… According to Buddhaghosa, the ancient Sinhalese commentaries mention several ways for making a storage space of this sort, but he himself recommends this: When starting construction of the storage place, after the foundation has been laid, a group of bhikkhus should gather around and, as the first post is being put in place, say (not in unison),
“Kappiya-kuṭiṁ karoma (We make this allowable …
… Breath Meditation
12 Taking a Stance
13 The Joy of Effort
14 Experimental Intelligence
15 The Path of Mistakes
16 A Post by the Ocean
17 The Active Truth
18 The Middleness of the Path
19 The Grass at the Gate
20 A Magic Set of Tools
21 Perception
22 Little Things
23 Stepping Back
24 Generosity First
25 Self Esteem
26 Goodwill All …
… If there’s a dog barking in the middle of the road, kick it off to one side.
§ Barking dogs don’t bite. Silent dogs might, so watch out.
§ Ears that listen to gossip are the ears of a pitcher, not the ears of a person.
§ Don’t believe everything you hear. If they say you’re a dog, check to see for yourself …
… Ask yourself, “Where do you feel it most clearly now?” Try to stay
with that, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the
out-. And if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, you
can change: Make it faster, slower, shorter, more shallow, heavier,
lighter. Try to get in touch with what feels good right now …
… The Buddha discovered that the way you attend to sensory contact is determined by your views about what’s important: the questions you bring to each experience, the problems you want to solve. If there were no problems in life, you could open yourself up choicelessly to whatever came along. But the fact is there is a big problem smack dab in the middle …
… This is why the Buddha said his path is admirable in the beginning,
admirable in the middle, and admirable in the end, because it requires
us to be responsible all the way through.
… The first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, and the last one doesn’t see. In the same way, the statement of the brahmans turns out to be comparable to a row of blind men, as it were: The first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, and the last one doesn’t see. So what do …
… good family has gone forth in this way, he is covetous, with strong passion for sensual desires, with a mind of ill will, of corrupt resolves, his mindfulness muddled, unalert, unconcentrated, his mind distracted, loose in his sense faculties. Just as a log from a funeral pyre, burning at both ends, smeared with excrement in the middle, fills no use as timber either in …
… That way—when, in the course of the day,
something difficult comes up, either from outside or inside—you go to
the breath, and surrounding the breath are thoughts about the Buddha,
the Dhamma, the Sangha, thoughts about the brahma-viharas, to give you
some perspective on the issue facing you. That way, as you stay with
the breath, you’re not simply hiding …
… In other
words, you tell yourself to focus on the breath in a certain way, to
work with the breath a certain way, then you do it, and then you have
to evaluate the results—one, to make sure you’re doing things the way
you tell yourself to do, and when the results don’t come out, you have
to figure out why …
… This is another example in how the Buddha’s teaching is the middle way
that steps outside of the either/or that so many people in society
present us with. It steps out by framing the issue in a totally new
way. The Buddha’s question is: Do you want to be free? That’s in line
with the example he gives. He left …
… You want sights, sounds, smells, tastes,
tactile sensations to be this way, and they’re not that way.
Sometimes the pleasures and pains come from your desire to gain
awakening. Those, the Buddha said, are actually useful. There’s the
pain that comes when you realize, “Okay, there’s awakening out there
and I haven’t gotten there yet.” He says not to try …
… As
we say in the chant, it’s admirable in the beginning, admirable in the
middle, admirable in the end. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s
easy, but it’s admirable all the way.
… This gives you an island that gets you out of the
flood for a bit, but you’re still in the middle of the river. You
haven’t made it all the way across. But it gives you something to hold
on to in the meantime.
So you want to be really good at this. As Ajaan Lee used to say, the
people who …
… It doesn’t involve doing anything demeaning, and it doesn’t involve
anything less than honorable, which is why the Buddha said that it’s
admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the
end. It’s good all the way through.
… We think in these ways as a way of getting the mind to finally settle
down.
Ajaan Maha Boowa’s image is of two different kinds of trees.
Undirected meditation, he says, is like a tree out in the middle of a
meadow. If you want to cut it down, it doesn’t involve much
calculation as to which direction you should cut it …
… People learned the Dhamma by listening to it
and memorizing it, and there was a very systematic way of memorizing
long passages of Dhamma.
We’ve lost that ability now. Our memories get shorter and shorter
because we get more and more dependent on gadgets to keep things in
mind for us. Which is sad, because those gadgets are not going to be
with …
… There’s another passage in the texts where they talk about how once
you settle down, you remind yourself that here you are out in the
middle of a very quiet countryside, not quite wilderness here, but
it’s quiet. All the issues related to back home, if they come up in
your mind, aren’t really related to anything around you. Issues coming …
Adult Dhamma
March 5, 2015
I was reading a review of a short-story collection recently, in which the reviewer was noting that although the author wasn’t experimental in the way she structured her stories, she was revolutionary or radical in that she treated her characters like adults, and her readers like adults. Unfortunately, that’s pretty rare.
The same observation applies to …
… There is another passage where the Buddha talks about the way beings wander on in this world. It’s like throwing a stick up into the air. Sometimes it lands on this end, sometimes it lands on that end, sometimes it lands splat in the middle. No real pattern. No real direction. This doesn’t mean that life is hopeless. But it means simply …
Monastery Buildings & Property | The Buddhist Monastic Code, Volumes I & II
… According to Buddhaghosa, the ancient Sinhalese commentaries mention several ways for making a storage space of this sort, but he himself recommends this: When starting construction of the storage place, after the foundation has been laid, a group of bhikkhus should gather around and, as the first post is being put in place, say (not in unison), “Kappiya-kuṭiṁ karoma (We make this allowable …
Talk collections | dhammatalks.org
… Breath Meditation 12 Taking a Stance 13 The Joy of Effort 14 Experimental Intelligence 15 The Path of Mistakes 16 A Post by the Ocean 17 The Active Truth 18 The Middleness of the Path 19 The Grass at the Gate 20 A Magic Set of Tools 21 Perception 22 Little Things 23 Stepping Back 24 Generosity First 25 Self Esteem 26 Goodwill All …
MN 95 Caṅkī Sutta | With Caṅkī
… The first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, and the last one doesn’t see. In the same way, the statement of the brahmans turns out to be comparable to a row of blind men, as it were: The first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, and the last one doesn’t see. So what do …
