Search results for: "Dhamma"
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- The Duty to Be Positive… Fortunately, the young monk had been studying enough of the Dhamma to realize what Chao Khun Nor was saying: Each of the four noble truths has a duty, and thinking about thoughts that wear you down—about what’s wrong with you, things you’ve done in the past that you feel ashamed of—is not one of your duties. Those sort of thoughts …
- Greed & Distress with Reference to the World… The question is, what’s the message? Is it in line with the Dhamma? If the being doesn’t have any message, well, just wish that being goodwill. That can be your message to yourself that there are beings out there who are suffering. Here you are meditating, getting all this merit. There may be somebody out there who sees it and would like …
- Heedfulness… by time, what can you get out of the choices available to you? What can you get out of the strengths you still have? You may know about that collection of Dhamma talks that Ajaan Maha Boowa gave to the woman who had cancer. After the woman returned home and died, her friend, a doctor who’d been with her, suddenly found that she …
- The Lightened Mind… The reason why he taught them when they were already arahants probably had to do with the fact that they had heard only one or two Dhamma talks from him and gained awakening. He wanted to fill them in on the details of what they should say if they were teaching people who were not nearly as advanced as they were. Of those 1 …
- You’re Already Dead… There’s learning the Dhamma, which means not only listening but also thinking about it, questioning it. When the Buddha taught, he didn’t teach nice-sounding platitudes. He didn’t offer things for your reflection without being responsible about what he was saying. Everything he said had meaning. And he recommended that the monks question him if there was anything they didn’t …
- Fear of Missing Out… He subscribed to a magazine that was put out by the scholarly monks called Dhammacaksu, “The Dhamma Eye,” which had sutta translations and articles on the meaning of the suttas. The magazine would arrive once a month. Ajaan Fuang said that when the magazine arrived, the evening sit that night was dedicated to Ajaan Lee’s reading the magazine out loud to everybody. So …
- Seclusion Through Mindfulness… The people in the Buddha’s time who, on hearing the Dhamma, really appreciated it, had a sense that it cleared things up, helped them escape from the things that were tying them down. Of course, what was tying them down? Their own attitudes. So to seclude yourself from the things that tie you down: That’s the work of mindfulness—getting you ready …
- Training Your Cynical Voices… You read about the people who disliked the Dhamma back in the time of the Buddha, argued with it, resisted it. And a lot of their resistance was the same sort of stuff you see now: They were materialists, they didn’t believe in the power of kamma, thought that going to nibbana was impossible or selfish. But were they the people who benefitted …
- A Concentration Checklist… What part of the mind doesn’t want to look? So basically, the way to overcome boredom is to ask questions based on what you know of the Dhamma: what you’ve learned about what happens as the mind deals with its sensory experience. Ask yourself, “Can I see that happening right now?” Two other problems are mirror problems: too much effort, too little …
- Virtue… As the Buddha once said, that’s a prerequisite for practicing the Dhamma on any level: that you be honest. So following the precepts creates the right environment for developing the mind further in meditation. It also develops some important skills, such as mindfulness, alertness, and persistence. You have to keep your precepts in mind, remembering that you’ve promised yourself not to lie …
- Worries & Regrets… He said he’d be happy to discuss the Dhamma, but he didn’t want to give house-blessings. That was for us younger monks. There was one time when one of his students invited him to her home, and I went along. The student’s sister—who’d been meditating with another teacher—had some meditation questions. She started out by saying, “The …
- Love Me, Love My Defilements… There’s a passage in one of Ajaan Maha Boowa’s Dhamma talks where he’s saying to the monks, “Suppose the Buddha were able to see your defilements. Don’t you think he’d be disgusted?” I’ve heard people react to that, saying that the Buddha wouldn’t be disgusted with us. The Buddha would love us; he would be compassionate toward …
- The Broken Gong… This is one of the reasons why the Buddha taught the Dhamma to begin with. People were suffering and they didn’t see that they had any choice in the matter. They felt they just had to suffer, to put up with it as part of life. You hear this now, again and again, even in Buddhist circles: Aging is part of life, so …
- 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.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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