On Retreat A little closer to the clouds, above the scruffy heads of evergreen scrub, I discover the benefits of drinking tea and watching the sky turning pink after sunset. Only slowly the hard-edged words of learned truths dissolve, and a softer voice unwraps itself, emerging from the inside of what is here. What does it say? “You didn’t come here to succeed” is all I understand for now. Enough…

Stopping inside These days I don’t like to go anywhere, content to pore through my books and smile at the cats. They are old now, the summer flowers are over-tall, too much rain, and the weeds choking every corner of the garden. I love that landscape, where the world falls away and the deer lie down in the night’s shadow. Stopping inside the silence of being, awareness finely tuned, an island of p…

The study of the Dhamma is another area that often requires us to venture outside of our comfort zones. Pariyatti—which is the Pali word for the theoretical comprehension of the Dhamma acquired through reading and study—is an important part of Theravada Buddhism. For anyone intent on pursuing the Noble Eightfold Path, there has to be a deep curiosity about the Buddha’s teachings and how they might…

…Of course, the fact that the Pali Canon is the oldest (extant) record (of the Buddha’s teachings) is no guarantee that it is accurate. But as the Canon itself says, the true test of a teaching lies not in the claims of tradition, but in the results it gives when put into practice. To be fair, the test must involve four things: —associating with people of integrity; —listening to the true Dhamma;…

During one time refugees were pouring into Thailand from Laos and Cambodia. The charitable organizations who came out to help were many. This made some ordained Westerners think it was not right that Buddhist monks and nuns should just sit in the forest while other religious organizations were so actively participating in alleviating the plight of the refugees. So they approached Ajahn Chah to exp…

Yesterday, a group of us went over to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas for a commemoration of Master Xuan Hua’s fiftieth anniversary of coming to America. This morning while I was sitting, I remembered something said by Doug Powers, a long- time disciple of Master Hua. He had mentioned yesterday that Master Hua would both tease and challenge the students who came to study with him in the sixties a…

The Buddha taught the Saranīya Dhammas, which are the six principles of conciliation or harmonious living. The first three of these Dhammas are based on bodily, verbal, and mental acts of loving-kindness. By generating loving-kindness, we create a strong condition for the arising of wholesome kamma. When we establish harmony with others, we build on that foundation of loving-kindness. The fourth…

Six years after the Second World War was over, the legacy of the war remained in the form of the poverty and difficulties caused by the shortages of food and materials that affected every home. In particular, there was a great shortage of cloth. If a monk or novice had even one complete set of robes, he was fortunate. I was one of a large number of novices living with Luang Pu. One day Novice Phro…

One of Ajahn Chah’s disciples was unplugging a tape recorder when he accidentally touched the metal prongs of the plug while it was still connected. He got a shock and dropped it immediately. Ajahn Chah noticed and said, “Oh! How come you could let go of that so easily? Who told you to?” This reflections by Ajahn Chah is from the book, No Ajahn Chah, pp. 202.

There’s an element of the human psyche that is constantly looking for comfort, security, and ease. We can sometimes believe that the end of suffering is when we bring about the circumstances in which we don’t have to extend ourselves or put forth too much effort. But even when we’ve managed to manipulate conditions in a way that allows us to feel relatively comfortable and laid back, we inevitably…