Search results for: "Dhamma"

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  2. Gather Around the Breath
     … You can think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. If you’re having doubts about your ability to do this practice, remind yourself of the good things you’ve done in the past: the times you’ve been generous, the times you’ve been principled in your actions when it was a challenge. Or you can think about death. That’s one of … 
  3. Learning from What You Do
     … Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the Dhamma wheel every time you make a decision. The Buddha gives you some help by laying out the precepts But there are a lot of subtle areas in the mind that you have to test for yourself. And you are concerned about outcome. You are concerned about results—because this is how you learn. The model … 
  4. Breath Meditation: The Third Tetrad
     … Think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha. You can think about your past virtue, your past generosity, things that you find uplifting. Then you can come back to the breath, but this time with a better state of mind. If, however, the mind is feeling overly excited, overly energetic, then you want to figure out how to breathe in a way that … 
  5. Anupassana
     … One tetrad deals with the breath, one tetrad with feelings, another with mind, another with dhammas—in other words, the four frames of reference in the establishing of mindfulness. In each case, you get sensitive to the fact that that particular thing is being fabricated, and then you play with it to heighten that sense, “Oh yes, this really is something that I’m … 
  6. The Fourth Noble Truth
     … Everything we do when we’re talking about the Dhamma is all part of the practice. And all the factors come together here where the mind can observe itself carefully in stillness and see what’s worth holding onto and what’s not, letting go of what’s not—to the point where it doesn’t have to hold onto anything. That’s the … 
  7. Right Next to Ignorance
     … You might think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. Think about your generosity. Think about your virtue. In times like this, you want to think about how good it has been, the times when you actually were able to carry through with the precepts when it was difficult, or you were able to be generous when it was difficult, to give you a … 
  8. Negotiating with Death
     … The Buddha never simply takes categories from his culture and imposes them on the Dhamma. His attitude was that when they’re useful, he’ll take them. And he lists them in ways that are really helpful. The same with the four frames of reference that we practice in establishing mindfulness: body, feelings, mind, mental qualities. Feeling there is one of the difficult ones … 
  9. Change Your Perceptions
     … There’s so much fatalism in the way that the Dhamma is taught in the West—saying that you simply have to accept whatever comes up. Part of this may be traced back to the commentaries when they talk about dependent co-arising as having to span three lifetimes. Your ignorance in this lifetime will then cause birth in another lifetime, and then the … 
  10. Appropriate Attention
     … He said appropriate attention, something we hardly ever hear of in Dhamma talks. “Attention” means how you frame the issue, how you frame the way you approach the present moment, how you look at things, the questions you ask. This attention can either be appropriate in terms of putting an end to suffering or inappropriate if it’s not effective at all, if it … 
  11. Imagine
     … Without this stability and familiarity, your insights are simply ideas you’ve heard from Dhamma talks, read in books, notions you’ve picked up from outside. They don’t seep deep into the mind because the mind hasn’t softened up the territory here in the present moment. Only through the practice of concentration can the hardness in the present moment begin to soften … 
  12. The Brightness of Life
     … It’s one of the realizations that come with what they call the opening of the Dhamma Eye: The Buddha knew what he was talking about. This really is unconditioned. It really is the end of suffering. There is a brightness to the world. There’s a brightness in life. This is where it is. This is why the effort put into the practice … 
  13. Always Willing to Learn
     … And again, as you’re meditating, learn which areas of the Dhamma apply to which phase of the emotional waves you go through. In the beginning stages where the wave is still subtle, you can apply the four noble truths: look for the stress, look for the craving and the clinging, and do what you can to let go of that craving and clinging … 
  14. Hold on to Your Frame of Reference
     … That’s what you’re going to need in order to remember all the lessons—either the lessons you’ve learned by listening to the Dhamma, or the one’s you’ve learned by observing your actions and their results, on your own. It’s only by developing this quality that you can really stay with the practice and not lose it. Someone once … 
  15. When You Practice on Your Own
     … Many people listening to the Dhamma in this way would gain their first taste of awakening. There were other people, though, whom the Buddha would treat more harshly. There’s the time when he was walking with a group of monks and they came across a huge bonfire by the side of the road. He went down from the road and sat down by … 
  16. People Suffer from Their Thinking
     … So the purpose of the Dhamma is to help give you a perspective that will help you step back and look at these issues in the long-term. Get a better sense of what’s really important in life and what’s not important in life. The Buddha talks about four Guardian Meditations. These are things to think about if you have trouble getting … 
  17. Mindfulness the Gatekeeper
     … Fortunately, the young monk had been studying the Dhamma, and as soon as he heard the word “duty,” he thought of the duties of the four noble truths. He was developing the thoughts instead of letting them go. Or you might say, whatever it was that was causing the thoughts, he was trying to let to go of the thoughts without letting go of … 
  18. The Second Frame of Reference
     … These aren’t just things written in books, or words in Dhamma talks. They’re things you can actually find inside.
  19. The Raft of Concepts
     … People often come to the Dhamma thinking that we’re here to get beyond concepts. But they run into concepts in the Buddha’s teachings, and therefore they feel that the Buddha’s being inconsistent. What’s inconsistent, though, is their misunderstanding. The Buddha never says that we have to drop concepts from the very beginning. He says you use concepts to get beyond … 
  20. But Not Sick in Mind
     … You try to think, “Well, what are the basic principles for dealing with a problem of this sort?” And if you come up with a solution, then even though it’s not in the books, it still counts as Dhamma. So you want to exercise your ability to think about the basic principles and then figure out how to apply them right here, right … 
  21. Factors for Awakening
     … The word dhamma, qualities, can also mean events or actions, and here we’re particularly looking at mental actions. Look at your actions and see what you’re doing: where there’s stress; what you did to aggravate that stress; what you could do to undercut it, i.e., how you abandon the cause. You follow these questions all the way to the questions … 
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