Worried about attachment to jhānas? The worst that can happen is that we will be reborn in a heavenly realm for up to 84 thousand eons of celestial bliss. Considering the range of possible rebirths within samsara that’s still not a bad option. The best that can happen is that we realize enlightenment. Virtue and states of samādhi are like rungs of a ladder. We have to hold onto higher and higher…

Renunciation is a lovely reflection to bring up from time to time. Sometimes people talk about how they’ve renounced something they were strongly attached to. They say that having renounced it, they’re now done with it, once and for all. However, it’s rarely as simple as that. Being attached to something means we don’t want to let it go. If we recognize that something is harmful, a desire may aris…

For sustaining and integrating the benefits of meditation, the composure of sense restraint is highly effective. The Buddha repeatedly emphasized the importance of establishing mindfulness at the doors of the senses in order to curtail self-indulgence. The bliss that arises in jhāna is completely independent of sensual pleasures. Thrills and excitement are in fact an obstruction to deep meditatio…

Yesterday, at the City of the Dharma Realm in Sacramento, I was giving instructions to twenty-eight novices who were preparing to ordain next month as bhikṣunīs, Buddhist nuns. It was quite a delightful time. Their sincerity was tangible. One of the ideas I brought up with them is developing samaṇa saññā, the perception or recollection of being a religious seeker. We function out of our perc…

Another training the Buddha described with regard to food is that to eat appropriately you should eat one mouthful at a time. That may not strike you as a novel concept. It means you eat the mouthful of food that is in your mouth, without lining up the next spoonful in a holding pattern like a plane hovering round an airport or waiting for take-off on a runway. Instead, simply be with the mouthful…

If you listen to yourself very much, you can sometimes hear such statements as, ‘I should do this but I shouldn’t do that, I should be this way, I shouldn’t be that way,’ or that the world would be other than it is; our parents should be this way or that way and shouldn’t be the way they are. So we have this particular verb tense ringing through our minds because we have an idea of what shouldn’t…

So right intent is an important base to cultivate. The three inclinations that make up right intent are kindness, compassion and renunciation – letting go of the pull of the senses. Tuning into and sustaining this right intent feels good: firstly it generates self-respect or freedom from regret and anxiety. Then, because we act in accordance with that right intent, it means that we make good frien…

The Buddha gave a small collection of teachings called the ‘Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection’ (A 5.57). The first of these is: ‘I am of the nature to age.’ The second is: ‘I am of the nature to sicken.’ The third is: ‘I am of the nature to die.’ The fourth is: ‘All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will become separated from me’; and the fifth is: ‘I am the owner of…

Deep samādhi offers an experience of true silence, a profound inner solitude. It frees the mind from the inane babble of thoughts, from the tyranny of chattering opinions. True insight does not arise from reasoning. Certainly, pondering Dhamma by mulling it over in the rock-polishing tumbler of disciplined thought can pave the way to insight with smooth stones, but the pondering eventually become…

What then is the experience of jhāna? The mind’s energy gradually pulls away from its usual dispersion at the various sense doors and gathers internally. Any negative emotions or unwholesome states of mind disappear. The sensation of having a body disappears. One feels light and joyful, and the mind becomes silent without any thinking whatsoever. The mind’s awareness then focuses more and more in…