It is the commemoration of Ajahn Chah’s birthday today. One of the constant refrains in his teaching and training is the recollection of the Thai phrase, mynair—unsure, uncertain, not a sure thing. We can develop the ability to hold experience in this space of not sure and uncertainty. Often the mind inclines to some sort of story. “It’s going to be just like this; this is going to be really wonde…
Another realization that has become clearer as I’ve been meeting people and teaching over the years is that those who’ve come from broken homes, or who have had very unstable family situations, assume that life is unsteady and unpredictable; they often have a deep sense of insecurity. I remember being struck during my first few years of meeting and living with such people, and there are a great ma…
We go through life propelled by our desires. Sometimes we get what we want and we’re satisfied for a while, and then we’re not so satisfied, so we generate more desires. We take it for granted that that’s simply the way things have to be. Some of us think that, well, maybe if we get a lot of things, they’ll make up for the lack of other things. So people amass things—amass power, amass wealth—thin…
When you look at the factors in the noble eightfold path, it’s interesting to note the order in which they come. The first two factors have to do with discernment, seeing that the big issue in life is suffering and stress, and particularly the kind of suffering that comes from our own thoughts. That right there tells you a lot: that this is a path where you have to look at your actions, look at yo…
What does our mind do when it stops grasping? It actually starts to feel, just by itself. You learn to feel by not grasping. What do you do when your mind feels dull, negative or bored? If you look at it, you can witness that there’s a grasping there, an attempt to clutch hold of something. Then there’s the attempt to get out of it, the attempt to find a positive or happy feeling, the attempt to f…
Chanting – what is this? Is this a valuable thing, or is it useless? If you ever doubt about it – to do it or not to do it - what goes on, do you know? Do you have to find reasons and justifications, do you have to be convinced? Or do you take some stand, saying ‘I am not going to do it’ or ‘I am going to do it’? Some people are always saying, ‘Oh, chanting reminds me of all those awful things Rom…
Walking the Path isn’t hard in and of itself. But it is hard for the sense of self, that illusory entity called ‘me’ who is so resistant to liberation. Again, this self is a collection of habits, it’s not a fault. You don’t have a ‘me’ because you wanted one. It just happened. You didn’t want to have an ego, a deluded ego which you may hate right now: ‘My personality – I’m terrible!’ We are very g…
Last year, at the start of my three-month retreat, I woke up deaf one morning. Prescribed steroids, it would be six weeks before I could have an MRI to confirm whether there was a tumour. For years, I had been the one to counsel and encourage others during illness and loss. Now, alone and in silence, could I walk my talk? I fought to maintain the simple rhythm of each day, cleaning, meditating, ch…
One way of inducing rapture is to ask yourself, “Which parts of the body right now feel relaxed or even just okay?” When you breathe in, can they maintain that quality of feeling okay, or is there a little squeeze on them? Try noticing your hands. You breathe in, breathe out, and does the flow of energy at any point in the breath cycle put a squeeze on the hands—on any of the muscles in any part o…
One of the main purposes of listening to the Dhamma is to get a sense of possibilities. We read the life of the Buddha to get a sense of what a human being can do, but all too often his story seems to be off there in never-never land, something someone far away in a far distant time was able to do. But to what extent is it relevant to us? To what extent can we make it relevant to what we’re doing?…
