22. Load next page...