Search results for: "Dhamma"
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- Working Hypotheses… There’s a lot more to the Dhamma than you can get your head around—if you haven’t practiced. And even when you do practice, it’s not just a matter of getting your head around it. It’s a matter of getting your whole head and body around it, your whole being around it. As the Buddha says, you *see *it with …
- Right Learning… That’s the Dhamma at that point. If a particular teaching doesn’t apply, put it aside. It’s not what you need at that particular time. But when you put it aside, don’t throw it away. Have it there handy for whenever you need it. Like the teaching on karma: The Buddha said basically that our experience of the present moment is …
- Inner Negotiating Skills… Ajaan Maha Boowa apparently once gave a Dhamma talk on people’s addictions to lottery that had his preceptor laughing so hard he couldn’t stop. Ajaan Mun liked to play with words, with a point. And he had a good sense of humor about his defilements—which is what humor is for. It’s useful, when you see your defilements, to be able …
- Effective Self-Discipline… And where are we told to look?—“Look at your breath and just keep looking at your breath.” But as Ajaan Lee says in one of his Dhamma talks, great things start out from little things. Trees come from little seeds. People come from little tiny, tiny embryos. And it’s your sensitivity to the breath that’s going to develop the discernment that …
- Spread Goodness Around… Years back I was going to be giving a Dhamma talk on Buddhist ideas on the pursuit of happiness. The afternoon before I gave the talk, I happened to visit one of my old college professors, whose field was Christian ethics. He asked me what the talk that night was going to be about. And knowing the type of person he was, he wanted …
- Tranquility & Insight in Tandem… The words are helpful, but there’s a lot of the Dhamma that’s not in words. It’s in seeing the movements of the mind. That’s what the teachings on inconstancy or anicca are all about. It’s not that we say, “Oh gee, everything in the world is inconstant,” and leave it at that. We want to see particularly: Where’s …
- Circumspection… He says, “That’s the difference between a true person and an untrue person.” He asked for one quality in his students. “Bring me,” he said, “a person who’s honest and no deceiver, and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma.” After all, it’s our ability to deceive not only others, but also ourselves that’s the big issue in the practice …
- Skills to Make You Free… Be at home here.” After all, he calls this vihara dhamma, a dwelling place for the mind. When you get a home, you don’t just run into the house and then run out. You go into the house, you decorate it, you make it a home, and then you can stay there. You can rest. As you stay there, you start learning things …
- Heedfulness… As the Buddha said, you get the most out of a Dhamma talk when you don’t have too low an opinion of yourself, as when you tell yourself that “The things I’m listening to are too difficult, they’re beyond me—so I’ll just listen.” The talk is meant for you to listen to and then to look into your mind …
- Refuge for All Beings… the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha are refuges for all beings. There are no questions asked, like: What is your past? What have you done to the Buddha in the past? The Buddha had to teach people who had mistreated him in the past but he didn’t hold it against them. He taught them how to put an end to suffering. They …
- Body Contemplation Is Compassionate… And ideally, when you actually see the Dhamma, have a glimpse of the deathless, that eradicates a lot of your fear about what’s going to happen after death. The Canon makes a distinction between the fear of death that’s associated with the pain and illness that may lead up to death, and the fear of what’s going to happen after death …
- Off the Continuum… That’s the actual wheel in the wheel of Dhamma. Back at the time of the Buddha, a “wheel” was a series of variables, listing all their possible combinations and permutations. In this case, the variables are the four noble truths, and the three levels of knowledge appropriate to each: knowledge of the truth itself, knowledge of the duty or task you have to …
- Common Sense… He said, “Bring me someone who’s observant, who’s truthful and no deceiver, and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma.” In other words, you don’t deceive others about what you’re doing and you don’t deceive yourself. If you want to see the truth, if you want to know the truth, you have to be true, you have to be …
- Four Bases of Success… In fact, the Buddha says all dhammas are rooted in desire. There’s no way you’re going to be able to practice a path without having a desire. It’s simply a matter of, one, focusing the desire properly on the right goal; and then two, after you’ve chosen the goal, focusing on the path that leads there. If you spend all …
- A Healthy Attitude Toward Happiness… Every year they would have a large Dhamma talk at the end. They’d either invite a senior monk from Bangkok or they’d invite one of the great ajaans from the forest to give the closing talk. That year it was the turn for the senior monk from Bangkok. Everybody was there in the hall, waiting for him to come, when the phone …
- Strength Training… Recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. The four sublime attitudes. Recollection of death for when you’re getting lazy. You don’t know when death is going to come. We make plans in our life, we have to make plans in life, but at the same time, we have to realize that those plans could be blown out of the water …
- Hold on for All You’re Worth… You read the Dhamma talks of the great ajaans in Thailand, and a lot of them are just that: encouragement, encouragement, encouragement. Here they were children of farmers in one of the poorest parts of Thailand, and as far as the Thai society was concerned, there was nothing you could expect much from these people except to exploit them, but they didn’t let …
- Willing to Learn… Again, the Buddha gives help, he gives pointers, but figuring out exactly when to use which dhamma teaching: That’s something we have to learn how to observe for ourselves. So the principles are all laid out. If you see in yourself any habits that are causing stress and suffering, you work to let go of them. Or any mental states that you know …
- Capable… You realize that true happiness is not going to come through your simply sitting here waiting for it to come, or accepting things as they are, or reading and thinking about the Dhamma. There are things that have to be developed; there are things that have to be abandoned. You see that, you realize that, so you realize you’re going to get the …
- Getting Yourself… As Ajaan Suwat himself once said, one of Ajaan Mun’s favorite topics for a Dhamma talk would be the customs of the noble ones. One thing we tend to forget, when we look at the Thai Forest tradition that seems so very Thai, is that as Ajaan Mun and Ajaan Sao were setting out, they were going against a lot of traditions that …
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