If you approach our monastery in the dark on your first visit here high in the Kander Valley, when you step outside the next morning you’ll probably rub your eyes in disbelief at the sheer magnificence of the rock face stretching into the sky right behind the monastery. Often the monks get asked if they’re worried by this precarious situation. Their answers might be succinct, slightly bored or eve…

Although Nibbāna is immediate, the number of people who have actually seen it is infinitesimal. This is because Nibbāna is extremely subtle – so subtle that the Buddha, after first awakening, grew discouraged at the prospect of teaching it. [See MN 26: Pāsarāsi Sutta, The Noble Search.] Fortunately for us, the Buddha abandoned his hesitation and devoted himself to forty-five years of tireless serv…

The practice is so beautifully simple. All the techniques, methods and teachings are designed simply to bring us back to the present moment, here and now, to bring us back to seeing clearly. All the techniques and methods help to give us a good pair of spectacles. We wear them so we don’t have blurry eyesight. When we look at the world through lenses of greed, hatred or delusion, we look at a very…

I’ve noticed that when my mind is a bit forgetful, or if I have some physical discomfort or pain, my habitual reaction is a tensing up, a feeling of anxiety or panic: ‘Oh dear, what’s happening here?’ There is a kind of mental freezing, but that actually makes things worse. It doesn’t help me, and it doesn’t help the people I’m in contact with because they become tense, anxious and worried as well…

If you reflect on your mood right now, what is it? Do you feel happy, unhappy, or neither? Do you feel hot or cold? Do you feel inspired or depressed? Do you feel confused or clear, unsure or sure? Whenever I feel confused, I just try to accept that feeling. What is that like as a feeling? By asking myself that question I begin to notice and accept the feeling of confusion, rather than just resist…

‘Contact’ is the act of registering experience. Now take the case when we’re intensely focused on reading a book or watching a movie: awareness of our bodies, of the pressure of the chair, and maybe even a minor ache or pain, disappears. The mind’s attention is absorbed in seeing and processing the seen, so the tactile impressions of the chair, and of sitting here, don’t register an internal impre…

So being a good friend is a very skillful practice, one that requires us to make relationship a conscious focus rather than a casual interaction. It also requires us to work on ourselves. We have to let go of the impatience or the judgemental attitudes and work with the understanding that: ‘This is another person, not the same as me, not fitting in with my mind-sets, yet wanting happiness and need…

Get yourself ready to meditate. Sit in a composed way and examine your mind, using your mindfulness and discernment perceptively. Setting the mind in the right direction is something very important. If the mind isn’t set in the right direction, its thoughts and opinions won’t be right. It’s like a tree leaning to one side. When it falls down, it’ll fall in the direction that it’s been leaning. Whe…

The teachers who have most inspired and encouraged me in my own spiritual training have always offered their teachings for reflection rather than as the basis for assuming dogmatic positions. Buddhism has a well-developed doctrine, but when doctrine is merely held as an opinion, it easily becomes the source of a lot of argumentative debate that is not productive. The task of the contemplative is t…