Search results for: "Dhamma"
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- Skilled in Aims… In fact, it’s when the mind gets past sensual thoughts, secluded from sensual thoughts and secluded from all types of unskillful dhammas—unskillful qualities from wrong view all the way up through wrong mindfulness—that you lift the level of your mind. You give it a good foundation inside—a sense of well-being inside—that doesn’t have to depend on any …
- Three Types of Equanimity… Ajaan Lee talks a lot about this in the context of what they call the worldly dhammas: gain, loss, status, loss of status, praise, criticism, pleasure, pain. As he points out, we’d always like the good side—the gain, the status, the praise, and the pleasure—but the good side is not always good for us. Status can go to our heads. Praise …
- Concentration as a Skill… We had a visitor here the other day saying that she’d been reading and listening to my talks on breath meditation, and she liked the basic Dhamma but she didn’t like this breath meditation. It sounded boring. The techniques of focusing on the body, working with the breath—they in and of themselves could be boring aside from the fact that they …
- Firm in Your Intent… Ajaan Suwat once gave a Dhamma talk in which he said all the factors in the noble path have to have concentration in them. And the same holds for the five strengths, starting with conviction. Concentration in conviction means you have to stay with that conviction. The same with persistence: You have to stick with the program, which is that if any unskillful qualities …
- Memory & Motivation… You read Ajaan Maha Boowa’s accounts of his practice in his Dhamma talks. That’s to counteract the voice that says, when you’re tempted to do something unskillful, “Well, everybody does it.” Well, no, not everybody does it. There have been people who have learned to say No, and they’ve benefited as a result. It also counteracts the little voice that …
- Perfect Breathing Isn’t the Goal… After all, the cause is in the mind.* * Mano-pubbangama dhamma, mano-settha mano-maya. All phenomena have the mind as their forerunner. They’re excelled by the mind. They’re made by the mind. So, we’re here to look into the mind. We’re working with the breath for the purpose of getting to the mind. Along the way, we can learn …
- True for What Purpose?… That’s when you’ve used that particular story, that particular narrative, for the sake of the Dhamma: when you develop that sense of samvega. So think about the Buddha’s grammar and how all the different things you’re focusing on either fit or don’t fit into that grammar. It’s like any language. It’s very good for expressing some things …
- At Home in Jhana… It’s simply a matter of taking the time and developing the sensitivity so that you can stop your wandering around and develop what’s called vihāra-dhamma, your home for the mind. When your home is comfortable enough, you can light it, you can decorate it in all kinds of ways. In other words, you can take this house of the present moment …
- Fear of the Truth… And, of course, the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha are a refuge. We find that refuge by developing their qualities, so that the mind becomes a refuge—directly for itself, and indirectly for others. Now, the nature of this refuge is not that it’s simply a place where you run away and hide. It’s like the fortress. You’re there on …
- Joy & Discontent… At the very least, choose a place where you can meet up with the true Dhamma and practice it. This means you’re in the present for the sake of the future. So you keep reminding yourself that this is where the real work is done. It’s not just for the sake of being here. It’s for the sake of dealing with …
- Building on Certainty… And that’s just talking about the Dhamma—there are all these other issues in the world outside that are even more uncertain. He said, “Well, there are a few things you can be certain about, start right there. One is, is your breath coming in? Is it going out? Start where you can be sure.” And once you gradually establish a beachhead there …
- Preparing to Die Well… So why did you ordain?” Ratthapala replies that he had reflected on four Dhamma summaries from the Buddha. These four summaries are mentioned nowhere else in the Canon, but they were lessons Ratthapala claimed he learned from the Buddha. One, the world is swept away. It does not endure. Two, the world offers no shelter. There is no one in charge. Three, the world …
- Four Roles to Play… That’s how the Dhamma is nourished. So feed it well.
- Cleansing the Mind… The Buddha had compassion for him, was able to teach him the Dhamma, and Angulimala was able to escape a lot of the bad karma that would have come to him if he’d continued his ways. A lot of people, however, were not happy for him. They wanted to see him suffer first. They would throw things at him when he was on …
- Cause & Effect Right Now… Ask yourself, ‘What’s the Dhamma lesson here? What’s something you can take from it as a guide to how you’re going to develop your mind?’ And particularly how you’re going to understand how the mind creates a lot of unnecessary suffering for itself.” Now that’s something that’s really useful. Because that principle of causality: If you sat down …
- It’s Good to Talk to Yourself… contemplation of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha to deal with times when you’re feeling discouraged in the practice, and contemplation of death for when you’re feeling lazy. You realize that death could come at any time, and you’ve got work to do in your mind if you want to be ready to die and not suffer from it. Contemplation …
- Elemental Energy… In Pali, they use the word *vihāra-dhamma, *which literally means a home for the mind, shelter for the mind. That’s what the breath can be. It can also be nourishment. When the breath is comfortable, it gives you something good to feed on so that you’re not hungry for praise from other people, or for this or that from other people …
- Great Expectations… This is how we find the Dhamma, as the Buddha said: through commitment and then reflection. We commit to seeing how greed, aversion, and delusion come and how they go, why they come, why they go, and then we look for their allure. Why is it that when they go, we go back and dig them up again? What is it that we like …
- Taking Responsibility… That’s the point, as he says, where you become independent in the Dhamma. Prior to that point, you have to depend on other people to give you advice, to point out where you’re wrong. With stream-entry, you reach the stage where you can begin to monitor yourself reliably. That doesn’t mean you can’t use advice from other people. The …
- You Can Do Better… This is what the Dhamma means: There’s something better, and here’s the opening. So let that thought pull you along. You can do better. And it will be better when you do better. In other words, it’s worth all the effort that goes into it. The results will be good. That’s what drives our practice, what gives power to the …
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