Search results for: "Dhamma"

  1. Page 74
  2. The Train Trestle
     … This is why it’s good to have the Dhamma to give us a clear sense of what paths there are in the world and what kinds of actions lead in what direction so we can choose wisely and construct something that’ll take us to safety.
  3. Right View from Right Effort
     … A large part of understanding the Dhamma is knowing what are the basic principles that never change and what are the things that have to depend on on the specific context—and your own ingenuity. The precepts never change. The basic pattern of the practice never changes. It’s simply a matter of your learning what’s right for your situation, how to apply … 
  4. A Valuable Gift
     … Ajaan Mun’s phrase was to take all the knowledge you’ve learned from your Dhamma textbooks, put it in a trunk, and put a lock on the trunk for the time being. Just watch your mind. If you want to learn about greed, watch your own greed. To learn about aversion, watch your own aversion. To learn about delusion, okay, look at your … 
  5. Warm Your Heart
     … For most people there, it’s their first experience of the Dhamma: making merit together with the family. You know how in horror films they like to start out with a very ordinary group of people doing something pleasant, so that the horror becomes a big contrast? Well, often horror films in Thailand will start with a family going to the monastery to make … 
  6. So Little Time
     … The Dhamma that the Buddha taught is for the purpose of putting an end to suffering and for finding true happiness: These are the issues that are important. Anything that gets in the way of those issues, you can put aside. We read about those people in the time of the Buddha who came to him with this questionnaire: Is the world eternal? Is … 
  7. The Human Condition
     … This is why Ajaan Lee focuses so much on what are called the eight worldly dhammas: gain, loss, status, loss of status, praise, criticism, pleasure, and pain. He says all eight of them have their uses. We don’t like the negative ones, but they have their uses for developing a sense of direction. When loss hits you, if you can realize, “Oh, this … 
  8. The Mind When Trained Brings Happiness
     … You may wonder why we’re showing so much respect for the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. It’s because they teach us to respect something worthy of respect within ourselves: our ability to find true happiness, our desire for true happiness. The Buddha doesn’t say that these are bad things or that they’re selfish. On the contrary, he says that … 
  9. Tenacity
     … Ajaan Mun once said in his very last Dhamma talk that this is one thing you never let go of until you reach full awakening: the determination not to come back and suffer. Simply going around being mindful and apathetic and emotionally blank doesn’t really accomplish anything. You’re just feeding off old karma and creating blank new karma, which doesn’t lead … 
  10. Empathetic Joy
     … You’re not lessened by the fact that other people have higher Dhamma attainments than yours or become noble ones. In fact, if you can appreciate the fact that they’re there, that makes it a lot easier for you to practice. So search through your mind. If you see any areas of resentment, use this contemplation to help root them out. This is … 
  11. Equanimity on the Path
     … She told me one time she could never understand why Dhamma teachers like to extol equanimity as the goal of the practice. As she said, she’s pretty equanimous all the time, and it’s not much of a goal. And the Buddha himself never said that it was the goal. It’s the last of the factors for awakening, and that’s led … 
  12. A Memorial to Your Life
     … When he talked about the Dhamma as a mirror, again, it’s looking back at your mind. **So try to develop this ability to be still, but also observe what’s going on in your mind. You’ll see a lot of things you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. This is how you develop success and **power in the meditation—the kind of meditation … 
  13. What’s Worth Doing?
     … right view about the precepts, about the Dhamma, the Vinaya, about the practice. These are things you have to hold onto. And as for your sense of self, there are times when it’s very, very useful to have a sense of self. Because when you’re developing the path, you need to be confident that you’re capable of doing it, and that … 
  14. A Home of Your Own
     … The Pali term, vihāra-dhamma, literally means a quality which is your dwelling, a quality which is your home: this quality of concentration. We’re inhabiting the body from within, getting to know our own mind from within, and we keep making this the primary focus of our awareness so that it stands out. As for the world outside, you can keep it at … 
  15. Part III : Daily Life
     … There are even devas out there who are a little scared by people who practice meditation, who practice the Dhamma for freedom. It calls into question what they’re doing. A lot of people don’t like to have that called into question. So we maintain our own inner stability. In a way, being a meditator is like being a turtle. The turtle has … 
  16. Be Prepared
     … Those of us with a background in the Dhamma recognize this quality as heedfulness, the realization that there are dangers, but also that something can be done about them. So you learn the skills that can handle them, and at the same time you have to be very alert. You have to be prepared. In this way, meditation is partly a preparation for the … 
  17. Intelligent Design
     … If you look at Buddhist history, you see that wherever the Dhamma goes, people find all kinds of ways of trying to divert the teaching to other purposes, forgetting that its original purpose was the most compassionate: showing the way out of suffering. Our imagination is so tied up with the normal way of using connectedness or interdependence that it really has trouble negotiating … 
  18. Intelligent Restraint
     … This is one of the reasons why, when the Buddha defines the Dhamma eye, it’s defined as seeing whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation. Now, notice, he says “origination.” It’s not just arising and passing away. It’s not a generalisation about impermanence. He’s more specific. The big problems arise from within. But they can all cease … 
  19. Issues of Control
    There are times when the Buddha finishes his Dhamma talks by sending the monks out to meditate at the roots of trees, in empty dwellings. But he doesn’t say, “Go do samatha,” tranquility, and he doesn’t say, “Go do vipassanā,” or insight. He says, “Go do jhāna.” The noun jhāna is related to a verb,* jhāyati*, which has a second meaning—it … 
  20. Anybody Home?
     … He went to a Dhamma teacher for some advice on how to handle his grief. And the advice she gave was that you have to remember that George and Martha are only conventional truths. On the level of ultimate truth, there is no George, there is no Martha. Never was. He realized it was bad advice. To say that there’s nobody there means … 
  21. The Mind's Immune System
     … In the Culavedalla Sutta, Visakha, a layman, asks his ex-wife, Dhammadinna — who’s now a nun — some questions on the Dhamma. After she explains these three obsessions — resistance, passion, ignorance — he asks, “Is there passion obsession with every feeling of pleasure? Resistance obsession with every feeling of pain or disease? Ignorance obsession with every feeling of neither pleasure nor pain?” She answers, “No … 
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