Search results for: "Dhamma"
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- Balanced Meditation… Recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. Recollection of relinquishment, recollection of virtue. The qualities that make people into devas—that’s a recollection. Recollection of death. Mindfulness immersed in the body. Mindfulness of breathing. And the recollection of the peace of nibbana. These are good topics to know for when you’ve got specific problems coming up. In other words, when you …
- The World of the Noble Truths… We’re talking about how the Dhamma has an attha, which is a Pāḷi word that means “meaning,” “goal,” “benefit.” This world of the four noble truths delivers you to that attha, that benefit, that goal. They find their meaning in taking you there. So try to look at your actions in the context of that view, that world—because then you know what …
- A Handful of Leaves… You may have read books, you may have heard nice ideas and Dhamma talks, but unless you really take care of this problem inside you, there will always be problems. Once you do take care of this, the problems are gone. Nothing weighs on the mind. There will be the stress of having a body. The body will grow old, get sick and die …
- Not Getting What You Want… And of course, it’s not going to work with the Dhamma. You can’t play the reverse of Barney the Dinosaur, saying, “Well, if I don’t want something strong enough, then it’ll come.” You learn how to cultivate skillful desires and then apply them in a skillful way. So those desires there in suffering can actually be cultivated wisely: The desires …
- Calm in the Storm… There’s a Dhamma talk where Ajaan Lee talks about the breath energy that starts at the soles of the feet and goes up the legs, up the spine, up through the skull, and out through the top of the head. That strengthens your back. So there’s a lot you can play with. The discoveries about what your body needs never seem to …
- Shaping Your Breath, Shaping Your Life… In his Dhamma talks, though, Ajaan Lee gives other instructions. When you breathe in, think of the energy coming from the navel up the front of the body; then from the feet, up the legs, and up the back, up the spine, up to the skull. The lesson you can draw from all this is that imagining the breath to yourself in different ways …
- Four Noble Questions… When you ask yourself what’s the suffering right now, where’s the stress, he tells you to look right there, at the five clinging-aggregates, so that you’re not just casting around and having to reinvent the Dhamma wheel every time you ask the question. How are you going to see these aggregates? When you develop the path. That’s why we …
- Intelligence of the Heart… I’ve heard Dhamma talks by some ajaans—Western ajaans, not the Thai ajaans —saying that you’re not supposed to judge anything at all, have no value judgments at all. But judgments are what discernment is all about: what’s worth doing, what’s not worth doing. “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when …
- Ingenuity… That’s how they gained a greater and greater sense of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha as their refuge. The sense of refuge is made really palpable when you’re meditating in a dangerous forest. What have you got? The forest monks have no weapons, and the forests are full of dangers. In Thailand, they don’t have that romantic sense of …
- Goodwill & Heedfulness… In fact, I was reading recently a Dhamma teacher saying that most people don’t have enough time when they’re on weeklong metta retreats to think about anybody else, so they should focus all of their goodwill on themselves as a healing process. If you have trouble wishing for your own true happiness, then you may want to spend extra time here. But …
- Trust in Heedfulness… The Buddha once said this was his one prerequisite for someone he would take on as a student: “Bring me someone who’s honest,” he said, “and no deceiver, and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma.” So we have to learn to make ourselves trustworthy people, because no matter what promises you get from outside, the test is inside. This is another function …
- Dharma Medicine… You don’t really need his Dhamma anymore. But as long as the mind still has its suffering, still has its greed, anger, and delusions, it still needs medicine. He provides the medicine with some instructions on how to use it, but it’s up to us to figure out when it’s beneficial and when it’s timely and how to apply it …
- Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening… fact that life, human life is so rare, so hard to come by, what would you do? The king’s answer is, what else could you do but to practice the Dhamma? Now, that’s not the answer of someone who believes that life is just a one-shot deal. It’s the answer of someone who believes that there is something that lasts …
- Exploring What You’ve Got… But the message of the Dhamma is, “Look at what you’ve already got and make the best use of that.” What have you got sitting here right here, right now? You’ve got the body and the mind. That’s all you need: the body sitting here breathing, the mind thinking and aware. You put all those things together so they develop. It …
- Guardian Meditations… The ideas we pick up from the Dhamma talks we hear, the ideas we pick up from the books are the beginnings of what we can do, but you’re going to have to learn to work your own variations on them. And in doing so, your discernment becomes *your *discernment. It’s not borrowed goods any more. It’s something you’ve learned …
- Noble Treasures… You learn about the teachings of the Dhamma as best you can. You don’t have to learn about all of them, but enough to give yourself guidance. It’s one of the reasons why we chant so often, because these phrases get into your head and they’ll pop up sometimes right when you need them—reflections on the body; reflections on aging …
- Wisdom Through Training… We talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, but what that means is taking them as examples so that we can develop their qualities in the mind, and those qualities that we develop in the mind are our real refuge. There’s another statement in the Canon: The self is its own mainstay. But you can be your mainstay …
- A Noble Path… I’ll teach you the Dhamma.” Then he went on to say, “Any teaching that has the noble eightfold path will have people who are awakened.” It’s one of those rare cases that where, having put a question aside, he actually answered it. He said, “It’s only here in this teaching that you’re going to find this path.” So this is …
- Endurance & Restraint… Nine months after his awakening, he now had more than a thousand students to go out and help him teach, to spread the Dhamma. So it’s an event that we remember, along with Visākha Pūjā, on which we remember the night of his awakening, and Āsāḷha Pūjā, on which we remember the day he gave his first sermon and gained his first disciple …
- A Larger Perspective… When the Buddha created a catechism, a series of questions for teaching basic Dhamma concepts—“What is one? What is two” all the way up to What is ten?—his most interesting question and answer was, “What is one?” The answer: “All beings subsist on food.” We’re out here feeding. This is what it means to be a being. You have to feed …
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