For all Buddhists, taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha is the first and most elemental act on the Buddha’s path to freedom. The Buddha is the ideal of spiritual perfection, and the teacher of the true path to attain it. By taking refuge in the Buddha, you take that ideal as your teacher. You also pledge not to seek false spiritual ideals. The Dhamma is the true path to spiritual perfect…

How does your body-mind feel first thing in the morning? Learn to feel that rather than just thinking, ‘I don’t feel so good. I don’t feel very much awake. I feel I could use a stiff cup of coffee or stay a few more hours in bed.’ That’s what happens when we think about suffering: we think of the antidotes to it; so of course if we don’t get them, this suffering becomes worse and worse, doesn’t it…

Your moods and preoccupations are one thing; the mind is something else. They’re two different kinds of things. Usually when a mood hits, one that we like, we go running after it. If it’s one we don’t like, we turn our backs on it. When this is the case, we don’t see our own mind. We just keep running after our moods. The mood is the mood; the mind is the mind. You have to separate them out to see…

Once, when the Buddha was still alive, his opponents hired some people to curse him and Venerable Ãnanda when they were out on their alms round. “You camels. You skinheads. You beggars,” – that’s what they say in the texts. Venerable Ãnanda got all upset and asked the Buddha to go to another city – a city where they wouldn’t get cursed, a city where they wouldn’t get criticised. The Buddha asked h…

We can imagine that we are limited by where we are born, what family we are born into, our social status, how we look— that these things determine who we are. Of course, they will have a big influence on our lives. But it’s what we do with our minds, our bodies, our speech—how we live in the world—that both influences the world around us and shapes who we are. Our six senses are eating the world a…

It is easy to forget the role that posture plays in meditation. If you are not sitting comfortably, restlessness may arise. If you don’t notice that connection, you finish meditating and conclude, “Gee, my mind was really restless.” But was it actually the mind that was restless or was that feeling there because the body was uncomfortable? Start to pay attention to body and mind; we have to medita…

Concentration is not something exclusive to Buddhism. Even in mundane activities, people use concentration. No matter what work you do, if you’re not intent on it, you won’t succeed. Even our ordinary everyday expressions teach concentration: “Set your heart on a goal.” “Set your mind on your work.” “Set yourself up in business.” Whoever follows this sort of advice is bound to succeed. But apart f…

Just as all phenomena are rooted in desire, consciousness localizes itself through passion. Passion is what creates the “there” on which consciousness can land or get established, whether the “there” is a form, feeling, perception, thought-construct, or a type of consciousness itself. Once consciousness gets established on any of these aggregates, it becomes attached and then proliferates, feeding…

…Practising mindfulness means trying to be more present either to the particular aspects of our experience that we have chosen as themes for mindfulness practice, or to whatever is happening right now, if we choose to be unspecific with our focus. In the example you gave of having the mind quieten down so that you experience emotional neutrality, to be mindful would be to really notice this, to st…

We have to get used to letting go of craving for certainty, and come to terms with what uncertainty actually feels like in the whole body-mind. The temptation to turn away from such unpleasant feelings can be strong. But if we inhibit our reactions, again using mindfulness, sense restraint and skilful reflection, it is possible that we won’t have to turn away, but instead enter into a realistic re…