… the buying, selling, and trading of various objects for the convenience of those who desire them, as a way of exchanging ease, convenience, and comfort with one another – on high and low levels, involving high and low-quality goods, between people of high, low, and middling intelligence. This should be conducted in honesty and fairness so that all receive their share of convenience and …
… Aging, illness, and death are its shadows or effects that show by way of the body. When we want to kill our enemy and so take a knife to stab his shadow, how is he going to die? In the same way, ignorant people try to destroy the shadows of stress and don’t get anywhere. As for the essence of stress in the …
… We go that
way.” And for a third time, the Blessed One said, “This,
Nāgasamāla, is the route. We go this way.”
Then Ven. Nāgasamāla, placing the Blessed One’s bowl & robes
right there on the ground, left, saying, “This, Lord Blessed One,
is the bowl & robes.”
Then as Ven. Nāgasamāla was going along that route,
thieves—jumping out in the middle of the …
… It may be built into the
way you’re acting, but it can be removed from the way you act. And
tackling that kind of suffering is an area where you can make a
difference.
That’s where the Buddha focused. He didn’t take on all the suffering
in the world—which is another misconception you hear around: that the
Buddha said he …
… He is called awakened.”6
Then Sabhiya the wanderer—delighting in and approving of the Blessed One’s words—gratified, joyful, exultant, enraptured & happy, asked the Blessed One a further question:
“Having attained what
is one said to be a brahman?
In what way is one a contemplative,
and how is one ‘washed’?
How is one called a nāga?
Answer, Blessed One, when I …
… Stay with
them all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-.
This is where mindfulness gets developed because you have to keep
remembering you’re going to stay right here with the sensation of the
breathing. You’re not going to allow yourself to slip off. If you do
slip off, then as soon as you notice it, come …
… Either his buffalo will get bogged down or else he’ll trip over the bag and fall flat on his face right there in the middle of the field. The field will never get plowed, the rice will never get sown, the crop will never get gathered. He’ll have to go hungry.
This is the way our practice of the Dhamma tends to …
… This message was aimed directly at the monks—on the grounds that they had no family to attend to them, so they should care for one another—but it’s phrased in such a way that the message applies indirectly to lay people as well: When you belong to a family, you’re duty-bound to look after the aged, ill, or dying members …
… If we don’t see them clearly, don’t take them to heart, and don’t try to find a way out, there’s no way we can put an end to what causes our fears. Just like the deer: if it’s complacent about the hunter’s headlights, it’s going to end up strapped to the fender for sure.
So to genuinely …
… And you, monks, are very helpful to brahmans & householders, as you teach them the Dhamma admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, & admirable in the end, as you expound the holy life both in letter & meaning, entirely complete, surpassingly pure. In this way the holy life is lived in mutual dependence, for the purpose of crossing over the flood, for making a right …
… The first thing that you have to understand about pain is that some of it comes from your actions in the past—such as the way you’ve been using your body, the way you’ve been feeding it, the extent to which you have or haven’t been exercising it—but some of the causes for the pain are things you’re doing …
… Other issues are problems that have to be settled in a formal way. Duty-issues, however, are formal ways of settling problems. They themselves, as Community transactions, are problems only in the sense that they have to be conducted strictly according to the correct formal pattern. If they aren’t, they are invalid, open to question, and have to be conducted again.
When a …
… There’s the way
the energy flows in your body when you’re angry, as opposed to the way
it flows when you’re feeling lust, or how it flows when you’re feeling
fear. There are the thoughts that contribute to that particular
emotion. The way you evaluate the situation around you: That’s
contributing to your emotion. And the feelings and perceptions …
… Ānanda: “Master Ānanda, is there any one monk endowed in each & every way with the qualities with which Master Gotama—worthy & rightly self-awakened—was endowed?”
“No, brahman, there isn’t any one monk endowed in each & every way with the qualities with which the Blessed One—worthy & rightly self-awakened—was endowed. For the Blessed One was the arouser of the unarisen path …
… between heedless and heedful ways of living, and ends with the final attainment of total mastery. On the other hand, the plot must not show smooth, systematic progress; otherwise the work would turn into a treatise. There must be reversals and diversions to maintain interest. This principle is at work in the fairly unsystematic ordering of the Dhammapada’s middle sections. Verses dealing with …
… Sometimes it lands on its base, sometimes on its tip, sometimes smack on its middle. We’re slippery characters, changing roles all the time [§41].
20. As a summary, what would be a good way to teach children some healthy lessons about kamma?
You might try the lessons the Buddha gave to his own son, Rāhula [§42].
First he taught Rāhula how important it …
… Learn to open your mind to other ways of conceiving and
perceiving the breath. Ajaan Lee talks about the breath coming in and
out of the back of the skull, in and out the middle of the chest, lots
of different spots in the body. Allow yourself to conceive the breath
in that way and see what happens to your experience of breathing as …
… This is the way it is with us; this is the way it is with other people.
When you see the truth in this way, the mind gives rise to disenchantment because it sees clearly that every thing of every sort simply arises and changes, and when it changes it disbands. The mind can let go and stay neutral, and the path arises. The …
… Another fetter is uncertainty—doubts and hesitation, running back and forth, not knowing which way to go and ending up spinning around along with the world.
Once we know the ways of the body and mind, we’ll be released from these fetters. The mind will gain release from the body and shed the fermentations of defilement. This is called knowledge of the end …
… There are now
monk disciples of mine of middle standing. There are now junior
monk disciples of mine. There are now elder nun disciples of
mine… nun disciples of mine of middle standing… junior nun
disciples of mine… male lay disciples of mine, householders
wearing white, following the celibate life… male lay disciples of
mine, householders wearing white, partaking of sensuality… female
lay disciples …
The Path | Basic Themes
… the buying, selling, and trading of various objects for the convenience of those who desire them, as a way of exchanging ease, convenience, and comfort with one another – on high and low levels, involving high and low-quality goods, between people of high, low, and middling intelligence. This should be conducted in honesty and fairness so that all receive their share of convenience and …
Sn 3:6 Sabhiya
… He is called awakened.”6 Then Sabhiya the wanderer—delighting in and approving of the Blessed One’s words—gratified, joyful, exultant, enraptured & happy, asked the Blessed One a further question: “Having attained what is one said to be a brahman? In what way is one a contemplative, and how is one ‘washed’? How is one called a nāga? Answer, Blessed One, when I …
