Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. A Good Independent Self
     … But you’ve got to take that role back—and make it serve the Dhamma. So here you’re talking to yourself about the breath. Talk to yourself about how well the mind is settling down with the breath. What can be done to fix the breath if they’re not settling down together? What can be done to the mind? That’s useful … 
  3. Attachment vs. Affection
     … In other words, introduce them to the practice of the Dhamma in as diplomatic a way as possible. Most parents resent their children trying to teach them, so you have to learn to do this in an indirect way. Some also resent the B-word, so you don’t have to couch these teachings as Buddhist. But you do have that special debt, and … 
  4. Compunction
     … These two qualities are also listed in the five strengths of a person in training—in other words, the strengths of someone who’s given rise to the Dhamma eye, the first taste of awakening. These are qualities that get built into that person’s character from that point on. They’re also listed as treasures, and in the Buddha’s image of the … 
  5. At Home with the Breath
    One of the traditional terms for concentration practice is vihāra-dhamma, a home for the mind, a dwelling for the mind. The verbs for different states of jhāna show what you do: You enter and dwell. You make yourself at home. So here’s the breath, coming in and going out. That’s going to be your home for the next hour. And as … 
  6. Judging Your Meditation
     … The Buddha once said that that was the primary prerequisite for learning the Dhamma: that you be truthful, both with other people and with yourself. So when you have these qualities of patience and truthfulness, which hopefully you’ve developed through the meditation, you’re in a much better position to read what’s going on and to decide for yourself what’s working … 
  7. A Happiness Without Boundaries
     … When we talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, we’re taking them as examples as to how to find true happiness, how to develop the skills inside that lead to happiness. So. The Buddha. We talk about his three major virtues: wisdom, purity, and compassion. They all come from learning how to find happiness in a responsible way … 
  8. Lessons from the Buddha’s Awakening
     … The Buddha said the Dhamma is whatever is in line with what he taught. For example, he taught that things arise and pass away. The later teachings came out and said, “No, nothing arises. Nothing passes away. It’s all a great oneness.” But if everything were a great oneness, what are we doing here? The Buddha said of the things that arise and … 
  9. The Dignity of Restraint
     … Several years back I gave a Dhamma talk in which I happened to mention the word “dignity.” After the talk, a woman in the audience who had emigrated from Russia came to me and said that she had never heard Americans use the word “dignity” before. She had learned it when she studied English over in Russia, but she never heard people use it … 
  10. An Inside Job
     … This is why you might say the whole practice of the Dhamma is an inside job. The problem is something that’s sensed only from within: your suffering. And the solution comes from understanding how you experience things from within and how you can clear away all the fabrications and find something unfabricated within. At that point, there are no more doubts. You might … 
  11. Motivation
     … There has to be a passion for the Dhamma, the desire to do this well, to stick with it all the way through. So as you’re practicing, if you find that often your motivation begins to lag, you’ve got to learn how to motivate yourself and generate some more desire. In some cases, it’s through comforting yourself with the thought that … 
  12. Abandoning Effluents (2)
     … What is our purpose in eating? What is our purpose in using clothing, using shelter, using medicine? You want to make sure the purpose is in line with the Dhamma, because, again, your purpose in using these things will have an effect on the mind and on the world. If you eat more than you really have to, you’re placing a burden on … 
  13. Truth as Medicine
     … And you can learn from reading the books, listening to the Dhamma, a lot of good general principles. But the time will come when you have to learn how to apply this to your own mind. This relates to old-fashioned medicine as well. The doctor in those old days wouldn’t give you a shot. He’d say, “Okay, these are the leaves … 
  14. Suffering Comes from What You’re Doing
     … Because you want to see, “What can I do to bring the mind to settle down? What can I do with the breath? How do I think about the breath?” And what’s the role of desire in all this? As the Buddha said, all dhammas are rooted in desire, which means all things good and bad that you can do. So you have … 
  15. A Well-thatched Roof
     … You even see it in some modern Dhamma teachers. They don’t like the four noble truths. They tell us that they’re not noble. They tell us that they’re not truths. They tell us that the word for origination doesn’t mean origination; it means result. In other words, suffering results in craving. But that doesn’t give you any idea of … 
  16. Pleasures & Pains on the Middle Way
     … It’s the same here as you practice the Dhamma. Certain pleasures you’ve got to give up because they’re going to get in the way. There may not be anything inherently bad in them, but you find that if you indulge in them, they induce unskillful states of mind. Other pleasures are not harmful at all; other pleasures are actually helpful—like … 
  17. What We’re Here to See
     … The Buddha mentions this in his descriptions of dhammas as a frame of reference. You want to notice, when mindfulness isn’t present, how it can be made present; when concentration isn’t present, how it can be made present—you want to see the stages, see the steps—and when these things are present, what you can do to maintain them and develop … 
  18. A Meditation Karma Checklist
     … It’s useful to look at it from the point of view as a type of karma because the Buddha provides lots of different ways of analyzing karma both in the Dhamma and in the Vinaya. They can provide useful checklists for when the meditation is not going right. You can ask yourself: What’s missing? What aspect is going wrong? The Vinaya has … 
  19. The Power of Truth
     … And this is one of the reasons why the two words, Dhamma and attha, go together so often in the Canon. Attha is not only the meaning of the words, but also the goal to which they aim, the profit and benefits they bring about. So when you ask about the attha of a teaching, you’re asking both about the meaning of the … 
  20. Right Livelihood
     … No matter how much Dhamma you may have read or how precise your understanding of the intricacies of the Buddha’s teachings, when the time comes to feed, you’re going to go back and feed on the same old roadkill you’ve been feeding on all your life. It’s like Ajaan Chah’s simile: Westerners, he once said, are like vultures. When … 
  21. Fear of Letting Go
     … When he dies, he’s going to have to leave everything, all his riches, behind. **Then he comes against the Dhamma summary that says, “The world is a slave to craving.” Of course, kings don’t like to be called slaves. So he asks, “What does this mean?” Raṭṭhapāla asks him in return, “If there were a kingdom to the east, and someone came … 
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