Meditation With Movement
Quotations from Previous Weeks

Apr 11^th, 2025

The fine art of failure

You may have a fixed idea of what you're experiencing, such as dread, anger, or disappointment. But when you let yourself be present with the feeling and experience it directly, you find that you can't pin it down so easily. That "dread" or "anger" keeps morphing and shifting and changing. Even though its unpleasantness haunts you, even though it feels so threatening, when you look hard you discover that you can't really find anything substantial.

The ego wants resolution, wants to control impermanence, wants something secure and certain to hold on to. It freezes what is actually fluid, it grasps at what is in motion, it tries to escape the beautiful truth of the fully alive nature of everything. As a result, we feel dissatisfied, haunted, threatened. We spend much of our time in a cage created by our own fear of discomfort.

The alternative to this struggle is to train in holding the rawness of vulnerability in our heart. Through this practice, we can eventually accustom our nervous systems to relaxing with the truth, to relaxing with the impermanent, uncontrollable nature of things. We can slowly increase our ability to expand rather than contract, to let go rather than cling.

Every time we practice holding the rawness of vulnerability in our heart, we gain a little insight into how things really are. We experience directly how nothing ever stays the same, even for a moment. We can't make anything stand still, even if we try. What we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think about is constantly changing. Even our heaviest, most unpleasant emotions have no solidity to them.

Pema Chodron, Welcoming the Unwelcome, pp.32-33

Apr 4^th, 2025

The Nature of Mind is Divine

The true nature of mind is divine because it is without suffering - it is supreme bliss. The bliss, joy, and happiness that we feel when we drop into deep states of meditation - when we come home to our deepest sense of ourselves - is different from the relative happiness we feel in the ordinary world conditioned by circumstances. This experience of the divine infused with bliss is not a transitory feeling. It is a joy and contentment that are inherently within your own mind beyond the duality and constructs of your thinking. It is like a gold nugget at the core of your being that may have mud around it. It may be hiding beneath your obscuratios, but it is not sullied by them...

Experiencing the divine nature of your own mind is like stepping off the edge into the abyss, and when you finally do, you realize that there is no ground beneath you; there is just infinite and loving space where all aspects of yourself are welcomed... I call this the abliss. When standing at the threshold of the small self's dissolution, remember that the abyss is bliss.

Chandra Easton, Embodying Tara: Twenty-One Manifestations to Awaken Your Innate Wisdom pp. 13-14

Mar 28^th, 2025

Realization: The Flowering of Wisdom

What we see with insight is that all our aversion, our greed or our worry cluster around perceptions or impressions that we have.

They're not innate, and they're not self. For instance, when you dislike a person, the person in your mind is actually an accumulation of various impressions that irritate you. The perceptions that do otherwise are screened out. You don't remember the person's suffering, virtue or nobility; you remember their tardiness, greediness, or lack of cooperation. In this way you build up an identikit picture of a person based on a few perceptions. But if you step out of that through calming the mind, you can investigate and acknowledge the things you weren't noticing. Then it's clear that: 'This isn't a person, this is an impression of them I have created out of aversion? And as you look into that, you learn what your own mind can't tolerate; and as long as that remains the case, you are allowing that picture to have power over you.

You enquire, 'How has my mind gathered together this particular image?' Then you begin to understand that such perceptions are selective impressions based on pain and on not being in touch with, or not being able to handle, the wave of pain. So it gets stuck within us and can't pass. We're sensitive and don't like irritating things; but if we're not wise enough to acknowledge and let go, if we ignorantly shield ourselves from that irritation, these irritants get embedded into anxiety and aversion. You only get past them by looking into them, into how they're caused, and letting them pass through you.

Ajahn Sucitto, Parami, p 85-6

Mar 14^th, 2025

Overcoming Polarization

There are many ways to talk about the problems of this world, but one way or another, all of them have to do with polarization. We all have a tendency to divide people, things, and ideas into sharply contrasting categories, "us" and them," "right" and "wrong," "Worthy" and "unworthy." In this framework, there's not much room for a middle ground; everything is at one pole or another. When groups of people or whole nations get together around these concepts, they can become hugely magnified, which may result in large-scale suffering: discrimination, oppression, war.

These national and global problems have their roots in the subtle workings of our own individual minds. All of us, to our own degree, experience some feeling of opposition inside ourselves, with each other, and with the world around us. Were never quite satisfied with ourselves as we are, other people as they are, things as they are. Often, we feel this as an aversion to whatever we're experiencing. We don't like what's happening and we want to get rid of it. This can start out as a subtle level of aversion, which can grow into more obvious irritation. From there it may escalate into full-blown anger and hatred. Other times our feeling of opposition has to do with desire or craving. For instance, we may want an object or situation very badly because we think it will make us happy. But these desires are also based on seeing things as separate from us - seeing them as "other." In either case - aversion or desire - were caught in some form of polarization. Whether we are "for" or "against," there is a lack of openness and relaxation in our minds. If we observe ourselves closely, we'll probably discover that this is the case much of the time.

Fortunately, there are effective ways of working with our tendency to polarize. We can begin by self-reflecting and noticing the "for" or "against" quality of our thoughts, words, and actions. We can also notice and take joy in those moments when were not polarizing. Throughout the day we can ask ourselves: Am I perpetuating my sense of being in opposition? Or am I going against that tendency by lessening the gap between myself and the world? Am I increasing my sense of separateness from others? Or am I nurturing bodhichitta, the longing and commitment to wake up for the benefit of all living beings?

Pema Chodron, Welcoming the Unwelcome,pp. 30-31

Mar 7^th, 2025

Taking Care of Yourself, Taking Care of the Other

As children, our fathers and our mothers taught us how to breathe, how to walk, how to sit, how to eat, and how to speak. But when we come to the practice, we are reborn, as spiritual beings. So we have to learn how to breathe again, mindfully. We learn how to walk again, mindfully. We want to learn how to listen again, mindfully and with compassion.

We want to learn how to speak again, with the language of love, to honor our original commitment. "Darling, I suffer. I am angry. I want you to know it." This expresses faithfulness to your commitment. "Darling, I am doing my best. I am taking good care of my anger. For me and for you also. I don't want to explode, to destroy myself and destroy you. I am doing my best. I am putting into practice what I have learned from my teacher, from my sangha." This faithfulness will inspire respect and confidence in the other party. And "Darling, I need your help." This is a very strong statement, because usually when youre angry, you have the tendency to say, "I don't need you."

If you can say these three sentences with sincerity, from your heart, a transtormation will take place in the other person. You cannot doubt the effect of such a practice. You influence the other person to start practicing, too, just by your behavior. She will think, "He is faithful to me. He is keeping his commitment. He is trying to do his best. I must do the same."

So in taking good care of yourself, you take good care of your beloved one. Self-love is the foundation for your capacity to love the other person. If you don't take good care of yourself, if you are not happy, if you are not peaceful, you cannot make the other person happy. You cannot help the other person; you cannot love. Your capacity for loving another person depends entirely on your capacity for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger, pp 40-41

Feb 28^th, 2025

Becoming a Stable Vessel

Perhaps the most common misconception among Westerners is that Buddhism aims to negate the ego. This is a misunderstanding of emptiness and egolessness, which is more subtle than simply meaning we have no ego. This misunderstanding general arises from a failure to recognize the difference between relative and ultimate truth. The object of emptiness is not to negate the existence of the ego on a relative level, but to cut through ego-grasping. (Tib. dagdzin), which holds the ego to be a solid self-existent entity, an ultimate truth. When we erroneously negate the relative self, we are in danger of becoming nihilistic. If we are to function normally in a relative world, we need a stable sense of ego identity, a focus of awareness that cognizes, filters and understands the events of the day, both inner and outer. This enables even a highly evolved individual to say, "I am eating," "I am sitting," and so on. This "I" is a valid relative truth. Without it we can have severe psychological problems, and even go into psychosis where our normal sense of self is flooded by material coming from the unconscious.

The ego has two dimensions, which for most of us are not differentiated. One is healthy; the other is emotionally wounded. Problems arise when the ego is damaged through traumatic experiences particularly in childhood. Ego-identity gradually becomes overwhelmed by layer upon layer of emotionally held beliefs about the sense of "I" or "me." These are often painful wounds that we cling to and believe to be real and solid. We become fearful for our safety, and feel we are bad, wortheless, unlovable and so on. We cling to this core traumatized sense of "I" as absolute and permanent, and experience an powerful emotional feeling of "I" as bad, worthless, and so on. This is the emotional tone of ego-grasping which we instinctively cling to as through it were real and absolute. It is not therefore the ego that must be eliminated, but the ego-grasping that clings to these emotional wounds as absolutes.

Rob Preece, The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra, pp.21-22

Feb 21^st, 2025

Asking Why

WE ARE ALWAYS asking questions. What is the noise out-side? What are they doing in the kitchen? Why is she late? What happened today? And children ask questions from their very first word. Why? Why do you do that? Why is this so? Why is the sun up there? What makes it shine? What is the snow? Another question, and another, and coming from all the questions, more questions. An answer provokes another ques-tion. Each of us has questions: Why am I here? What am going to do about this aspect of my life? How do I clear this up?

Many of our questions come from dividing subject and object. Our deep-rooted and ingrained habit is to make pictures, graven images, so as to render perceptible, and set up as permanent, what is imperceptible and ineffable: sunyata, or emptiness. Emptiness is a name for something that cannot be designated because it does not exist relative to other things. Emptiness means that which has no permanent form and can thus manifest in any form. Or it could also be said that things are emptiness becoming form. That itself is the gist of the Heart Sutra: “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.“

Maurine Stuart Roshi, Subtle Sound page 86

Feb 7^th, 2025

On Buddha’s second reflection: sickness

We have a very strange, conflictual relationship with the body, because even though we want to stay healthy and strong and useful, the body also receives all our negativity and stress. We punish it with certain habits - smoking, drinking, constant worrying. When you are not aware of the body, do not acknowledge it, you can pile up a lot of stress. We can spend a lot of time, indulging in mental activities, without paying much attention to help affect our whole physical experience.

So the Buddha’s second reflection, “I am of the nature to be sick, I have not gone beyond sickness“, reminds us to take care of our body and realize that the body is dependent on the mind and the mind is dependent on the body. They are interrelated. They affect each other - sometimes the body affects the mind, sometimes the mind affects the body. If we do not understand that, we can easily damage the body by overriding the signals that it sends. The body is a very good gauge. If you know how to read it, it gives you every signal you need to know about your mind and how to take care of it…

Sickness is not a personal problem. You don’t need to feel bad about being ill. The Buddha says we are of the nature to fall sick and haven’t gone beyond sickness. If we haven’t been ill yet, this is a cause for appreciating our good health and the health of others – feeling a sense of mudita (appreciation), instead of complaining that we don’t have the right food, the right conditions, or the right job to be healthy. A mind that is always complaining will certainly make you sick. But if you appreciate what you have and receive it each moment, that can sustain you – even if that doesn’t sustain the health of the body, at least it can sustain the health of the mind.

Ajahn Sundara, The Body pp 41-43

Jan 31^st, 2025

THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS: THE WAVES AND THE OCEAN

When people begin to meditate, they often say that their thoughts are running riot, and have become wilder than ever before. But I reassure them and say that this is a good sign.

Far from meaning that your thoughts have become wilder, it shows that you have become quieter, and you are finally aware of just how noisy your thoughts have always been. Don't be disheartened or give up. Whatever arises, just keep being present, keep returning to the breath, even in the midst of all the confusion.

In the ancient meditation instructions, it is said that at the beginning thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninter-rupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually, as you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea, and finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave.

Sometimes people think that when they meditate there should be no thoughts and emotions at all; and when thoughts and emotions do arise, they become annoyed and exasperated with themselves and think they have failed.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a Tibetan saying: "It's a tall order to ask for meat without bones, and tea without leaves." So long as you have a mind, there will be thoughts and emotions.

Sogyal Rinpoche The Tibetan book of living and dying p.73

Jan 24^th, 2025

REFLECTIONS ON ATTAINMENTS

Activities or attainments have a particular meaning in Buddhism...The ultimate attainment, or siddhi, has always been enlightenment, which in Vajrayana Buddhism means to develop universal compassion in conjunction with the realization of shunyata.

What does it mean to realize shunyata? The Sanskrit term has been frequently translated into English as "emptiness," which Westerners typically associate with nothingness when they first hear it. For this reason, I prefer the translation "the pregnant void."

Without the emptiness of space, nothing could exist. Think of the vastness of space in which massive solar systems move, emerge, and fade away. Imagine the tiniest spaces between each leaf on a tree, every feather of a bird, every cell in your body. Leaves, feathers, and cells drop away and change...

What happens when you imagine that you are empty of the solitary self with which you have always identified? What if you focus instead on the vital life force pulsing both within and around you? Would you be less fearful of the future and open to alternatives that you might have never considered?

Rachael Wooten, Tara: The lIerating Power of the Female Buddha, pp. 227-228

Jan 17^th, 2025

THE MIND IN MEDITATION

What, then, should we "do" with the mind in meditation?

Nothing at all. Just leave it, simply, as it is. One master described meditation as "mind, suspended in space, nowhere." There is a famous saying: "If the mind is not contrived, it is spontaneously blissful, just as water, when not agitated, is by nature transparent and clear." I often compare the mind in meditation to a jar of muddy water: The more we leave the water without interfering or stirring it, the more the particles of dirt will sink to the bottom, letting the natural clarity of the water shine through. The very nature of the mind is such that if you only leave it in its unaltered and natural state, it will find its true nature, which is bliss and clarity.

So take care not to impose anything on the mind, or to tax it. When you meditate there should be no effort to control, and no attempt to be peaceful. Don't be overly solemn or feel that you are taking part in some special ritual; let go even of the idea that you are meditating. Let your body remain as it is, and your breath as you find it. Think of yourself as the sky, holding the whole universe.

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, p.72.

Jan 10^th, 2025

AWAKENING BODHICHITTA

In Sanskrit, bodhi means "awake" and chitta means "heart" or "mind." Our aim is to fully awaken our hearts and minds, not just for our own greater well-being, but also to bring benefit, solace, and wisdom to other living beings...

Bodhichitta, the awakened heart, begins with the wish to be free from whatever gets in the way of freeing [ourselves and] others. We long to be free from the confused thoughts and habitual patterns that cover up our basic goodness, so that we can be less reactive, less fearful, and less stuck in our old ways...

Trungpa Rinbpoche said that the way to arouse bodhichitta was to "begin with a broken heart." Protecting ourselves from pain - our own and that of others - has never worked. Everybody wants to be free from their suffering, but the majority of us go about it in ways that only make things worse. Shielding ourselves from the vulnerability of all living things - which includes our own vulnerability - cuts us off from the full experience of life. Our world shrinks. When our main goals are to gain comfort and avoid discomfort, we begin to feel disconnected from, and even threatened by, others. We enclose ourselves in a mesh of fear. And when many people and countries engage in this kind of approach, the result is a messy global situation with lots of pain and conflict.

Putting so much effort into protecting our hearts from pain hurts us over and over again. Even when we realize it's unhelpful, this is a hard habit to break. It's a natural human tendency. But when we generate bodhichitta, we go against the grain of this tendency. Instead of shying away, we arouse the bravery to take a direct look at ourselves and the world. Instead of being intimidated by phenomena, we come to embrace all aspeccts of our inexhaustibly rich lives.

Pema Chodron, Welcoming the Unwelcome, pp. 2-5

Jan 3^rd, 2025

HEART ADVICE

Recognition of our nature is both precious and miraculous. As I've often heard, what we seek is already ours. Ultimately, there is only one teacher: mind's true nature. When I connect with this, it feels like I'm connecting with my deepest potential. That is why I feel boundless gratitude to all the teachers who have introduced me to the nature of mind and to the sacredness of the world and its beings. Real devotion, it seems to me, is openhearted receptivity to things just as they are.

When I met the bear in the woods and began chanting OM MANI PADME HUM, I was not calling on an external deity to save me, but rather making a connection with the compassionate blessings that are always available to that bear and to me. So whether it's today or when I've died, I know that calling to my teachers or to wisdom figures like Kwan Yin or Avalokiteshvara, is really opening myself to a source of blessings inseparable from my own basic nature.

Pema Chodron, How We Live is How We Die, pp. 141-142

Dec 20^th, 2024

Cocooned Mind, Awakened Mind

What is the best use of each day of our lives? In one very short day, each of us would become more sane, more compassionate, more tender, more in touch with the dream-like quality of reality. Or we could bury all these qualities more deeply and get more in touch with solid mind, retreating more into our own cocoon.

Every time a habitual pattern gets strong, every time we feel caught up or on automatic pilot, we could see it as an opportunity to burn up negative karma. Rather than as a problem, we could see it as our karma ripening, which gives us an opportunity to burn up karma, or at least weaken our karmic propensities. But that’s hard to do. When we realize that we are hooked, that we’re on automatic pilot, what do we do next? That is a central question for the practitioner.

One of the most effective means for working with that moment when we see the gathering storm of our habitual tendencies is the practice of pausing, or creating a gap. We can stop and take three conscious breaths and the world has a chance to open up to us in that gap. We can allow space into our state of mind.

Awakened mind [already] exists in our surroundings — in the air and the wind, in the sea, in the land, in the animals — but how often are we actually touching in with it? Are we poking our heads out of our cocoons long enough to actually taste it, experience it, let it shift something in us, let it penetrate our conventional way of looking at things?

Pema Chodron, Lion's Roar, 15 October 2024

Dec 13^th, 2024

Meeting Reality

Once we see this reality as it is, we don’t have unrealistic expectations. Often we suffer when we find people’s minds are not the way we perhaps thought they were. We thought they were in charge. We thought they ought to be loving and caring. But it is good to remember that what we actually encounter is mostly a bunch of kilesas [kleshas, emotional tendencies].

This helps because attachment is a kilesa, even attachment to goodness and kindness. Attachment skews your perception. If you attach to goodness and kindness ... somebody who doesn’t fit your view is suddenly “not right.” Often people say (or think), “How can you be angry and be a Buddhist? If you were a true Buddhist you would be able to control your mind.”

No. "True Buddhists" are people who can see when they don’t control their minds. They see their mind as it is. They aren’t caught up in an idea of how the mind should be. We have the wisdom to know what makes us turn into hellish beings with hellish lives, and the wisdom to know how to bring those lives into a place of goodness, kindness, love and peace, the qualities that make a liveable world. Then the practice and life become a single unit ... the mind (citta) is not just the brain or the intellect. It is the reality that we experience in each moment.

All the techniques, methods, and teachings are designed simply to bring us back to the present moment... [They] help to give us a good pair of spectacles. We wear them so we don’t have blurry eyesight. When we look at the world through lenses of greed, hatred or delusion, we look at a very blurry world. As meditators, we can become attached to clarity, to purity, to wanting a perfect view. But it may be a long time before we achieve that perfect view. Meanwhile, our vision is not clear yet and that’s just the way it is.

Ajahn Sundara, Paccupanna, The Present Moment, pp. 7-9

Dec 10^th, 2024

The Wisdom of the Emotions

In the Buddhist teachings, there are five main types of wisdom, which are related to the five primary kleshas: craving, aggression, and ignorance, along with jealousy and pride. We can learn to recognize and connect with the wisdom aspect – the awakened, egoless side of the klesha. Then the energy of the emotion can serve to enlighten us rather than bring us down…

The klesha of craving is co-emergent with “discriminating wisdom.” The neurotic manifestation of the energy appears a grasping, needing, wanting…Its awakened aspect is a warm, compassionate quality that goes along with an ability to notice, take interest in, have profound insight into the details of life.

In the case of aggression, we find “mirror-like wisdom.” This has the qualities of sharpness and precision; it cuts right through deception and sees everything clearly.

People who are caught up in the neurotic aspect of jealousy tend to be speedy, busy, and critical – wanting to create a neat, uniform world. The awakened aspect is known as “all-encompassing wisdom.” When we experience this energy free from struggle and contraction, it allows us to accomplish things easily for the benefit of everyone involved.

The neurotic aspect of pride is associated with taking up a lot of space. If we connect with the essence of this energy, it becomes the “wisdom of equanimity.” Instead of doing so much picking and choosing, there’s more of an opening to life as it is – an attitude of letting whatever happens happen, a sense of egolessness.

The klesha of ignorance has the qualities of being dull, lethargic, and out of touch. In its extreme form it becomes numbness. The awakened aspect is called the “dharmadhatu wisdom.” It’s the wide-open, fresh, unconditioned space that permeates everything and can accommodate anything.

The key point to remember is that the wisdom and the neurosis are co-emergent.There’s a tendency to think, “I don’t want any neurotic propensities, I just want the enlightened parts.” But that’s like a thirsty person in a desert miraculously coming across a block of ice and saying, “I don’t care for ice. I’m going to look for water somewhere else.” There is nowhere to look. It’s just a matter of recognizing that the true nature of ice is no different from thirst-quenching water.

In the same way, if we want to discover our own wisdom, there’s nowhere to look other than in our own neurosis. We can discover that there’s emotion with ego and emotion that is egoless.

Pema Chodron, How We Live is How We Die, pp. 92-95

Dec 6^th, 2024

What Are Our Obstacles?

Kilesas (Pali) or kleshas (Sanskrit) are often defined as defilements... In the Pali canon, the root teaching, anything springing from greed, hatred, or delusion can act as a hindrance to freedom.

From the Abhidhamma, an important later part of the Pali canon, there are ten defilements... These ten, taken together, could be distilled into the five hindrances, as they are in the Pali discourses:

greed,
hatred,
sloth & torpor,
restlessness & agitation, and
skeptical doubt (in the teachings)...

Pema Chodron has this to say:

When we realize that we like our kleshas (kilesas), we begin to understand why they have such power over us. Hatred, for example, can make us feel strong and in charge. Rage makes us feel even more powerful and invulnerable. Craving and wanting can feel soothing, romantic, and nostalgic: we weep over lost loves or unfulfilled dreams. It’s painfully and deliciously bittersweet. Therefore, we don’t even consider interrupting the flow. Ignorance is oddly comforting: we don’t have to do anything; we just lay back and don’t relate to what’s happening around us.

As part of the training, we examine ourselves to identify our greatest obstacle to awakening... Mindfulness can bring into awareness the subterranean motives that undermine our intention to grow spiritually; we watch what we are doing and try to understand it, either in the moment or afterwards.

Posted on October 13, 2024 by lynnjkelly
buddhasadvice.wordpress.com/2024/10/13/what-are-our-obstacles

Nov 29^th, 2024

Five Obstacles: Desire, Ill-will, Sloth and Torpor, Restlessness, and Skeptical Doubt

The Kilesas [Pali.] / Kleshas [Skt.], the five obstacles, are unhelpful mental patterns and obstacles, entangling mental formations and reactive states, that hinder, blind, obscure or impede the Path of progress towards true Refuge. They can be the cause of reactivity, reinforcing unhelpful and unwholesome views and beliefs; they also immediately hinder practice, obstructing and obscuring the arising of insight and wisdom. They can also have superficial yet protective qualities. There exists through them a source of Refuge that is valid and authentic.

In the Kilesas, through the five obstacles, we can come to recognise and know ourselves, our conditioning, beliefs, views and responses to life. We can develop knowledge of what hinders and what helps foster Refuge and compassion... As we learn to work with these obstacles within us through mindfulness, we open the door to calm, clarity, composed, clear thought, and increasingly mindful and compassionate responses.

A central feature of training and practice with the five obstacles is the willingness to meet and become familiar with the arising and passing away of the Kilesas and to work with these obstacles, applying meditative and post-meditative antidotes to reduce and prevent their future occurrence. Again, the Kilesas are natural states that cause suffering; they are not inherently wrong, and they can veil or reveal opportunities for deeper insights into the nature of life, suffering, compassion and Refuge. They are workable. Through practice and training, we can clear, clean and polish the lens of the mind to directly experience knowledge of the Dhamma, of life’s intelligence.

Genyen – Ian Hackett – Tig-Le House, Margaret River, Western Australia
tiglehouse.org/the-kilesas-the-five-obstacles-panca-nivaranani

Nov 15^th, 2024

Impermanence

The Buddha spoke about our difficulty accepting impermanence when he taught on the three types of suffering. He called the first type "the suffering of suffering." This is the blatant agony of war, starvation, terrifying environments, abuse, neglect, tragic loss, or a series of severe illnesses. Its what we usually think of when we talk about "pain" or "suffering".

Some people are fortunate enough not to be experiencing the blatant suffering of suffering. . . currently things are pretty good. But we still have the pain that comes from the fact that nothing lasts. Delight alternates with disappointment, fulfillment alternates with boredom, pleasure alternates with discomfort.

This second type of suffering, which the Buddha simply called "the suffering of change," lurks in our gut as the painful knowledge that we .. can never get our life to be the way we want it to be, once and for all. Because things go well for us just often enough, we keep coming back to the false hope that we could keep it going that way.

The third type of suffering, known as "all-pervasive suffering," happens at a deeper and subtler level. This is the constant discomfort that comes from our basic resistance to life as it really is. We want some solid ground to rely on, but that's just not in the cards. If even mountains and boulders are unpredictably moving and changing, how can we find security in anything? This constant feeling of groundlessness and insecurity is the subtle discomfort than underlies both the suffering of suffering and the suffering of change.

However, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, "it's not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not." We can continue to resist reality, or we can learn to frame things in a new way, seeing our life as dynamic and vibrant, then we will truly be in touch with the freshness of each moment. If we can embrace continual change in this way, we'll start to notice the hum of anxiety quieting down and slowly, slowly fading away.

Pema Chodron, How We Live is How We Die, pp. 6-10

Nov 1^st, 2024

THE INBETWEEN STATE

We are told about the pain of chasing after pleasure and the futility of running from pain. We hear also about the joy of awakening, of realizing our interconnectedness, of trusting the openness of our hearts and minds. But we aren’t told all that much about this state of being in-between, no longer able to get our old comfort from the our side but not yet dwelling in a continual sense of equanimity and warmth.

Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.

Yet it seems reasonable to want some kind of relief. If we can make the situation right or wrong, if we can pin it down in any way, then we are on familiar ground. But something has shaken up our habitual patterns and frequently they no longer work. Staying with volatile energy gradually becomes more comfortable than acting it out or repressing it. This open-ended tender place is called bodhichitta. Staying with it is what heals. It allows us to let go of our self-importance. It’s how the warrior learns to love.

Pema Chodron, Tricycle Magazine, Winter 2001

Oct 18^th, 2024

FREE YOURSELF FROM THE STORY OF YOU

When you practice staying present, one thing you’ll quickly discover is how persistent the story line is. Traditionally, in the Buddhist texts, our tendencies with their habitual story lines are described as seeds in the unconscious. When the right causes and conditions come together, these preexisting propensities pop up like flowers in the springtime. It’s helpful to contemplate that it’s these propensities and not what triggers them that are the real cause of our suffering.

I had a dream about my ex-husband: I was just settling down for a quiet evening at home when he arrived with six unknown guests and then disappeared, leaving me to take care of them. I was furious. When I woke up, I thought ruefully, “So much for being finished with anger: I guess the propensity is still there.” Then I started thinking about an incident that had occurred the previous day, and I began to get furious all over again. This completely stopped me in my tracks, and I realized that waking or sleeping, it’s just the same. It isn’t the content of our movie that needs our attention, it’s the projector. It isn’t the current story line that’s the root of our pain; it’s our propensity to be bothered in the first place.

The propensity to feel sorry for ourselves, the propensity to be jealous, the propensity to get angry — our habitual, all-too-familiar emotional responses are like seeds that we just keep watering and nurturing. But every time we pause and stay present with the underlying energy, we stop reinforcing these propensities and begin to open ourselves to refreshingly new possibilities.

Pema Chodron, Omega Resource Library
www.eomega.org/article/free-yourself-from-the-story-of-you

Oct 4^th, 2024

RECOLLECTIONS: DHAMMA VALUES BECOME STRENGTHS

"And what things are fit for attention? They are things such that when one attends to them, the unarisen . . . does not arise and the arisen . . . is abandoned."
Majjhima Nikaya

To establish mindfulness and full knowing in daily life relies on filtering the input of stuff coming at us from all directions, because the sheer deluge can overwhelm us. Because we build up sankhara [thought form] tracks and programs based on contact, we need to be responsible about what we give attention to. Part of cultivation therefore is about turning away from input and actions that pull the mind into craving or aversion or distraction.

Hence the function of deep attention is to be discriminative. Rather than have the mind absorb into whatever is being pumped out by the media, we cultivate sense-restraint so that the citta [heart] doesn't compulsively go out into the sense-fields without a filter. As in cases like the following: you're walking down the street, or browsing the internet - do you need to gaze into the shop windows and advertisements? Does that hand you over to the consumer demon? Do you need to immediately switch on your phone as soon as you get up in the morning - get busy, get out there before you fully know where you are? With wise reflection, you can recognize a habitual sankhara, and give attention to one or two long in-breaths and out-breaths to balance its impetus.

Recollecting Dhamma themes adds further support to the mind and heart. As in the case of the Triple Gem [taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha], recollection entails bringing up a concept and dwelling on it steadily repeatedly until it touches the citta. Then a felt sense is established that can steady, rein in or gladden the heart.

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the End of Kamma, p.56-7

Sep 27^th, 2024

INTERCONNECTION OF BODY, THOUGHT AND HEART

There are two processes that steer the kamma of meditation.

The first process is one of strengthening and healing the heart through calming (samatha). Samatha practices use a steadying focus and a soothing attitude. The second process is "insight' (vipassana) - which is about seeing how things really are. The two processes work together; as you get settled and at ease, your attention gets clearer, and as you see things more clearly, liberating wisdom arises. In this way, calm and insight guide the mind to an alert, knowing stillness.

To enter a period of meditation, you put aside personal issues and circumstances in order to attend to the basis of your body-mind system. With even a cursory review, it's clear how dynamic this system is: the body's sensations throb and change, and its energies tingle and flow. Meanwhile, the mental domain has its own dynamic: moods swing, thoughts race and spark off memories; then there are plans and decisions and all kinds of options popping up - it can be such a flood that we're often not completely with what we're doing right now. So the first step in meditation is to refrain from jumping into that flood, and instead familiarize yourself with how it happens. Then you're doing one unusual but important thing - establishing a way of witnessing, and therefore learning about, your conscious system.

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the end of Kamma, p.67

Sep 20^th, 2024

NON-VIOLENCE

When embraced,
the rod of violence
breeds danger & fear . . .

Wanting a haven for myself . . .
seeing nothing in the end
but competition,
I felt discontent.

And then I saw
an arrow here,
so very hard to see,
embedded in the heart.

Overcome by this arrow
you run in all directions.

But simply on pulling it out
you don’t run,
you don’t sink . . .

you train for your own
unbinding [nibbana].
Sutta Nipata

In this short passage, the Buddha describes his sense of dismay at the violence and conflict in the world, together with his important discovery: that the only escape from violence is to remove the causes of violence from your own heart. . . You first have to stop engaging in violence before you can isolate and uproot the emotions and thoughts that would make you want to engage in violence to begin with.

The Buddha taught that restraint against killing should be exercised in all situations without exception. . . There is no room at all in the Buddha’s teachings for a theory of “just war.” The path to the end of suffering [nibbana] requires that you be willing to sacrifice many things, but not the purity of your virtue.

Thanissaro Bhikku Non-violence: A Study guide based on the Buddha’s Teachings pp. 1&2

Sep 13^th, 2024

Years ago [Ajahn Chag] was a wandering monk, living on his own on a mountainside above a village and keeping a strict meditation schedule. In Thailand they love outdoor night-long film shows because the nights are cool compared to the very hot days.

Whenever there was a party, it tended to go on all night. About so years ago, public address systems were just starting to be used in Thailand and every decent event had to have a PA going. It blasted as loud as it possibly could all through the night. One time, Ajahn Chah was quietly meditating up on the mountain while there was a festival going on down in the village. All the local folk songs and pop music were amplified throughout the area.

Ajahn Chah was sitting there seething and thinking, "Don't they realize all the bad karma involved in disturbing my meditation?

They know I'm up here. After all, I'm their teacher. Haven't they learned anything? And what about the five precepts? I bet they're boozing and out of control," and so on and so forth.

But Ajahn Chah was a pretty smart fellow. As he listened to himself complaining, he quickly realized, "Well, they're just having a good time down there. I'm making myself miserable up here.

No matter how upset I get, my anger is just making more noise internally." And then he had this insight: "Oh, the sound is just the sound. I's me who is going out to annoy it. If leave the sound alone, it won't annoy me. It's just doing what it has to do. That's what sound does. It makes sound. This is its job. So if I don't go out and bother the sound, it's not going to bother me. Aha!"

Amaro Bhikku, Small Boat, Great Mountain p.67.

Aug 16^th, 2024

Boundaries Make Good Bodhisattvas

So many of us—whether we were encouraged to be too self-focused or too other-focused—struggle to imagine what it would be like to feel capable of ushering in well-being for others while simultaneously honoring our own limits, time, and energy. Here, our feelings can be a trustworthy guide. With enlightenment mind, one feels motivated to awaken fully and begins to do so through increasingly hearing and responding to the experience of all, including ourselves, until we all feel freed up and on board with reality. Bodhicitta creates a sense of abundance, of having great capacity to open up, tap into deeper internal resources, and trust that these are shared resources of compassion, insight, and wisdom. Chronic sublimation and compulsive caretaking, in contrast, usually cause feelings of impingement and stress, or the fear that if you don’t offer care, the other person’s affection or respect will be withdrawn.

It is important to know the difference between these two projects. Preserving yourself and knowing your boundaries is not the same thing as exclusively seeking your own happiness. It’s about the healing process of learning to skillfully discern what will and will not serve all beings, yourself included. This balance is beautifully illustrated by the image of Green Tara, sometimes called the Mother of all Buddhas. With regal humility, she sits with one leg extended, symbolizing her wish to join you in your efforts to establish and share well-being. Her other leg is tucked inward, symbolizing her continued commitment to containing and developing her own mind and body energies that offer sustenance in these efforts. . . This image offers an inspiring symbol of enlightenment mind, letting us see what it looks like to be devoted to our collective well-being.

By Pilar Jennings, Tricycle Magazine, Summer 2018

Jul 26^th, 2024

Being Here Means So Much

When we leave the noise of the world, and we come to this sanctuary focusing on a meditation practice, and spending our time in silence... the silence of the trees... the silence of the snow... the silence of the night... but the real transcendance is when we can silence the mind. Not by strangling it into submission or by beating it until it can't make a peep any more, but by letting go of the ego that is constantly layering experience with noise.

So when we transcend even the transcendance of transcendance, that means we are going beyond even this sense that "I'm somebody who's meditating. Here I am, I'm a person. I'm a meditator." Even the identification with that - we don't bite it any more. We're not giving vent to the selfishness, to the egotistical inclinations and habits of the mind.

So there's an opportunity to really go beyond worldly ways of thinking and doing. And we have to call upon some special qualities to be able to transcend even the transcendance of transcendance. If you think that you're somebody transcending anything - this is the real catch-22 there - as soon as there's somebody there doing it - there isn't a transcendance, because we're not letting go of the sense of being someone doing something, rather than just practicing this awareness of life arising in the mind, of experience, of sense-consciousness, arising and falling away. And watching impersonally without the personal story that we're always tagging and labeling our life with. And then getting caught up in falling back into whatever we're trying desperately to transcend - but getting beyond the sense of "I am" anything. And going towards the place where we stop that particular pattern. The Cessation that the Buddha was pointing to - no longer creating the self, no longer wanting what the created self wants. And allowing that whole process of creating, producing, consuming and feeding on the selfishness, the self-centeredness - to fall away and to be silent.

Ayya Medhanandi, dhamma talk Being Here Means So Much
satisaraniya.ca/teaching/being-here-means-so-much

Jul 19^th, 2024

Is There an End?

Do you ever wonder whether your practice is getting anywhere? Do you sometimes just step back from the fine details and consider: "Am I doing the right thing? Am I more at peace with myself? Am I doing enough for other people or the world in general?"

Good questions. Well, some results of Dhamma practice are immediate: we're more conscious of what impulses are running through our systems; and we get a sense for what to act upon and what to put aside. We establish and firm up values - ones that can withstand the pressure of busy lives and the biases of the media. And we learn some meditation exercises with which to calm the mind and warm the heart.

But if you just assess how you re doing in terms of the conditions that arise in the mind, the conclusions aren’t that reliable. Daily life may find you juggling future gains and losses against present variables, or not being in agreement with your colleagues and neighbours. But with practice, you get less fazed by this; you don’t have to internalize and accumulate the world. That internal action can lessen and stop. So here’s one big test: can you be free from conditions, even whilst in the midst of them?

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the end of Kamma, p.163

Jul 12^th, 2024

Green Tara Meditation

Tara is awakened awareness manifest in a female form. She’s a beloved Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist figure... Wisdom and compassion are the two wings that carry us to awakening. As the divine feminine, Tara represents wisdom, which is the essential counterpart to the masculine principle of compassion.

From a Buddhist perspective, any person born from a womb comprises both masculine and feminine qualities. The masculine qualities are related to clarity, compassion, skillful means, activity, and coolness, while the feminine qualities are related to wisdom, openness, emptiness, receptivity, and warmth...

Tara is the dynamic expression of mind’s empty essence, which is pure, unbounded potentiality and creativity—the womb of all that is. As such, she’s the mother of all the buddhas...

Green Tara is a stainless mirror reflecting the truth of our innate, awakened nature, which is temporarily obscured to us. Through Green Tara practice, we gradually lift the veils that keep us from recognizing that our body, speech, and mind are inseparable from her awakened body, speech, and mind. This practice involves engaging with her by visualizing her and symbols associated with her, and by reciting her mantra. In Green Tara practice we initially visualize her in front of us. Then, as the practice progresses, she dissolves into us, and we arise as Green Tara. We come to recognize that we, too, are manifestations of awakened awareness...

Begin to chant Tara’s mantra Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Svaha (Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Soha) as a way to connect directly with her. The mantra is Tara’s wisdom and compassion manifesting as sound and vibration.

LAMA DÖNDRUP DRÖLMA
Green Tara: You Are the Divine Feminine, Lion's Roar, 12 March 2024

Jul 5^th, 2024

Puja [ritual, such as group sitting] is especially helpful when people perform it as a group. Then we are participating in the Dhamma as both the expression and the Way of awakening... This collective engagement ritualizes the "Sangha', that is, the assembly of disciples. Chanting in a group has a harmonizing, settling effect: sonorous and unhurried, it steadies bodily and mental energies and supports an atmosphere of harmony with fellow practitioners. Tuning in and participating brings us out of ourselves and into a deep resonance with heart-impressions of the sacred. We can be touched by a sense of timeless stability, purpose and beauty. If these intentions, felt senses and recollections are established regularly, we know where to find good heart, how to attend it, and how to allow ourselves to be uplifted.

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the end of Kamma, pp. 50-51

Jun 28^th, 2024

Never Turn Away From The Truth

We are students of truth and reconciliation, all of us here, trying to study about the truth of the way things are. Reconciliation comes from the verb to restore. It’s a beautiful choice of words; we’re trying to restore ourselves to knowledge, to accountability, to recognition. To purify by special service after desecration of life – a dishonoring of life – and inhuman treatment of other humans. And the special service that we can provide is our love, our compassion, our attention, and our making amends, our repairing in any way that we can. And internally we have to do that for ourselves in our own lives.

...How difficult is that? It is as if we have to dedicate everything we do to the development of wisdom. That everything in our lives is actually dedicated to waking up!

...We have to have the right intention. But it must be a culminating intention. In the beginning we intend, in the middle we must intend, in the ending, we are always inclining towards nibbana, towards freeing ourselves from delusion. This path is not possible without a loving heart, because ill will is insidious. It creeps in very very easily into the mind. And it is through unconditional lovingkindness that we begin to develop an unconditional compassion - unconditional joy - which is finally perfected in equanimity, that is able to bear with every condition that we face regardless. And then the attention is towards sila samadhipanya, and the eightfold path of developing virtue, developing purity of heart, preserving it, protecting it at all costs. Developing compassion towards ourselves, towards others.

The culminating faculty that draws all the others to the final realization of nibbana is wisdom. Never turn away from the truth, Buddha wisdom. The Buddha is not a historical figure, but the Buddha is here, present every day. Any moment of practice the Buddha is there on the shrine of the heart.

Ayya Medhanandi, Ottawa Buddhist Society Talk, Oct. 1, 2021
satisaraniya.ca/teaching/never-turn-away-from-truth

Jun 21^st, 2024

Right Speech

The classical explanation of Right Speech is:

Speaking truthfully. When something is green, we say it is green, and not purple.
Not speaking with a forked tongue. We don’t say one thing to one person and something else to another. Of course, we can describe the truth in different ways to help different listeners understand our meaning, but we must always be loyal to the truth.
Not speaking cruelly. We don’t shout, slander, curse, encourage suffering, or create hatred. Even those who . . . don’t want to hurt others sometimes allow toxic words to escape from their lips. In our mind are seeds of Buddha and also many fetters or internal formations (samyojana). When we say something poisonous, it is usually because of our habit energies.
Not exaggerating or embellishing.We don’t dramatize unnecessarily, making things sound better, worse, or more extreme than they actually are. If someone is a little irritated, we don’t say that he is furious. The practice of Right Speech is to try to change our habits so that our speech arises from the seed of Buddha that is in us, and not from our unresolved, unwholesome seeds.

Thich Nhat Hanh, dharma talk May 11. 2019
mindfulness-israel.org/en/right-speech
based upon a quotation from The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, ch. 12

Jun 14^th, 2024

Giving it away.

It’s easy to say, don’t think about the past or the future, just live in the present moment." How difficult! …

When the future that we expected is here, it may be entirely different from what we envisioned. So what is the use of all that worrying about how to deal with it?

Hui-neng tells us we will never grasp anything by thinking about it after it has happened. If our minds are clear, we will see our original nature at this moment. If our minds are not fuzzy, not painted over by some fixed ideas … our original nature can be seen immediately. Hui-neng also says that if we hold onto an evil thought we will destroy the cause of a million years' virtue.

What does he mean by an evil thought? One such thought … is resentment. It may make us feel quite superior to say to someone, "I forgive you." Things quiet down, perhaps, but the pain and resentment may just be pushed down into our unconscious minds, and rigidity comes to the surface. We may say, "I’ll never do that again." But how do we know what we will or will not do again?

True forgiveness brings a great change in our hearts… What is it to truly open our hearts to forgiveness? It is to see all the blows of fate we have experienced, all the rejections of the past, present, and future, all our weaknesses, as part of a darkness that has helped to bring more light.

Maurine Stuart Roshi Subtle Sound pp.21-22

Jun 7^th, 2024

HEART LIKE A RIVER

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform.

When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform. So the big question is: how do we help our hearts to grow?

Thich Nhat Hanh, How To Love p 10

May 31^th, 2024

The Ray of the Absolute

One of the things that happens to us all the time is that we get distracted by what's going on in the world. And we don't have a refuge within us. So it's appealing to be busy with what's external to us. The world is not peaceful in a way, but in another way, you could say that there are more and more people that are learning how to meditate... to look for something beautiful or something better. It's just that we live in a time when there is more information and we know more about what people DO... You roll back the clock and the world back then was messy - it always has been. We just have more exotic ways of messing up.

If we take care of the mind... the mess begins here. There could be a fire or a disaster and there are many ways to respond to that - and if you know how to put out the fire, you can control. But what if we lack control? This is when it becomes dangerous... the mind becomes fractured and frightened. It doesn't have to start from something happening in the world. Something happens privately for us.

I remember when I was living in England, one of the nun's mothers was very ill... and I happened to go to visit, just a few days before she died. She was sitting in a bed with the TV on watching what was happening in the news... And I was so surprised.

And I wondered, when it comes to be my time, and I going to be looking at what is happening in the world? or am I going to focus on the news of the present moment in this body/mind?

Ayya Medhanandi
satisaraniya.ca/teaching/a-ray-of-the-absolute

May 24^th, 2024

Honoring Wesak, Buddha's Enlightenment Day

We are just past the full moon in May - Wesak - the day the Buddha's world changed forever. We can be grateful that the Buddha chose to share his experience with us. Because of his generosity, we know that through our practice, we, too, can step out of our stress and suffering - into the peace of things as they are.

It is good, today, to take a little time and look at our minds, to discover what our intentions actually are. To notice where we are stuck. To remember our aspirations. To experience how the relationship of these opposing forces can actually feel.

It is especially helpful to notice what we are holding on to - without exhorting ourselves to "let go." LIke any other idea, "letting go" can easily become a sticking point - just something else to suffer over. Instead, we can simply give ourselves a choice.

Ask yourself: Does it feel better to stay here, in my mind? Or am I happier when I notice how my body feels, the light in the room, the sounds around me, the gestalt of what is? The choice we make is less important than the space we make by asking the question. Over time, as we choose and choose again, the habits of distraction begin to be replaced by the habits of awareness.

Mantra is a tool that can direct our minds away from our not-so-free associations. In honor of Wesak, we can chant the most popular Buddhist mantra in the Tibetan Buddhist world. This mantra is literally going all the time - rotating in brass drums, fluttering in prayer flags, fingered in malas. As we experience the mantra, we are resonating with the practice of millions of people.

In Sanskrit, the mantra is OM MANI PADME HUM. The Tibetan version is OM MANI PEME HUNG (or HUN). Each syllable corresponds to one of the paramitas, or "perfections." Para means to "go beyond" and mita means "to have arrived." So invoking each paramita opens a doorway that takes us beyond our everyday mind and brings us to a more expanded awareness.

OM: Generosity (refraining from pride)
MA: Discipline (refraining from harm)
NI: Patience (endurance moving towards equanimity)
PAD or PE: Diligence (finding joy in what is wholesome)
ME: Meditation (Open and undistracted awareness)
HUM or HUNG (Wisdom, discrimination)

OM and HUM, or HUNG, are basically untranslatable - they are not really words, but powerful "seed" sounds, pure energy. MANI can be translated as "I accept." Traditionally, in this mantra, it is translated as "jewel. "PADME or PEME is translated as "lotus." As a whole, OM MANI PADME HUM refers to "the jewel in the lotus -" the awareness that lives in that many-petaled flower of consciousness, growing out of the mud of daily life.

Here are links to two audiofiles for your own practice. There are many ways to engage with mantra - listening, chanting along, hearing in the mind, writing the words. All of them are powerful aids to meditation.

OM MANI PADME HUM (Sanskrit)
OM MANI PEME HUNG (Tibetan)

May you feel the full moon this Wesak propelling you toward happiness, now and every day.

Namaste,
Eve Kodiak

May 17^th, 2024

When we look deeply at a flower, we can see that it is made entirely of non-flower elements, like sunshine, rain, soil, compost, air, and time. If we continue to look deeply, we will also notice that the flower is on her way to becoming compost... When we look deeply at the compost, we see that it is also on its way to becoming flowers, and we realize that flowers and compost "inter-are..."

When we look deeply into ourselves, we see both flowers and garbage. Each of us has anger, hatred, depression, racial discrimination, and many other kinds of garbage in us, but there is no need for us to be afraid. In the way that a gardener knows how to transform compost into flowers, we can learn the art of transforming anger, depression, and racial discrimination into love and understanding. This is the work of meditation.

According to Buddhist psychology, our consciousness is divided into two parts, like a house with two floors. On the ground floor there is a living room, and we call this "mind-consciouness." Below the ground level, there is a basement, and we call this "store consciousness." In the store consciousness, everything we have ever done, experienced, or perceived is stored in the form of a seed, or a film...

Certain movies, such as Anger, Fear, or Despair, seem to have the ability to come up from the basement all by themselves... Fortunately, each film has a limited length, and when it is over, it returns to the basement. But each time it is viewed by us, it establishes a better position on the archive shelf...

Store consciousness is also described as a storehouse filled with all our seeds. When a seed manifests in our mind consciousness, it always returns to the storehouse stronger. The quality of our life depends on the quality of the seeds in our store consciousness.

We may be in the habit of manifesting seeds of anger, sorrow, and fear in our mind consciousness; seeds of joy, happiness, and peace may not sprout up much. To practice mindfulness means to recognize each seed as it comes up from the storehouse and to practice watering the most wholesome seeds whenever possible, to help them grow stronger... For example, if we stand in front of a tree, breathe consciously, and enjoy it for five minutes, seeds of happiness will be watered in us for five minutes, and those seeds will grow stronger. During the same five minutes, other seeds, like fear and pain, will not be watered. We have to practice this way every day... If we water our wholesome seeds carefully, we can trust that our store consciousness will do the work of healing.

Thich Nhat Hanh
Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living pp.23-25

May 10^th, 2024

The Desire for Truth

The search for truths about pain starts with a truth in the form of a reality: the experience of pain itself. As the Buddha explains it, there are two natural responses to this reality, bewilderment and a search (AN 6:63). The bewilderment comes from not knowing why the pain is happening. This is especially true for infants experiencing pain, but because the causes for pain can be so complex, unpredictable, and seemingly beyond our control, this bewilderment can last throughout life.

The search comes both because we're bewildered and because we desire another reality: We want the pain to stop.

It's in the psychological and social space defined by these responses that the Buddha formulates his teachings on truths in general, and on the four noble truths in particular.

The Four Nobel Truths, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Geoffrey DeGraff

May 3^rd, 2024

"There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither sphere of the infinitude of space, nor sphere of the infinitude of consciousness, nor sphere of nothingness, nor sphere of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support (mental object). This, just this, is the end of stress."

Udana 8:1

The Meaning of the Buddha's Awakening

THE TWO CRUCIAL ASPECTS of the Buddha's awakening a the what and the how: what he awakened to and how he did it. His awakening is special in that the two aspects come together. He awakened to the fact that there is an undying happiness, and that can be attained through human effort. The human effort involved in this process ultimately focuses on the question of understanding the nature of human effort itself.

Refuge, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Geoffrey DeGraff p.63

Apr 26^th, 2024

OUR ONE AND ONLY COMMANDMENT

There are three forms of discipline in our practice. The first is shila, moral precepts against stealing, gossiping, coveting, and so on. The second is dhyana, or Zen [meditation], and the third is prajna [transcendental wisdom]. Hui-neng said that for true understanding, we must know that dhyana is not different from prajna, and that prajna is not something attained after practicing Zen. When we are practicing, in this very moment of practicing, prajna is unfolding itself in every single aspect of our lives: sweeping the floor, washing the dishes, cooking the food, everything we do...

Through clarifying our minds we can abandon our delusions and enlighten ourselves. Realizing we are a part of the whole universe, not separate, our minds become as clear as crystal, and all the dharma is revealed. So let us see clearly; let us put all the past aside and go deeply into this, moment after moment. How do we do it? Just by our own natural breathing...

Just to breathe, just to see clearly: this is the real meaning of the precepts. To keep the precepts does not mean following a set of rules. It is giving ourselves to a way of life, a path of compassionate action that expresses itself in everything we do... So the power of this practice we are engaged in helps us keep the precepts without self-consciously trying to follow a set of rules. If we try to do it, if we think about it, if we read the list of precepts every morning and say, “Now, I mustn’t do this, and I mustn’t do that,” it doesn’t work. If it comes from the hara, from the intuitive wisdom mind, then it can be done. We can control ourselves very well when we are without any idea of controlling at all... Without trying to do something, we simply practice, in the same way as when we are hungry, we eat; when we are tired, we rest.

Maurine Stuart-Roshi, Subtle Sound

Apr 12^th, 2024

Energy and Relaxation

When we try to meditate, it is easy for us to veer unconsciously to the extremes, just as when learning to ride a bicycle at first we wobble and lurch from side to side. One such extreme is experienced when the body and the mind are too energized to establish the qualities of calmness and attention. They can be very charged or excited, with the mind revved up, very interested or alert, and the body restless. This is usually caused by something that is frightening or exciting. In the usual run of events the quality of arousal or alertness is brought about by some kind of emotionally charged stimulus.

Conversely, relaxation is generally epitomized by the image of being flopped in an armchair. It's a lazy Sunday afternoon and the feet are up, and maybe there's music playing in the background or the TV is on. One is not really paying attention; the mind is dozing and drifting, and the mind and body are completely relaxed. There is an intrinsic implication of being half-conscious, of being not quite with it, or being half asleep. Relaxation is generally viewed as just switching off.

From a Buddhist perspective, the idea is to find that quality of being, that quality of mind and body in which the elements of relaxation and energy are both maximized and in balance with each other. It is a principle of Buddhism - and also what one finds with investigation, when one looks at the mind - that when one learns to calm the mind and look into its nature deeply, it becomes more and more alert and more and more peaceful. The attention is attuned to the reality of the present much more acutely.

Briefly, the more and more clearly one sees the way things are, the more one recognizes that the fundamental nature of mind is intrinsically both completely awake and completely peaceful, simultaneously. The two do not occlude each other; they are qualities that can exist simultaneously.

Ajahn Amaro, Finding the missing peace: primer of Buddhist meditation pp 2-3

Apr 5^th, 2024

WHY IT'S HEAVY

When suffering arises, you have to see that it's suffering, and to see what this suffering arises from. Will you see anything? If we look at things in an ordinary way, there's no suffering. For example, while we're sitting here, we're at ease. But at another moment we want this spittoon, we lift it up. Now things are different. They're different from when we hadn't yet lifted up the spittoon. When we lift the spittoon, we sense that we're more weighed down. There's a reason for it. Why do we feel weighed down if it's not from having lifted the spittoon? If we don't lift it, there's nothing. If we don't lift it, we feel light. So what's the cause and what's the result? All you have to do is observe just this much and you know. You don't have to go off studying anywhere else. When we grasp onto something, that's the cause of suffering. When we let go there's no suffering.

Venerable Ahahn Chah, In Simple Terms, p29.

Mar 29^th, 2024

SELF OR NO-SELF

The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court; and those that deserve to be put aside. The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress.

The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say Yes or No to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted.

The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him: those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them, and those who don't draw inferences from those that should.

These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha's teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the anatta [no-self] doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored. Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside. Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn't be drawn.

So, instead of answering No to the question of whether or not there is a self - interconnected or separate, eternal or not - the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why?

No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress.

REFUGE Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff) p.69-70

Mar 22^nd, 2024

Seeing Clearly

All we have to do is open our eyes, open our hearts. While we are doing, thinking, and feeling, Zen is there, prajna is there. This intuitive mind infuses everything we do. But this is not something about which we can have discursive knowledge. We cannot attain realization of this in that way. This intuitive knowledge comes from our body and our mind. We don’t sit here and think about what enlightenment is. To think "I must get enlightened" is the greatest impediment. To have some degree of enlightenment is wonderful; to think about it is terrible. "No-knowing" is what we do, as in the famous phrase of Bodhidharma. When the emperor of China asked, "Who is this who stands before me?" Bodhidharma replied, "No-knowing." No-knowing. There is no way that we can take this intuitive mind and quantify it. We can’t say, "Here it is, I’m going to give you one month’s worth, or two months’ worth, and now your course is finished." That’s not it. We may see it in an instant, or it may take several lifetimes. This is a practice of endurance and patience. Forgetting all about gaining anything, we are simply trying to see clearly.

What does seeing clearly mean? It doesn’t mean that you look at something and analyze it, noting all its composite parts; no. When you see clearly, when you look at a flower and really see it, the flower sees you. It’s not that the flower has eyes, of course. It’s that the flower is no longer just a flower, and you are no longer just you. Flower and you have dissolved into something way beyond what we can even say, but we can experience this. This kind of seeing, this kind of understanding is "as-it-is-ness." This wonderful intuitive wisdom infuses everything we do, if we just open ourselves up to it, and forget about all our selfish, petty concerns, forget about what we want, what we must get, whether this is doing something for us. Forget it. We are here for the sake of all sentient beings, and we are one with all sentient beings when we come to see this as-it-is-ness. Meister Eckhart, a thirteenth-century Christian mystic who really understood this, said, "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me."

From Subtle Sound: The Teachings of Maurine Stuart

Mar 15^th, 2024

Endurance

[Ajahn Chah] was always stressing the importance of wisdom, not just restraint, but mindfulness and contemplation. Throwing oneself into practice with great gusto and little reflective ability may result in a strong concentration practice, but one eventually ends up in despair. Monks practising like this usually come to a point where they decide that they don't have what it takes to 'break through' in this lifetime, and disrobe. He emphasized that continuous effort was much more important than making a great effort for a short while, only to let it all slide. Day in, day out; month in, month out; year, in year out: that is the real skill of the practice.

What is needed in mindfulness practice, he taught, is a constant awareness of what one is thinking, doing or saying. It is not a matter of being on retreat or off retreat, or of being in a monastery or out wandering on tudong; it's a matter of constancy: What am I doing now; why am I doing it? Constantly looking to see what is happening in the present moment. Is this mind state coarse or refined? At the beginning of practice, he said, our mindfulness is intermittent, like water dripping from a tap. But as we continue, the intervals between the drips lessen and eventually they become a stream. This stream of mindfulness is what we are aiming for.

Recollections of Ajahn Chah, p.37
Amaravati Publications
Memory of Ajahn Jayasaro

Mar 8^th, 2024

Don't be a Buddha

On his visit in 1979, Ajahn Chah related that once a Westerner … came to Wat Pah Pong and asked him if he was an arahant. Ajahn Chah told him,

Your question is a question to be answered. I will answer it like this: I am like a tree in the forest. Birds come to the tree, they will sit on its branches and eat its fruit. To the birds, the fruit may be sweet or sour or whatever. But the tree doesn't know anything about it. The birds say 'sweet' or they say 'sour' - from the tree's point of view this is just the chattering of the birds.

On that same evening we also discussed the relative virtues of the arahant and the bodhisattva. He ended our discussion by saying,

Don't be an arahant. Don't be a Buddha. Don't be anything at all. Being something makes problems. So don't be anything. You don't have to be something, he doesn't have to be something, I don't have to be something.

He paused, and then said,

Sometimes when I think about it, I don't want to say anything.

Recollections of Ajahn Chah, p.55, Memory of Paul Breiter

Mar 1^st, 2024

FREEDOM IS A SIDE EFFECT OF A LIFE THAT IS CONSCIOUS

In Buddhism, what we call 'mind' (or 'citta') does not refer just to thinking and the brain. The mind has a much broader dimension. It includes thinking, but it also includes our perceptions, feelings, stories and memories. For example, when I perceive something, I already have an imprint in me, a memory that can help me recognize: 'this is this; that is that.'

As we become more conscious of the workings of our mind, we free the heart from the causes of misery. Freedom is a side effect of a life that is conscious. We don't necessarily become happy every minute of every day, but we feel more comfortable in ourselves. We have fewer regrets and less worry because we have lived a life that breathes deeply through the quality of awareness.

Ajahn Sundara, Seeds of Dhama, p.23

Feb 23^rd, 2024

Dhamma - Life Isn't Just Suffering

YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD THE RUMOR that Buddhism is pessimistic, that "Life is suffering" is the Buddha's first noble truth. It's a rumor with good credentials, spread by well-respected academics and meditation teachers alike, but a rumor nonetheless.

The real truth about the noble truths is far more interesting. The Buddha taught four truths - not one - about life: There is suffering, there is a cause for suffering, there is an end of suffering, and there is a path of practice that puts an end to suffering. These truths, taken as a whole, are far from pessimistic. They're a practical, problem-solving approach - the way a doctor approaches an illness, or a mechanic a faulty engine. You identify a problem and look for its cause. You then put an end to the problem by eliminating the cause.

What's special about the Buddha's approach is that the problem he attacks is the whole of human suffering, and the solution he offers is something human beings can do for themselves. Just as a doctor with a surefire cure for measles isn't afraid of measles, the Buddha isn't afraid of any aspect of human suffering. And, having experienced a happiness that's totally unconditional, he's not afraid to point out the suffering and stress inherent in places where most of us would rather not see it - in the conditioned pleasures we cling to. He teaches us not to deny that suffering and stress, or to run away from it, but to stand still and face up to it. To examine it carefully. That way - by understanding it - we can ferret out its cause and put an end to it. Totally. How confident can you get?

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff), Refuge, pp.64-5

Feb 16^th, 2024

Refuge

In pre-Buddhist India, going for refuge meant proclaiming one's allegiance to a patron - a powerful person or god - and submitting to the patron's directives in hopes of receiving protection from danger in return. In the Buddhist context this custom took on a new meaning.

A person taking refuge in the Buddhist sense is not asking for the Buddha personally to intervene to provide protection. Still, one of the Buddha's central teachings is that human life is fraught with dangers - from greed, anger, and delusion, the practice is aimed at gaining release from those dangers. Because the mind is the source both of the dangers and of release, there is a need for two levels of refuge: external refuges, which provide models and guidelines so that we can identify which qualities in the mind lead to danger and which to release; and internal refuges, i.e., the qualities leading to release that we develop in our own mind in imitation of our external models. The internal level is where true refuge is found

One [commits] to living in line with the principle that actions based on skillful intentions lead to happiness, while actions based on unskillful intentions lead to suffering. To take refuge in this way ultimately means to take refuge in the quality of our own intentions, for that’s where the essence of karma lies.

Refuge, Thanissaro Bhikku (Geoffrey DeGraff) pp.1-2

Feb 9^th, 2024

A Meditative Life

Often we like to think that simply by adding meditation to our daily schedule, the effects of the meditation will permeate everything without our having to do much of anything else. Simply add the meditation to the mix of your life and it will transform all the other ingredients: That's what we'd like to think, but it doesn't really work that way. You have to remake your life to make it a good place for the meditation to seep through, because some activities, some states of mind, aren't like fertile soil. They're like rocks. They're really resistant to receiving any influence from the meditation.

This is why, when you're a meditator you also have to look at the way you live your life, your day-to-day activities. See if you're creating a conducive environment for the meditation to thrive and spread. Otherwise the meditation just gets squeezed into the cracks between the rocks here and there, and never gets to permeate much of anything at all.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Mediations 2, p80

Feb 2^nd, 2024

Two quotes today:

The word parami [means] completeness or the highest state possible, hence “perfection.” This perfection is applied to the qualities needed for one to attain awakening. As the Buddhist tradition developed, the view emerged that one needs to cultivate and perfect a particular set of qualities—often over multiple lifetimes. These are the ten paramis: giving, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, lovingkindness, and equanimity.

Andrew Olendzki, What's in a Word? Parami, Tricycle, Fall 2020
The Place of Non-Abiding

Ajahn Sumedho had been in England for a few years during the summer of 1981 when a letter arrived from Thailand. Even though Ajahn Chah could read and write, he rarely did. In fact, he hardly wrote anything, and he never wrote letters. The message began with a note from a fellow Western monk. It said: “Well, Ajahn Sumedho, you are not going to believe this, but Luang Por decided he wanted to write you a letter, so he asked me to take his dictation.” The message from Ajahn Chah was very brief, and this is what it said: “Whenever you have feelings of love or hate for anything whatsoever, these will be your aides and partners in building parami. The Buddha-Dharma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. This, Sumedho, is your place of non-abiding.”

It still gives me goose bumps. A few weeks later, Ajahn Chah had a stroke and became unable to speak, walk, or move. His verbal teaching career was over. This letter contained his final instructions.

Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat, Great Mountain, pp. 15-16.

Jan 26^th, 2024

It's Always Possible

Whenever there is darkness in the heart, that's when you practice bright kamma and ending kamma. You don't have to figure out where the dissonance comes from and whose fault it is. All you need to know is that this is dark vipaka intentional action) - and where it gets cleared.

The process is like cleaning dirty laundry: it's done both by the action of placing the laundry in a basin and swishing it around, and without action because the water does the cleaning. So you take that dark residue and put it into the clarity or purity that skillful attention brings into play, and the dirt will begin to clear. We establish mindfulness, and deep attention lets go of what comes up. Whenever some of the dark residues get cleared, full knowing sense the lightness, or brightness. And you can tune in to that.

This makes your citta (heart) broader, deeper, and clearer. Over time there develops a ground of well-being, a gathering of punna (merit), that you can abide in. Through years of practice, your basin becomes a lake. But because with full knowing there isn't the sense that 'I've done this' or 'This means I'm this,' the mind remains quiet and receptive.

Our practice then is led by Dahmma rather than driven by self-views, and it inclines towards stopping the old rather than becoming something new. It's a cultivation that frees up, protects, and gathers us into a free space at the centre of the heart. Bright kamma supports the kamma that leads to the end of kamma; it gives us a foretaste of that freedom.

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the End of Kamma, pp. 61-62

Jan 19^th, 2024

Venerable Sona was very energetic in his efforts at meditation but was unable to realize awakening. He then began to wonder if he should leave the monastic life and return home. The Buddha read these thoughts . . .

'What do you think Sona, when you were formerly a householder, were you skilled at the stringed lute's music?'

'Yes, venerable Sir'

'What do you think, Sona, when the strings of your lute were too taut, was your lute at that time tuneful and suitable for playing?'

'No, indeed, Venerable Sir.'

'What do you think, Sona, when the strings of your lute were too loose, was your lute at that time tuneful and suitable for playing?'

'No, indeeed, Venerable Sir.'

'Even so Sona, too much exertion leads to restlessness and too little exertion leads to indolence. Therefore, Sona, you should welcome the evenness of energy, penetrate the evenness of the faculties and use it as a theme for reflection.' (Vinaya Pitaka1, 181f)

It is not uncommon for people to bring high expectations to the spiritual life. However, when one strips away the usual distractions and amusements, the familiar comforts and securities, what is revealed can be quite surprising, and even disconcerting. A wise approach to spiritual practice is to aim towards the 'evennenss of energy' advocated by the Buddha. That is, rather than riding on ideals, we learn to carefuly deflate idealism so as to achieve a soft landing in realism.

Ajahn Thiradhammo, Treasures of the Buddha's Teaching, Selected Translations from the Pali Canon with Commentaries, pp. 173-74

Jan 12^th, 2024

In the modern world, it is easy to discuss Buddhism without reference to the natural world. Many books about Buddhism emphasize the psychological, therapeutic, and philosophical aspects of the religion without any mention of the role nature can have in the lives of Buddhist practitioners. These books commonly leave out the backdrop in which the teachings were originally given. . .

Nature can also be an effective teacher. In particular, it can provide lessons in the impermanence of life; just as change is inherent in nature, so we can expect we will change. . . A long tradition in Buddhism sees an intimate and mutual interaction between nature and people’s inner life; the health of the natural environment is closely tied to the people’s physical and spiritual health. Caring for the environment is a way to care for ourselves. And if we care for our own well–being, we would care for the environment.

When we live disconnected from nature, it is hard to remember the intimate connection between our life and the health of the natural world. When we spend time in nature, it is easier to understand how they work together. If we take up the Buddha’s instruction to meditate at the foot of a tree, perhaps our appreciation of the natural world will grow. And perhaps sitting in nature will show us the natural world that is within each of us.

Even if we cannot be outside in the natural world, with a calm, clear mind, we can find the natural world within us. In important ways, the nature within and the nature outside of us are the same — they live in a mutual relationship. If we then want to care for our environment, we will become “nature taking care of nature.”

Gil Fronsdahl, Insight Meditation Society
www.insightmeditationcenter.org/2021/02/buddhism-in-nature

Jan 5^th, 2024

The Skills Of Attention

The what and how of attention are co-dependent. Any kind of attention selects data from a wide range. It seeks content. But if, for example, you review your visual experience, you'll note that although there is a wide field of seeing, the mind selects only a small portion of that to focus the eyes on. Then, whatever attention has focused on leads the mind and affects the heart. How we attend selects what we notice, and what we notice affects how we attend - and that determines where the mind will go and what action will ensue.

In detail: an underlying intention steers what intention selects, and through the twofold process of contact, a mind-state is born that sends out a train of thought. For example, an architect sees a house and notices the design and structure; a burglar sees it and notices the windows and doors. Even if the architect and burglar don't follow through with physical action, their hearts will have been aroused in certain ways and their minds will have considered and calculated. This mental process conditions their behavior and even who they experience themselves as being.

In abstract: underlying intention steers attention, attention gives rise to contact, and contact generates meaning and intention. Intention, attention, and contact are all sankhara; they lay down or strengthen a track of mental kamma - and with that, a sense of "I am" is born.

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the End of Kamma, pp. 52-53

Dec 29^th, 2023

What Is a Living Being?

A certain amount of spiritual maturity hinges on understanding the nature of conventional reality. So much of our conditioning is predicated on the assumption that there is such a thing as a “real” living being. We see ourselves in terms of the limitations of the body and the personality, and we define what we are within those bounds. We assume then that other beings are also limited little pockets of beingness that float around in the cosmos.

But a lot of what the practice is doing is deconstructing that model. Rather than taking the body and personality as the defining features of what we are, we take the Dharma as the basic reference point of what we are. . . Then we see the body and personality as being merely minuscule subsets of that, and as a result, we relate to our own nature in a very different way. The body and personality are recognized as little windows that the Dharma-nature is filtered through.

Through the matrix of the body, personality, and our mental faculties, that nature of reality can be realized; it is not some little thing that is tacked on at the edge. Within all Buddhist traditions, understanding what a living being is means revisioning that whole structure, the habitual image of what we are.

Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat, Great Mountain, p.10

Dec 22^nd, 2023

Conventional Truth and Ultimate Truth

The longer I stayed [at the monastery], the more I began to pay attention to Ajahn Chah’s repeated emphasis on the relationship between convention and liberation, conventional reality and ultimate reality. The things of this world are merely conventions of our own creation. Once we establish them, we proceed to get lost in or blinded by them. This gives rise to confusion, difficulty, and struggle. One of the great challenges of spiritual practice is to create the conventions, pick them up, and use them without confusion. We can recite the Buddha’s name, bow, chant, follow techniques and routines, pick up all these attributes of being a Buddhist, and then, without any hypocrisy, also recognize that everything is totally empty. There is no Buddhist! This is something Ajahn Chah focused on a great deal over the years: if you think you really are a Buddhist, you are totally lost. He would sometimes be sitting up on the Dharma seat, giving a talk to the whole assembly of monastics and laypeople, and say, “There are no monks or nuns here, there are no lay people, no women or men—these are all merely empty conventions that we create.”

The capacity we have to commit ourselves sincerely to something and simultaneously to see through it is something we find difficult to exercise in the West. We tend to be extremists. Either we grab onto something and identify with it or we think it is meaningless and reject it, since it’s not real anyway. So the Middle Way is not necessarily a comfortable one for us. The Middle Way is the simultaneous holding of the conventional truth and the ultimate truth, and seeing that the one does not contradict or belie the other.

Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat, Great Mountain, pp. 8-9

Dec 15^th, 2023

Action That Leads To Liberation

Mindfulness is the action of pausing on the program and momentum of the mind and referring to it, not as 'me' and 'mine' and locked in, but with dispassion. This skill shifts the kammic drive out of its gear and gives us a choice. Mindfulness is generally set up with reference to the body - that is, by attuning to the overall sense of the body in terms of its form and energies. By not getting stuck in or reacting to sensations, the mind can focus on bodily energy as it settles; then one can adjust the mental energy of intention so that it is in sync with the more settled energy of the body. The body can relax its energy a lot more readily than the mind, and in this way, through mindfulness, the body helps to free the mind from its scurry or slump. This is the foundation for the mental kamma of meditation.

Ajahn Sucitto
Kamma and the end of Kamma pp. 34-35

Dec 8^th, 2023

Happiness, Unhappiness and Nibbana

The goal of Buddhist meditation is Nibbana. We incline towards the peace of Nibbana and away from the complexities of the sensual realm, the endless cycles of habit. Nibbana is a goal that can be realized in this lifetime. We don't have to wait until we die to know that it's real.

The sensual world is compounded of birth and death. Its very nature is dukkha. . . We suffer from it when we expect more from it than it can possibly give, things like permanent security and happiness, permanent love and safety.

How long can you stay happy? . . . Happiness always leads to unhappiness, because it's impermanent. . . Trying to arrange, control and manipulate conditions so that we never have to experience unhappiness or despair, is a hopeless task.

Thus the goal for the Buddhist is not happiness, because we realize that happiness is unsatisfactory. It is not a rejection of the sensual world, but understanding it so well that we no longer seek it as an end in itself. We're not being pessimistic about the way things are, but we're observing, so we don't expect life to be other than it is. Then we can cope with life and endure it when it's difficult, and delight in it when it's delightful.

Nibbana isn't a state of blankness. . . it's like space. It's going into the space of your mind where you no longer attach, where you're no longer deluded by the appearance of things. You are no longer demanding anything from the sensory world. You are just recognizing it as it arises and passes away.

Ajahn Sumedho
Now is the Knowing (excerpted from the essay Happiness, Unhappiness and Nibbana, pp. 36-39)

Dec 1^st, 2023

Grasping is Suffering

Usually we equate suffering with feeling, but feeling is not suffering. It is the grasping of desire that is suffering. Desire does not cause suffering; the cause of suffering is the grasping of desire. . .

You really have to investigate desire and know it for what it is. You have to know what is natural and necessary for survival and what is not . . . We can be very idealistic in thinking that even the need for food is some kind of desire we should not have. . . . But the Buddha was not an idealist and he was not a moralist. He was not trying to condemn anything. He was trying to awaken us to the truth so that we could see things clearly.

Once there is that clarity and seeing in the right way, then there is no suffering. You can still feel hunger. You can still need food without it becoming a desire. . .

Grasping means being deluded by [desire]: 'These desires are me and there is something wrong with me for having them' or, ' I don't like the way I am now, i have to become something else' or ' I have to let go of something before I can become what I want to be.' All that is desire. So you listen to it with bare attention, not saying that it's good or bad, but merely recognising it for what it is.

Ajahn Sumedho
The Four Noble Truths p. 55-56

Nov 24^th, 2023

I encourage you to try to understand dukkha: to really look at, stand back, and accept your suffering. Try to understand it when you are feeling physical pain or despair and anguish or hatred and aversion - whatever form it takes, whatever quality it has, whether extreme or slight. This teaching does not mean that to get enlightened you have to be utterly and totally miserable. You do not have to have everything taken away from you or be tortured on the rack; it means being able to look at suffering, even if it is just a mild feeling of discontent, and understand it.

Ajahn Sumedho
The Four Noble Truths, p.33

Nov 10^th, 2023

Falling out of a Tree

"Ignorance is the condition for fabrications. Fabrications are the condition for consciousness. Consciousness is the condition for name and form." We've studied this and memorized it , and it's true, the way the Buddha has divided things up like this, for students to study. but when these things actually arise, they're too fast for you to count.

It's like falling from the top fo a tree - thump! to the ground. We don't know which branches we've passed. The moment the mind is struck by a good object, if it's something it likes, it goes straight to 'good.' It doesn't know the connecting steps in between. They follow in line with the texts, but they also go outside of the texts. They don't say, "Right here is ignorance. Right here is fabrication. Right here is consciousness. Right here is name and form." They don't have signs for you to read. It's like falling out of a tree. The Buddha talks about the mental moments in full detail, but I use the comparison with falling out of a tree. When you slip out of a tree - thump! - you don't measure how many feet and inches you've fallen. All you know is you've crashed to the ground and are already hurting.

Ajahn Chah
In Simple Terms: 106 Dhamma Similes for Contemplation Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikku

This book is in our library at MMPC, and also available for download at: www.forestsanghapublications.org

Nov 3^rd, 2023

Buddhism encourages us not only to reduce stress but also to recognize its causes. Thai Forest Master Ajahn Chah had a revealing simile for the situation.

It's like falling from the top of a tree to come crashing down to the ground below. We have no idea how many branches we've passed on the way down.

Corporate mindfulness finds the sufferer and offers aid, but it has nothing to say about the cause of the suffering. If asked about the tree, it says only, "What tree?"

In emphatic contrast, Buddhism says, "Hey noble one, you just fell from a tree, you hit every branch on the way down, and yet you'll get up tomorrow morning and fall from the same damned tree unless you wake up."

Curtis White
Against the Stream
Tricycle Buddhist Review, Fall 2023

Oct 27^th, 2023

Sweeping

Our routines give us lots of strength. Wherever in the monastery you can do them - regardless of whether it's your own hut or someone else's: if it's dirty or messy, straighten it out. You don't have to do it for anyone's sake. You don't have to do it to impress anyone. You do it for the sake of your practice. When we sweep our huts, sweep our buildings, it's as if we sweep all the dirty things out of our hearts, because we're people who practice. I want each of us to have this attitude in our hearts. Then we won't have to ask for harmony or cooperation. It'll already be there.

Ajahn Chah
In Simple Terms: 108 Dhamma Similes for Contemplation

Oct 20^th, 2023

What if we take a radical step? What if we just allow the past to be, and greet this moment with a transformed, a completely fresh, childlike curiosity? Because it is unique, this moment right here. Our sense of identity, of how we are – that’s the old stuff bubbling up and trying to grab our attention (even though some of it may be useful and necessary). But we can begin to see things just as they are, to have the willingness and the courage to let the past be. Let it go. It’s all right to do that. Let the fear and the delusion, all of that, let it go! When we look around, what we’re seeing is our minds, really; our perception of the world is just a reflection of our own mental state. And if we’re at peace and fearless, coming from a place of stability and security, we help to project into the world a state of peacefulness. Instead of doom and gloom and the dark, threatening clouds on our horizon, we can make it something more peaceful. Benevolent. Compassionate. This movement of the mind is very subtle. It’s just letting things be, letting things go.

Ajahn Anando, Dec 31, 1986

Sept 8^th, 2023

“To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.”

Thich Nhat Hanh
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

August 25^th, 2023

"Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free."

Thich Nhat Hanh

July 21^st, 2023

Emptiness in Buddhist terms doesn’t mean nothingness. It means that every single thing we encounter — including ourselves — goes beyond our ability to conceive of it. We call it emptiness because nothing can ever explain it. Reality itself is emptiness because we can’t possibly fit it into our minds.

Brad Warner
Don’t Be a Jerk.
And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master

July 14^th, 2023

We should forget day by day, what we have done; and we should do something new. This is true non-attachment. To do something new, of-course we must know our past, and that is alright. But we should not keep holding on to what we have done; we should only reflect on it.

Shunryu Suzuki

July 7^th, 2023

Skilful conduct (sila) is the beginning, the foundation and the chief cause of all good things. . . Skilful conduct is the boundary, the control and the brightening of the mind, and it is the abiding of all the Buddhas.
(words of the Buddha quoted in Teragatha 612-3)

Skilful conduct gives stability and viability to spiritual practice. it is the foundation upon which spiritual practice is built, and grounds that practice in one's ordinary day-to-day life. Otherwise spiritual practice can too easily become an ancillary habit, an exceptional experience, which is seemingly not feasible in normal life, or just a one-off experience which we are unable to reproduce. Skilful conduct also give the mind control and boundaries as aids to meditation, so that although the mind may be churning out all kinds of crazy and immoral things, our conduct is rooted in harmonious and wholesome actions. Thus we can watch and know the entire range of our selfish expressions, without needing to follow or react to them, or blindly deny or ignore them.

Treasures of the Buddha's Teaching
Selected translatins of the Pli canon with commentaries, p. 84
Ajahn Thiradhammo

June 16^th, 2023

And how does one abide contemplating feeling tones. . . ? When feeling a pleasant feeling, one knows, 'I feel a pleasant feeling'; when feeling an unpleasant feeling, one knows 'I feel an unpleasant feeling'; when feeling a feeling which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, one knows, 'I feel a feeling which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant'.

Majjhima Nikkaya, attributed to the Buddha

Feeling (vedana) in the Buddhist definition, is just the basic affective tone of our experience . . . distinct from the mental or emotional reactions which it often initiates. Feelings are present whenever there is consciousness, whether we are aware of them or not. . . through development of the exercise described here, we become increasingly aware, not only of the incredible range of feeling tones and the influences they exert over us, but also of the fragility of these feelings to which we give such importance.

Ajahn Thiradammo,
Treasures of the Buddha's Teaching, p. 99-100

June 9^th, 2023

The development of mindfulness proceeds from the coarse to the more refined. Body is the first object for developing mindfulness, because it is more stable and substantial, slower to change, longer lasting and, usually, more honest than the slippery convolutions of the mind.

The most important observable bodily activity is the natural breathing process. Thus the breathing is used as the basic meditation object. Focusing attention on natural breathing can lead to the development of concentration, while awareness of the subtle changes in breathing patterns can lead to insight.

Ajahn Thiradhammo
Treasures of the Buddhist teaching
Selected translations of the Pali canon with commentaries
pp. 94-95

June 2^nd, 2023

This body is just a manifestation, like a cloud. When a cloud is no longer a cloud, it is not lost. It has not become nothing; it has transformed; it has become rain. Therefore we should not identify our self with our body. This body is not me. I am not caught in this body. I am life without limit.

Thich Nhat Hanh
from Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm

May 26^th, 2023

Tao, the Way, is a kind of natural law behind all of creation.

Tao is eternally without desire. So, it can be called small. All things return to it, although it does not make itself their ruler. So, it can be called great.

Tao Te Ching, ch. 34

May 12^th, 2023

It is very useful to keep our concentration on impermanence alive. You think the other person in your life is going to be there forever, but that is not true. That person is impermanent, just like you. So if you can do something to make that person happy, you should do it right away.

In the practice of buddhism, dying is very important. It’s as important as living.

May 5^th, 2023 (Vesak, Full Moon, Total Lunar Eclipse)

Sayings of the Buddha from the Dhammapada:

If the mind is clear, whatever you do or say will bring happiness that will follow you like your shadow. (1:1)
We are but guests visiting this world, although most do not know this. Those who see the real situation no longer feel inclined to quarrel. (1.6)
Perform those actions you will never regret: actions that will ripen into future joy and delight. (5:8-9)

Meditation With MovementQuotations from Previous Weeks

Meditation With Movement
Quotations from Previous Weeks