I certainly experienced some benefits from the effort I made during this retreat period of intensified practice. About halfway through the three months, I had an experience of clarity that I can remember vividly – it was a night or two before my twenty-fourth birthday. It was quite spontaneous; I wasn’t doing any special practice. I was sitting there in puja one evening, surrounded by the other mo…

Our minds are pretty chaotic systems, which is why following the middle way is so difficult. It’s so easy for a chaotic system to get knocked out of equilibrium, to veer off to the left, to veer off to the right. Staying in the middle is difficult; it requires a lot of balance. …It’s easy for tiny little things to set them off. This is why we have to be careful in our practice. Don’t regard the li…

There’s an idiom I appreciate from the Zen Tradition which is simply stated: “Leave no trace.” It’s an attitude ascribed to persons who do everything with clarity, efficiency, and mindfulness. It’s helpful to cultivate this attitude, both as an ideal within the mind and also in terms of the little things we do— paying attention so we do not leave a trace behind us when we’re engaged in our daily a…

In 1978, one of Ajaan Fuang’s students had to move to Hong Kong, and so he set up a small meditation center there. In one of his letters he asked Ajaan Fuang to write out a short outline of the main points of the practice, and this was the answer he received: “Focus on all six of the elements: earth, water, wind, fire, space, and consciousness. When you’re acquainted with each of them, meld them i…

The brahmavihāras, or “sublime attitudes,” are the Buddha’s primary heart teachings—the ones that connect most directly with our desire for true happiness. The term brahmavihāra literally means “dwelling place of brahmās.” Brahmās are gods who live in the higher heavens, dwelling in an attitude of unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, and unlimited equanimity. These u…

The question of what has the power to obstruct the beauty of caring pertains not just to our relationships with people but also to the way we relate to things and to views and opinions. Perhaps for instance, we thought that we were being compassionate towards planet earth, taking good care of her, only to catch ourselves behaving aggressively towards those we see as exploiting her. Can we tolerate…

In summary, the core meaning is that when the awakened mind reviews the manifest world, it exhibits a deep appreciation of ‘uncivilized’ nature. On the face of it, this is simply because a remote environment offers fewer possibilities for worldly motivation, and also encourages deep contemplation on the facts of existence. In the presence of constant change and the imminence of death, the mind tun…

In order to support the journey from the early to the later stages of maraṇasati—both for the Earth and for the body—we need to move slowly and employ some grounding practices. Whenever we feel that this contemplation is becoming too intense, it’s important to take a step back and remind ourselves that this is a very long journey. To make this path sustainable, we must be gentle with ourselves. W…

The way of the Dhamma is one of observing nature and harmonising our lives with the natural forces. In European civilisation we never really looked at the world in that way. We have idealised it. If everything were an ideal, then it should be a certain way. And when we just attach to ideals, we end up doing what we have done to our earth at this time, polluting it, and being at the point of totall…