Q: Suppose you know you’re going to die in three minutes. How do you train your mind at that point? A: The first point of advice is: Don’t wait until you’re two or three minutes from death. Try to practice in advance as much as you can. But if you suddenly realize that death is imminent, remember that you really have to let go. Of everything. The Buddha’s advice is that if you’re worried about wha…

When looking at the qualities of courage and renunciation, you might notice that these are both important ingredients of any spiritual path. In the Theravada tradition renunciation is at the top of the list in terms of practice and training. For monastics, all of our life revolves around this theme. And the five precepts, the ‘training’ of the lay community, are also very concerned with these qual…

I was speaking with somebody recently who shared that he was finding it difficult to settle into the joy of life, to sit back and enjoy being alive. He thought that something was wrong with that. I explained to him that from a Buddhist perspective it’s not about settling into a joy that’s supposedly inherent in life. Rather, joy is something that comes from past action, from kamma. As my father us…

The here and now that offers rest and peace is not a thought, sensation or state of mind. These things, which we customarily mistake to be the real business, continually defy and tantalize us with their scintillating changeability. Right here and now is the awareness that takes embodiment as location, empathy as felt relationship and silent attention for clarity. Embodied awareness, one that sees…

The Buddha didn’t talk very much about awakening, but when he did he referred to it in very practical terms. For example, the word ‘nibbāna’ literally means ‘going out’, in the sense that a flame goes out. You could make a play on words by saying, ‘The candle has nibbāna-ed’. But if we translate it too literally, ‘nibbāna’ becomes ‘extinction’ – we’re going to be extinguished. This may sound ex…

According to one of the Suttas, it is very difficult to repay the debt of gratitude to our parents. The Buddha says that even if we can carry our mother and father on our shoulders for a hundred years, we cannot fully reciprocate their kindness. Even if we were to carry them, one on each shoulder, for the rest of our lives we will still not repay the debt we owe them because the kindness they have…

In telling his own story, the Buddha was not motivated by the desire, common at present, to simply tell “what it felt like to be me.” He gives very few details of his personal life, mentioning his luxurious and refined upbringing simply to prove that when he talks of the drawbacks of sensual pleasures, he’s talking from experience. Aside from that detail, he recounts only the events and decisions…

Whether it’s sewing robes or making a footpath, the Forest Tradition has a high standard of workmanship. But quite often we’re asked to do things we’re not competent in or used to doing. There’s a learning curve we all go through in the Saṅgha. If we’ve never had to do welding and we end up assigned a welding job, or if we’ve never been an abbot and we end up being an abbot, it becomes a real tra…

Standing to one side, the god Subrahmā addressed the Buddha in verse: “This mind is always anxious, this mind is always stressed about stresses that haven’t arisen and those that have. If there is a state free of anxiety, please answer my question.” “Not without understanding and austerity, not without restraining the sense faculties, not without letting go of everything, do I see safety for livin…

From a Buddhist perspective, anything to do with other people can be considered social action: how we relate to the individuals close to us such as family or neighbours, to society at large and to the world around us. The field of social action expands out, but it begins with ourselves and our relationships to others. The individual is at the core of all relationships between any parts of society.…