Search results for: "Dhamma"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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