Search results for: "Dhamma"

  1. Page 78
  2. Good & Independent
     … They need the weapons of teachings in the Dhamma, but they also need nourishment—and the nourishment comes from the concentration. At the same time, when the mind settles down like this, it’s a lot easier for it to discern what’s actually going on—to see why it’s causing suffering. When blatant suffering comes up, you can see it really clearly … 
  3. The Carpenter’s Adze
     … You can reflect on the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, on your own generosity or your own virtue when you’re feeling down. Reflect on death when you’re feeling lazy. Learn how to read your mind by watching what it does, how it reacts to different types of training. After all, the carpenter himself has to do that. He’s not focusing … 
  4. Appropriate Attention
    When you listen to a Dhamma talk while you’re meditating, you have to remember that the talk has a purpose. And you have to ask yourself: What is your purpose in listening? Ideally, the purpose of the talk is to help you understand where there’s suffering, what causes it, the fact that it can be brought to an end, and then, how … 
  5. The Four Biases
     … They talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, and this is what they mean: You take the qualities of the Buddha—his mindfulness, discernment, concentration, integrity—and you train the mind so that it can be protected by those qualities inside. That’s the true meaning of refuge. When you have that quiet corner in the mind that you … 
  6. Equanimity Isn’t Apathy
     … Even after his Awakening, he spent 45 years establishing the teaching, the Dhamma and the Vinaya. It took a lot of work. And he didn’t do it with an apathetic attitude, thinking, “I don’t care whether it works or not.” He put a lot of effort into making it a teaching that would last. He noticed that some people would take the … 
  7. Recovering Your Balance
     … You can think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha. One of the really fine things about Buddhism is that it was founded by someone who knows what it’s like to make a mistake. Even in his last lifetime, the Buddha made a huge mistake—six years of tormenting himself. And all those previous lifetimes! You look in the Jātaka stories and … 
  8. Big Desire, Detailed Focus
     … You remember things you’ve learned from books, things you’ve learned from Dhamma talks, things you’ve learned from your own experience, and apply them, when they’re relevant, to what you’re doing as you try to get into concentration. So when you’re being mindful of the breath, it means you keep the breath in mind, and you remember to keep … 
  9. The Skill of Stillness
     … You’re inspired by the example of the Buddha, of his noble disciples; you’re inspired by his Dhamma.” The other side, of course, is realizing the dangers of not doing the work. You can get in a bad mood and it spirals down. So you’ve got to learn how to control your moods—see the dangers of just following the ups and … 
  10. Feeding on the Breath
     … As soon as the Dhamma talk is over, there won’t be much else to listen to. And so the mind’s first response is to churn out thoughts. So you have to learn how to think about the breath in a way that makes it interesting, to fight off those other thoughts that would pull you away. I was speaking with an osteopath … 
  11. A Thread into Awareness
     … why that part of the mind feels justified in saying, “Okay, now we’ve done some meditation, we’ve invested enough in the Dhamma. Let’s invest in something else.” You can tell it, “As long as you’re not yet an arahant, you haven’t invested enough in the mind.” You want to very picky about where you’re going to find your … 
  12. The Heightened Mind
     … Many of those arahants had gained awakening after listening to only one Dhamma talk, so some of them, at least, didn’t realize the full range of the Buddha’s teachings. So he gave a very general survey, from the very basics up to the highest. One of the points he emphasized was what he called the heightened mind. Heightened mind usually means the … 
  13. Delight & Beyond Delight
     … The Dhamma is that special. So as you’re making yourself worthy of that path, learn to appreciate the fact that you’re headed in the right direction. Then, as the path becomes more alluring, you can look back at the other habits you’ve had in the past and you’ll be more willing to see through their allure. The reason why we … 
  14. From Darkness to Light
     … Ajaan MahaBoowa used this image in one of his Dhamma talks. He said we take the mud that’s in ourselves and we throw it around outside, saying that everything outside is muddy. We find fault with this person, find fault with that situation. We can’t stay anywhere. We have to keep going, going, going. You have to look back into yourself and … 
  15. The Right Time at the Right Place
     … One of the reasons we have those chants at the beginning of the meditation—about the parts of the body; sometimes we reflect on aging, illness, and death; sometimes we go through the Dhamma summaries: The world is swept away. It does not endure. It offers no shelter. There’s no one in charge. It has nothing of its own. One has to pass … 
  16. Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea
     … But if you see that living at your ease is not bad for the mind, okay the Buddha says, don’t reject any pleasure that accords with the Dhamma. And how do you know? You’ve got to learn how to pass judgment. This is one of the things we’re doing as we’re getting the mind to settle down: We’re learning … 
  17. Happily on the Path
     … So, what can you do in line with the Dhamma that would provide delight? Learn how to think positively about the goodness that comes with being generous and virtuous, getting the mind still, having some control over your thoughts, and then seeing the things that have eluded you for a long time. That’s what discernment is all about. We all want happiness. Everything … 
  18. Factors for Awakening
     … Of these two types, people of the first type are described in a set of dhammas in the Canon, the seven factors for awakening. The factors start with mindfulness and end up with concentration. In the meantime, they use discernment to get you from mindfulness practice to concentration practice. They show that fact in two ways. The first way is shown in the fact … 
  19. Your Secret Foundation
     … You turn it into the Dhamma. And the spot where the transformation takes place is right here at your breath. If you didn’t do it with this breath, you’ve always got the chance to the next breath, and then the next, and then the next. The breath is very forgiving in that way. When you start seeing the breath as a process … 
  20. Not Just a Witness
     … That, the Buddha said, is how the Dhamma is nourished.
  21. Break Things Down
     … Sariputta about what it means to fathom the Dhamma. Sariputta is quiet for a while. Then the Buddha asks him, “Have you seen that ‘this has come to be’?” That’s when Sariputta launches into quite a long discourse on seeing things as they’ve come to be—as individual events in the mind, individual habits, individual qualities in the mind. You see that … 
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